An attack on it is bitterly resented. This honour is quite consistent with licentiousness, robbery, plunder, and even murder; but to violate caste by drinking from the vessel of a low-caste man, or eating with him, would bring with it indelible disgrace. To partake of the cow, the sacred animal, is the greatest crime which can be committed, and, if done unconsciously, the greatest calamity. Notwithstanding the fact that the English as a people had little zeal for their religion, the Sepoys thought they saw reasons for our wishing to effect their conversion. If Christians, they would be fitter instruments for carrying out the designs of their English conquerors. They would in that case be no longer hampered by class distinctions, commissariat arrangements could be more easily made, they would have no objection to serving in foreign lands, and they would become identified with us. What was more easy than to effect the change by the manipulation of their food? Their imagination led them to interpret facts as justifying suspicion, and the supposition was enough to drive them to revolt. The Muhammadans in India have become Hinduized to a large extent; they continually speak of themselves as a caste, and Muhammadan soldiers have shared with their Hindu comrades in the fear that the English were bent on destroying their religion. They took the most prominent part in the mutiny at Vellore in 1806. They were injudiciously required there to put on the English military hat, to shave their beards, and put on leather belts, which they maintained were made of pigs' skins; and all this was done, they said, to turn them into _Topeewalas_, Hatmen--in other words, into Englishmen and Christians. [Sidenote: CO-OPERATING CAUSES FOR REVOLT.]