The king's chief duty being to insure the material welfare of his subjects with the sole view of helping their spiritual welfare, the punishment for the infringement of caste and religious rules is made severe and swiftly administered. At the same time the spirit of the times is taken into consideration and many rigid rules are relaxed and minor faults are pardoned. The four castes are subdivided into sub-castes according to the different callings that the Vaishyas and Sudras show preference in their inclinations to follow. Those who take to agriculture are classed as cultivators, those who rear cattle and sell milk and butter are called milkmen, while those who take to trade and commerce are called traders and merchants and so on. All these form into different sub-castes under the general caste of Vaishya. Similarly the Sudras are subdivided according to their respective callings; viz., blacksmiths, potters, carpenters, masons, etc., all under the general caste of Sudra. The chief object of these sub-castes is to save human society from disintegration as much as possible, to preserve the masses of men in as large coherent sections as practicable linked to one another through spiritual, moral and material relations. Another, and almost equally important, object of the caste and sub-caste systems in the Copper Age is to conserve the heredity of their different intellectualities, talents, healthy characteristics, and instincts. This becomes all the more necessary owing to the fact that it is in the Dwāpar Yuga that husbands and wives begin to have carnal relations. During the Golden Age and the greater portion of the Silver Age all men and women are, what Christians call, virgin-born. The fuss that is made about this immaculate conception succeeds only to excite a smile of pity in the Shastra-enlightened Hindoo—a smile of pity for the ignorance of the facts in the past history of the human race of which they seem to know so little and care less to know more. This fact about the Golden and Silver Ages, this generally prevailing immaculate child-conception, ought to open their eyes. If they require any authority for this statement, I refer them to the study of the Shānti Parva of the Mahābhārata.