But all these things are harmless when compared with the principles by which the Brahmans reduced to the most miserable of lives numberless human creatures who had committed no wrong except that their origin did not agree with the political scheme of the priests. Formerly it had been lawful for the members of the three Aryan castes, after having married a girl of the same caste, to take other wives of a lower caste besides, and no disgrace attached to their children. The son of a Brahman and a Vaisya—or even of a Súdra woman—was therefore a Brahman. But this was no longer the case under the code of Manu. If the parents belonged to different castes, the children did not follow either father or mother, but they formed a mixed caste and the law distinctly regulates their occupations and trades. This theory gave birth to a great number of mixed castes, who were more or less despised. And the social standing of many of them grew still worse on account of an absurd maxim which degraded the Indian people to the level of grass and plants. Good seed in a bad soil gives of course a poorer return than in good soil; still the crop is endurable. But weed introduced into good soil produces weed abundantly. According to this theory of the Brahmans the children were below the father, if he had married a wife of a higher caste. The lowest and most execrable creature therefore is the son of a Súdra and a Brahman woman. The destiny of a Súdra was of course hard and unhappy, but the misery of the offspring of such a marriage, of the Chandâla, defies all description. “He shall live far from the abodes of other men and bear signs by which everybody can recognise and avoid him, as his contact pollutes. Only in daytime shall he be admitted into the villages, as then people can avoid him. He shall possess but common animals like dogs and donkeys, eat out of broken plates, put on the dresses of the dead, etc. They were compelled to serve as executioners. To the utmost degree of contempt and misery has the proud Brahman reduced these poor creatures.” (Schröder, pp. 423-424.) But the Chandâla was not the last in the Brahmanic scale, which suppressed all dignity in human nature; his offspring, though he had only a wife of the Súdra caste, was necessarily still below him. Thus originated a great number of mixed castes, one more despised than the other, and despising one another. Most of these outcasts take their names from the Indian aborigines and are thus placed on the same level with the most contemptible tribes. Some of the things I have cited about the mixed castes, may have been merely a theory of the Brahmans; however, the actual existence of classes of people reduced by the clergy to a sort of animal life, has been sufficiently verified by foreign travellers.