==============+======== Districts. | Number. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~ Dehra Dûn | 8 Sahâranpur | 33 Muzaffarnagar | 21 Meerut | 395 Bulandshahr | 11 Aligarh | 148 Mathura | 956 Agra | 316 Farrukhâbâd | 28 Mainpuri | 106 Etâwah | 247 Etah | 3 Budâun | 13 Morâdâbâd | 258 Shâhjahânpur | 4 Cawnpur | 495 Fatehpur | 860 Bânda | 470 Hamîrpur | 535 Allahâbâd | 69 Jhânsi | 4,020 Jâlaun | 121 Lalitpur | 696 Benares | 75 Mirzapur | 212 Jaunpur | 703 Ghâzipur | 24 Gorakhpur | 19 Basti | 373 Lucknow | 864 Sîtapur | 31 Kheri | 1 Faizâbâd | 30 Gonda | 37 Bahrâich | 36 Sultânpur | 260 Partâbgarh | 1 +~~~~~~~ Total |12,497 ==============+======= Dikhit; Dikhshit (Sans. dikhshita, “initiated, consecrated”), a functional division of Brâhmans.—“The priest specially employed to initiate a Hindu boy into the performance of his religious duties, and to give him the second birth is called a Dikhshit. The word is simply a corruption of Dikhshitri, “one who initiates.” It is only boys of the upper castes, that is those who are called “the twice-born” (dvija) who are entitled to the privilege of Diksha. But Brâhmanism has for the last thousand years and more been steadily descending into lower and lower strata of the population, absorbing one indigenous tribe after another; and hence the possession of this privilege cannot now be considered a mark of twice-born ancestry. The orthodox age for undergoing the rite of diksha is on the completion of the seventh year. The Hindu book of ceremonies, known as Karam Kand, calls it the eighth, but the figure is raised to eight by counting the nine months preceding birth as an additional year. At the present day the orthodox age is not always observed, and a boy can be initiated a year or two after if it suits the convenience of the parents to postpone incurring the expenditure which these rites entail. A boy, whatever his parentage may be, is not a full Hindu until the diksha has been performed. Up till then he is little better than a Sûdra or unregenerated person. But on and after that day he incurs the religious responsibilities to which his parents have all along intended to dedicate him, as a Christian boy does by the double rite of baptism and confirmation. Girls are never initiated as boys are; and thus a high caste woman who marries a man of the Sûdra rank cannot but become a Sûdra herself. This, I suspect, is the real explanation of the abhorrence felt by Hindus to a woman being married into a caste lower than her own.