The bishop then framed a set of questions as regards caste observances, to which he required particular answers; but, in consequence of his untimely death, and of the short tenure of office held by his successors, Bishops James and Turner, no further official action was taken till the middle of 1833, when Bishop Wilson’s “Circular"[38] dealt the most fatal blow to Christianity that it has ever received in India.  For this “Circular” imperatively declared that the distinction of castes, as regards all the relations of life, must be abandoned, “decidedly, immediately, and finally.”  And in order that this mandate might be intensely galling to the upper class vegetarian Christian, it was especially ordered that “differences of food and dress” were to be included in those overt acts which were to mark out for condemnation the Christian who still clung to the habits of his fathers in these innocent and, as regards food, healthful restrictions.  To cling to these differences of food and dress, and to abstain from alcohol, was to cling to caste; and it was especially ordered that the children of native Christians should not be admitted to the Holy Communion without a full renunciation of all those social differences which might distinguish them from other members of the society in which they lived.  This was quite sufficient.  “The ‘Circular’ was read in the churches of Tanjore.  It was received by the native Christians with great displeasure, and they showed their views by seceding in a body.”

Turning now to the Report of the Madras Commissioners, which was written in 1845, we shall at once see the cause and root of this violent attack on social usages.  For the Commissioners commence their Report by stating that the institution of caste and the divisions of society were things of priestly invention, and that, in fact, the whole of Hindoo society, as we at present see it, originated in, and is maintained by, Hindoo idolatry.  And they further allege that the tyranny of this institution is such as to be perfectly unaccountable on any other supposition.  How any body of priests had the power to issue and enforce mandates regarding the extraordinary diversities as to food and dress that we see prevailing throughout India, where the council sat that issued these decrees, and where the members of this council came from, they give no account.  They do not seem to have even thought of such questions, and, for evidence of these astounding assertions, they refer us to what they call “the laws of Manu,"[39] and to Halhed’s “Gentoo Hindoo Code.”  Caste and idolatry, then, according to them, are not only inextricably wound up together, but caste itself was caused by, and is a part of, idolatry; and we are, therefore, plainly told that it is impossible that a man should abandon the one without abandoning the other, and that, in other words, the two institutions must stand or fall together.  Leaving this part of these assertions to be commented on further on, I now pass on to the statement and arguments of the Tanjore German missionaries.