One word more.  The absolute good that caste has done may be briefly summed up.  It has acted as a strong moral police, and as a preserver of order and decorum in the community,[46] and it has prevented the spread of bad habits and customs, more especially that of drinking, as far as large numbers of the people are concerned.[47] On the other hand, caste is said to have hindered the progress of the people taken as a whole.  But in every instance where we have really tried the introduction of any art, the removal of any public crime (as suttee and human sacrifice, for instance), the improvement of any cultivation, the introduction of education, or of new means of moving from place to place, we have either found caste to be no impediment at all, or an impediment so slight as not to be worth mentioning.

* * * * *

NOTE.—­With the view of obtaining information I briefly allude here to two points with reference to caste and its effects—­the (1) curious custom of the Marasa Wokul tribe in Mysore, and (2) the influence of caste in developing improved aptitudes which afterwards descend by hereditary transmission.

As to the first, the mother of a girl is compelled to submit to the amputation of the terminal joints of the third and fourth fingers of the right hand on the occasion of the betrothal of her daughter, and in the event of a girl being motherless the mother of the bridegroom-elect must submit to the operation.

The custom is alluded to in the well-known work of the Abbe Dubois, and in the appendix the editor of the second edition confirms the account given, and quotes confirmatory evidence from Colonel Wilks’ “Mysore,” in which is published the legend which is reported to have given rise to the custom.  Colonel Wilks, early in this century, saw some of the women who had been operated on.  The tribe in question lives in the north-east of Mysore, but after inquiry through the medium of natives in the interior of the country, I cannot now learn that the custom is continued.  Perhaps, being a disagreeable one, it may have been given up.  I should feel much obliged for any information as to the point in question.

As to the second point, I was informed in 1891 by Mr. Chatterton of the Engineering College at Madras, that he had many Brahmins under him in the workshops, and that, though more intelligent than other castes, they are less efficient, owing to their ancestors never having been practised in any mechanical work.  The influence of caste was here most perceptible, and he could always pick out the work done by boys whose caste had been employed in that particular work, and he further informed me that boys showed poor proficiency in work out of the line of their particular caste.

FOOTNOTES: 

[31] Manjarabad is a talook or county on the south-west frontier of Mysore.

[32] And that, I may observe, was a case in which a toddy-drawer, the third caste in Manjarabad, was concerned.