been a bond of union, as likewise the necessity of all castes to employ the priests, for the Jewish ritual and the tribe of Levi were the bonds of union among the twelve tribes of Israel.  Sir Alfred Lyall virtually defines Hinduism as the employment of brahman priests, and it is the adoption of brahmans as celebrants in social and religious ceremonies that marks the passing over of a non-Hindu community into Hinduism.  It is thus it becomes a new Hindu caste.[11] Then, uniting further the mutually exclusive castes, many are the common heritages, actual or adopted, of traditions and sacred books, and the common national epics of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat.  The cause of the solidarity is not a common creed, as we shall see when we reach the consideration of new religious ideas, ideas.

[Sidenote:  New ideas opposed to caste, namely, individual liberty and nationality.]

If Hinduism as a social system is to be moved by the modern spirit, we may look for movement in the direction of freedom of individual action, that is, the loosening of caste; we may look for larger ideas of nationality and citizenship, superseding to some extent the idea of caste.  As is not infrequent in India, Government pointed out the way for public opinion.  In 1831 the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck, issued his fiat that no native be debarred from office on account of caste, creed, or race, and that a son who had left his father’s religion did not thereby forfeit his inheritance.

[Sidenote:  Loosening of caste.]

To any observer it is now plain that while caste is still a very powerful force, and even while new castes, new social rings, are being formed through the working of the spirit of exclusiveness, the general ideas of caste are undergoing change.  In these latter days one can hardly credit the account given of the consternation in Calcutta in 1775, when the equality of men before the law was asserted, and the brahman, Nanda-kumar, was hanged for forgery.  Many of the orthodox brahmans shook off the dust of the polluted city from their feet and quitted Calcutta for a new residence across the Hooghly.  In 1904, we find conservative Hindus only writing to the newspapers to complain that even in the Hindu College at Benares, the metropolis of Hinduism, some of the members of the College Committee were openly violating the rules of caste.  In the same year a Calcutta Hindu newspaper, the Amrita B[=a]z[=a]r Patrik[=a], declared, “Caste is losing its hold on the Hindu mind."[12] The recent denunciation of caste by an enlightened Hindu ruler, the Gaekwar of Baroda, is a further significant sign of the times.

[Sidenote:  Offences against caste.]