of Nasik” as “a stain on the Brahmanical religion of mercy emphatically preached by Manu and other law-givers.”  After paying a warm tribute to Mr. Jackson’s personal qualities and great learning, and quoting sacred texts to show that “such a murder is to be condemned the more when a Brahman commits it,” and renders the murderer liable to the most awful penalties in the next world, the proclamation proceeded to declare that “his Holiness is pleased to excommunicate the wicked persons who have committed the present offence, and who shall commit similar offences against the State, and none of the disciples of this Petha shall have any dealings with such sinful men.”

Amongst the majority of Brahmans in Kolhapur and elsewhere this proclamation, I fear, found no echo, for their hostility towards their own Maharajah had often assumed or encouraged criminal forms of violence.  It had certainly not remained confined to the spiritual domain, and it became absolutely savage when, in 1902, his Highness declared that he would reserve at least half the posts in the State for qualified men of the non-Brahman communities.  Under the constant inspiration of Poona, the Tilak Press waged relentless war against his Highness, preaching disaffection towards his Government, just as it preached disaffection towards the British Raj; and the agitation in Kolhapur itself was reinforced by the advent of a large number of Poona Brahmans who, in consequence of a recrudescence of plague, fled from that city to the Maharajah’s capital.  They flung themselves eagerly into the fray, and had the audacity even to start a mock “Parliament.”  But the Maharajah was determined to be master in his own State, and in Mr. Sabnis he had found a Prime Minister who loyally and courageously carried out his policy for the improvement of the administration and the spread of education amongst the non-Brahman castes.  The Maharajah realizes that Brahman ascendency cannot be broken down permanently unless the non-Brahman castes are adequately equipped to compete with them in the public services.  Amongst these there is plenty of loyalty to the ruling chief, for his Mahratta subjects have not wholly forgotten the tyranny of Chitpavan Brahman rule either under Shivaji IV.’s Prime Minister or in the less recent times of the Poona Peshwas.  One of the most interesting institutions in Kolhapur is a hostel specially endowed for non-Brahman, Mahratta, Mahomedan, and Jain youths who are following the courses of the Rajaram College.  The control of education plays in Kolhapur as conspicuous a part as at Poona in the struggle between the forces of order and disorder, and it is amongst the Kolhapur youth that the latter have made their most strenuous exertions and with the same lawless results.