Living in this home on the edge of the desert we saw the real life of the tent people. We watched them as, weary and tired looking, they returned from their long journeys. We saw the trains of laden camels as they started for the distant cities. We saw the shepherd boys drive in the flocks of sheep or goats, looking as they did in olden Bible times.
There is no woman in the world who is so bound down by custom, so tied to the wheel of conventionality, as is the Indian woman, both Hindu and Mohammedan. In the olden times the ancient law-makers realized the danger menacing a people surrounded by an inferior race, as were the natives of India compared to their Aryan invaders, and instituted that remarkable social system that peculiarly affects the women of the country, and is the cause of many of the evils that has made her life one not to be envied—caste.
Hindu society is divided into hundreds of communities consisting of several clans, each clan having its own peculiar customs and iron-bound rules. The clans are composed of families, governed by the family custom, which in turn must obey the clan custom, and these must be governed by the rules of the community. If a person violates the custom, he forfeits all the privileges which he or his family may have in the life of the community. His social life is entirely cut off from other families and from the protection of his people. No one of his community will eat or drink with him, visit his house, or marry his children. The priest will not serve him, the barber will not shave him, nor the washman wash for him. He will be absolutely alone and friendless in the world, not able to get employment, even allowed to starve by the members of his own family, who dare not help him, knowing they themselves would be outcasted. He may not have the solace of joining another caste, either lower or higher, because he must live and die in the caste in which he was born.
Originally there were only four great castes in India: the Brahmans, or priestly class, who held all the intellectual or cultural prerogatives; the Kashatriyas, or warrior caste; the Vaisayas, or merchant caste; and the Sudras, or working class. Below that still are the outcastes, who are almost slaves, and do the lowest menial services. Manu, the great law-maker, said that the Brahman issued from the head of Brahma, hence his intellectual superiority; the warrior from his arms, the husbandman from his thighs, and the Sudras from his feet, thus exactly placing the man’s social position in life.