Part 42

hereditary; and that the division of Egyptian society was merely that which is generally found in certain stages of social growth between the liberal professions and the mechanical arts and trades. No difference of colour, or indeed of any feature, has been observed in the monumental pictures of the different Egyptian castes. From an inspection of numerous tombs, sarcophagi, and funeral stones, which frequently enumerate the names and professions of several kinsfolk of the deceased, Ampere concluded that sacerdotal and military functions were sometimes united in the same person, and might even be combined with civil functions; that intermarriage might certainly take place between the sacred and military orders; and that the members of the same natural family did frequently adopt the different occupations which had been supposed to be the exclusive property of the castes. The tombs of Beni Hassan show in a striking manner the Egyptian tendency to accumulate, rather than to separate, employments. Occasionally families were set apart for the worship of a particular divinity. An interesting "section" of Egyptian society is afforded by a granite monument preserved in the museum at Naples. Nine figures in bas-relief represent the deceased, his father, three brothers, a paternal uncle, and the father and two brothers of his wife. Another side contains the mother, wife, wife's mother and maternal aunts. The deceased is described as a military officer and superintendent of buildings; his elder brother as a priest and architect; his third brother as a provincial governor, and his father as a priest of Ammon. The family of the wife is exclusively sacerdotal. Egyptian caste, therefore, permitted two brothers to be of different castes, and one person to be of more castes than one, and of different castes from those to which his father or wife belonged. The lower employments, commerce, agriculture, even medicine, are never mentioned on the tombs. The absolute statements about caste in Egypt, circulated by such writers as Reynier and De Goguet, have, no doubt, been founded on passages in Herodotus (ii. 143, 164), who mentions seven classes, and makes war an hereditary profession; in Diodorus Siculus (i. 2-8), who mentions five classes and a hereditary priesthood; and in Plato, who, anxious to illustrate the principle of compulsory division of labour, on which his republic was based, speaks in the _Timaeus_ of a total separation of the six classes--priests, soldiers, husbandmen, artisans, hunters and shepherds. Heeren (ii. 594) does not hesitate to ascribe the formation of Egyptian caste to the meeting of different races. According to the chronology constructed by Bunsen the division into castes began in the period 10,000-9000, and was completed along with the introduction of animal worship and the improvement of writing under the third dynasty in the 6th or 7th century of the Old Empire. The Scholiast of Apollonius Rhodius, on the authority of Dicaearchus, in the Second Book of _Hellas_, mentions a king, Sesonchosis, who, about 3712 B.C., "enacted that no one should abandon his father's trade, for this he considered as leading to avarice." Bunsen conjectures that this may refer to Sesostoris, the lawgiver of Manetho's third or Memphite dynasty, the eighth from Menes, who introduced writing, building with hewn stone, and medicine; possibly, also, to Sesostris, who, Aristotle says (_Polit._ vii. 1), introduced caste to Crete. He further observes that in Egypt there was never a conquered indigenous race. There was one nation with one language and one religion; the public panegyrics embraced the whole people; every Egyptian was the child and friend of the gods. The kings were generally warriors, and latterly adopted into the sacerdotal caste. Intermarriage was the rule, except between the swineherds and all other classes. "Every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians" (Gen. xlvi. 34).

The comprehensive essay by Sir H.H. Risley in the introductory volume of the Indian Census Report for 1901 is the best recent account of caste in India. See also, besides the works mentioned in the text, Sir Denzil Ibbetson's _Report on the Punjab Census_ (1881); W. Cropke, _Things Indian_ (1905) and other books by this author on Indian religion and caste; Senart, _Les Castes dans l'Inde_ (1896); Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya, _Hindu Castes and Sects_ (1896). There is an interesting chapter on the subject in Sidney Low's _Vision of India_ (1906). See also INDIA, INDIAN LAW, and HINDUISM.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _History of Rise and Progress of the English Constitution_, i. 332.

[2] Stubbs' _Constitutional History of England_, i. p. 162.

[3] _History of Peru_, i. 143.

[4] _Rapport sur les differentes classes de chefs dans la nouvelle Espagne_ (1840), p. 223.

[5] Something like this is to be found in the Russian notion of _chin_, or status according to official hierarchy of ranks, as modified by the custom of _myestnichestvo_, by which no one entering the public service could be placed beneath a person who had been subject to his father's orders. Hereditary nobility at one time belonged to every servant, military or civil, above a certain rank, and a family remaining out of office for two generations lost its rights of nobility; but in 1854 the privilege was confined to army colonels and state councillors of the 4th class. At one time, therefore, the _razryadniya knighi_, or special registers, superseded by Peter the Great's _barkhatnaya kniga_, or Velvet Book, contained a complete code of social privilege and precedence. Peter's "_tabel o rangakh_" contained fourteen classes. The subject is treated of in the 1600 articles of the ninth volume of the Russian Code _Svod Zakonov_. The Russian Nobility, though deprived of their exemptions from conscription, personal taxation and corporal punishment, still retain many advantages in the public service.

[6] Juarros, _Hist. of Guatemala_, Tr. (London, 1823).

[7] _Life and Essays of H.T. Colebrooke_, i. p. 104.

[8] _History of India_.

[9] "The crudities and cruelties of the caste system need not blind us to its other aspects. There is no doubt that it is the main cause of the fundamental stability and contentment by which Indian society has been braced up for centuries against the shocks of politics and the cataclysms of Nature. It provides every man with his place, his career, his occupation, his circle of friends. It makes him, at the outset, a member of a corporate body: it protects him through life from the canker of social jealousy and unfulfilled aspirations; it ensures him companionship and a sense of community with others in like case with himself. The caste organization is to the Hindu his club, his trade union, his benefit society, his philanthropic society. An Indian without caste, as things stand at present, is not quite easy to imagine." (Sidney Low, _Vision of India_, 1906, ch. xv. p. 263).

[10] Muir's _Sanskrit Texts_, vol. i. (1868).

[11] _Ideen_, i. 610.

[12] The idea of a conquering white race is strangely repeated in the later history of India. The Rajputs and Brahmans are succeeded by the Mussulmans, the Turks, the Afghans. There was an aristocracy of colour under the Mogul dynasty. But under an Indian climate it could not last many generations. The Brahmans of southern India were as black as the lowest castes; the Chandalas are said to be descended from Brahmans. According to Manu the Chandala must not dwell within town; his sole wealth must be dogs and asses; his clothes must consist of the mantles of deceased persons; his dishes must be broken pots. Surely this vituperative description must apply to an aboriginal race.

[13] _Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft_, Band i. (quoted by Muir, _ubi supra_).

[14] _De Origine Castarum_ (Gottingen).

[15] _History of India_, vol. i. (1867-1871).

[16] For a characteristic appreciation of caste see Comte, _Cours de philosophic positive_, vi. c. 8. He regards the hereditary transmission of functions under the rule of a sacerdotal class as a necessary and universal stage of social progress, greatly modified by war and colonization. The morality of caste was, he contends, an improvement on what preceded; but its permanence was impossible, because "the political rule of intelligence is hostile to human progress." The seclusion of women and the preservation of industrial inventions were features of caste; and the higher priests were also magistrates, philosophers, artists, engineers, and physicians.

[17] _De la religion_, ii. 8.

[18] The great mass of the Brahmans were in reality mendicants, who lived on the festivals of birth, marriage, and death, and on the fines exacted for infractions of caste rule. Others had establishments called Muths, endowed with Jagir villages. There were two distinct orders of officiating priests--the Purohita, or family priest, who performed all the domestic rites, and probably gave advice in secular matters, and the Guru, who is the head of a religious sect, making tours of superintendence and exaction, and having the power to degrade from caste and to restore. In some cases the Guru is recognized as the Mehitra or officer of the caste assembly, from whom he receives Huks, or salary, and an exemption from house and stamp taxes, and service as begarree (Steele's _Law and Customs of Hindoo Castes within the Dekhan Provinces_, 1826; later edition, 1868). Expulsion from caste follows on a number of moral offences (e.g. assault, murder, &c.), as well as ceremonial offences (e.g. eating prohibited food, eating with persons of lower caste, abstaining from funeral rites, having connexion with a low-caste woman). Exclusion means that it is not allowed to eat with or enter the houses of the members of the caste, the offender being in theory not degraded but dead. For some heinous offences, i.e. against the express letter of the Shasters, no readmission is possible. But generally this depends on the ability of the out-caste to pay a fine, and to supply the caste with an expiatory feast of sweetmeats. He has also to go through the Sashtanyam, or prostration of eight members, and to drink the Panchakaryam, i.e. drink of the five products of the cow (_Description of People of India_, Abbe J.A. Dubois, Missionary in Mysore, Eng. Trans., London, 1817; edition by Pope, Madras, 1862).

[19] _Manu_. x. 88-90.

[20] Wheeler ii. 533.

[21] _Travels of Fah Hian_, c. 27.

[22] Strabo, _Ind._ sec. 59.

[23] Arrian, _Indic._ c. 11, 12; Diod. Sic. ii. c. 40, 41; and Strabo xv. 1.

[24] Irving, _Theory and Practice of Caste_ (London, 1859).

[25] _Manual of Archaeology_.

[26] _Revue des deux mondes_, 15th September 1848.

CASTEL, LOUIS BERTRAND (1688-1757), French mathematician, was born at Montpellier on the 11th of November 1688, and entered the order of the Jesuits in 1703. Having studied literature, he afterwards devoted himself entirely to mathematics and natural philosophy. He wrote several scientific works, that which attracted most attention at the time being his _Optique des couleurs_ (1740), or treatise on the melody of colours. He endeavoured to illustrate the subject by a _clavecin oculaire_, or ocular harpsichord; but the treatise and the illustration were quickly forgotten. He also wrote _Mathematique universelle_ (1728) and _Traite de physique sur la pesanteur universelle des corps_ (1724). He also published a critical account of the system of Sir Isaac Newton in French in 1743.

CASTELAR Y RIPOLL, EMILIO (1832-1899), Spanish statesman, was born at Cadiz on the 8th of September 1832. At the age of seven he lost his father, who had taken an active part in the progressist agitations during the reign of Ferdinand VII., and had passed several years as an exile in England. He attended a grammar-school at Sax. In 1848 he began to study law in Madrid, but soon elected to compete for admittance at the school of philosophy and letters, where he took the degree of doctor in 1853. He was an obscure republican student when the Spanish revolutionary movement of 1854 took place, and the young liberals and democrats of that epoch decided to hold a meeting in the largest theatre of the capital. On that occasion Castelar delivered his maiden speech, which at once placed him in the van of the advanced politicians of the reign of Queen Isabella. From that moment he took an active part in politics, radical journalism, literary and historical pursuits. Castelar was compromised in the first rising of June 1866, which was concerted by Marshal Prim, and crushed, after much bloodshed, in the streets by Marshals O'Donnell and Serrano. A court-martial condemned him _in contumaciam_ to death by "garote vil," and he had to hide in the house of a friend until he escaped to France. There he lived two years until the successful revolution of 1868 allowed him to return and enter the Cortes for the first time--as deputy for Saragossa. At the same time he resumed the professorship of history at the Madrid university. Castelar soon became famous by his rhetorical speeches in the Constituent Cortes of 1869, where he led the republican minority in advocating a federal republic as the logical outcome of the recent revolution. He thus gave much trouble to men like Serrano, Topete and Prim, who had never harboured the idea of drifting into advanced democracy, and who had each his own scheme for re-establishing the monarchy with certain constitutional restrictions. Hence arose Castelar's constant and vigorous criticisms of the successive plans mooted to place a Hohenzollern, a Portuguese, the duke of Montpensier, Espartero and finally Amadeus of Savoy on the throne. He attacked with relentless vigour the short-lived monarchy of Amadeus, and contributed to its downfall.

The abdication of Amadeus led to the proclamation of the federal republic. The senate and congress, very largely composed of monarchists, permitted themselves to be dragged along into democracy by the republican minority headed by Salmeron, Figueras, Pi y Margall and Castelar. The short-lived federal republic from the 11th of February 1873 to the 3rd of January 1874 was the culminating point of the career of Castelar, and his conduct during those eleven months was much praised by the wiser portion of his fellow-countrymen, though it alienated from him the sympathies of the majority of his quondam friends in the republican ranks.

Before the revolution of 1868, Castelar had begun to dissent from the doctrines of the more advanced republicans, and particularly as to the means to be employed for their success. He abhorred bloodshed, he disliked mob rule, he did not approve of military _pronunciamientos_. His idea would have been a parliamentary republic on the American lines, with some traits of the Swiss constitution to keep in touch with the regionalist and provincialist inclinations of many parts of the peninsula. He would have placed at the head of his commonwealth a president and Cortes freely elected by the people, ruling the country in a liberal spirit and with due respect for conservative principles, religious traditions and national unity. Such a statesman was sure to clash with the doctrinaires, like Salmeron, who wanted to imitate French methods; with Pi y Margall, who wanted a federal republic after purely Spanish ideas of decentralization; and above all with the intransigent and gloomy fanatics who became the leaders of the cantonal insurrections at Cadiz, Seville, Valencia, Malaga and Cartagena in 1873.

At first Castelar did his best to work with the other republican members of the first government of the federal republic. He accepted the post of minister for foreign affairs. He even went so far as to side with his colleagues, when serious difficulties arose between the new government and the president of the Cortes, Senor Martos, who was backed by a very imposing commission composed of the most influential conservative members of the last parliament of the Savoyard king, which had suspended its sittings shortly after proclaiming the federal republic. A sharp struggle was carried on for weeks between the executive and this commission, at first presided over by Martos, and, when he resigned, by Salmeron. In the background Marshal Serrano and many politicians and military men steadily advocated a _coup d'etat_ in order to avert the triumph of the republicans. The adversaries of the executive were prompted by the captain-general of Madrid, Pavia, who promised the co-operation of the garrison of the capital. The president, Salmeron, and Marshal Serrano himself lacked decision at the last moment, and lost time and many opportunities by which the republican ministers profited. The federal republicans became masters of the situation in the last fortnight of April 1873, and turned the tables on their adversaries by making a pacific bloodless _pronunciamiento_.

The battalions of the militia that had assembled in the bull-ring near Marshal Serrano's house to assist the anti-democratic movement were disarmed, and their leaders, the politicians and generals, were allowed to escape to France or Portugal. The Cortes were dissolved, and the federal and constituent Cortes of the republic convened, but they only sat during the summer of 1873, long enough to show their absolute incapacity, and to convince the executive that the safest policy was to suspend the session for several months.

This was the darkest period of the annals of the Spanish revolution of 1873-1874. Matters got to such a climax of disorder, disturbance and confusion, from the highest to the lowest strata of Spanish society, that the president of the executive, Figueras, deserted his post and fled the country. Pi y Margall and Salmeron, in successive attempts to govern, found no support in the really important and influential elements of Spanish society. Salmeron had even to appeal to such well-known reactionary generals as Pavia, Sanchez, Bregna and Moriones, to assume the command of the armies in the south and in the north of Spain. Fortunately these officers responded to the call of the executive. In less than five weeks a few thousand men properly handled sufficed to quell the cantonal risings in Cordoba, Sevilla, Cadiz and Malaga, and the whole of the south might have been soon pacified, if the federal republican ministers had not once more given way to the pressure of the majority of the Cortes, composed of "Intransigentes" and radical republicans. The president, Salmeron, after showing much indecision, resigned, but not until he had recalled the general in command in Andalusia, Pavia. This resignation was not an unfortunate event for the country, as the federal Cortes not only made Castelar chief of the executive, though his partisans were in a minority in the Parliament, but they gave him much liberty to act, as they decided to suspend the sittings of the house until 2nd January 1874. This was the turning-point of the Spanish revolution, as from that day the tide set in towards the successive developments that led to the restoration of the Bourbons.

On becoming the ruler of Spain at the beginning of September 1873, Castelar at once devoted his attention to the reorganization of the army, whose numbers had dwindled down to about 70,000 men. This force, though aided by considerable bodies of local militia and volunteers in the northern and western provinces, was insufficient to cope with the 60,000 Carlists in arms, and with the still formidable nucleus of cantonalists around Alcoy and Cartagena. To supply the deficiencies Castelar called out more than 100,000 conscripts, who joined the colours in less than six weeks. He selected his generals without respect of politics, sending Moriones to the Basque provinces and Navarre at the head of 20,000 men, Martinez Campos to Catalonia with several thousand, and Lopez Dominguez, the nephew of Marshal Serrano, to begin the land blockade of the last stronghold of the cantonal insurgents, Cartagena, where the crews of Spain's only fleet had joined the revolt.

Castelar next turned his attention to the Church. He renewed direct relations with the Vatican, and at last induced Pope Pius IX. to approve his selection of two dignitaries to occupy vacant sees as well as his nominee for the vacant archbishopric of Valencia, a prelate who afterwards became archbishop of Toledo, and remained to the end a close friend of Castelar. He put a stop to all persecutions of the Church and religious orders, and enforced respect of Church property. He attempted to restore some order in the treasury and administration of finance, with a view to obtain ways and means to cover the expense of the three civil wars, Carlist, cantonal and Cuban. The Cuban insurgents gave him much trouble and anxiety, the famous _Virginius_ incident nearly leading to a rupture between Spain and the United States. Castelar sent out to Cuba all the reinforcements he could spare, and a new governor-general, Jovellar, whom he peremptorily instructed to crush the mutinous spirit of the Cuban militia, and not allow them to drag Spain into a conflict with the United States. Acting upon the instructions of Castelar, Jovellar gave up the filibuster vessels, and those of the crew and passengers who had not been summarily shot by General Burriel. Castelar always prided himself on having terminated this incident without too much damage to the prestige of Spain.

At the end of 1873 Castelar had reason to be satisfied with the results of his efforts, with the military operations in the peninsula, with the assistance he was getting from the middle classes and even from many of the political elements of the Spanish revolution that were not republican. On the other hand, on the eve of the meeting of the federal Cortes, he could indulge in no illusions as to what he had to expect from the bulk of the republicans, who openly dissented from his conservative and conciliatory policy, and announced that they would reverse it on the very day the Cortes met. Warnings came in plenty, and no less a personage than the man he had made captain-general of Madrid, General Pavia, suggested that, if a conflict arose between Castelar and the majority of the Cortes, not only the garrison of Madrid and its chief, but all the armies in the field and their generals, were disposed to stand by the president. Castelar knew too well what such offers meant in the classic land of _pronunciamientos_, and he refused so flatly that Pavia did not renew his advice. The sequel is soon told. The Cortes met on the 2nd of January 1874. The intransigent majority refused to listen to a last eloquent appeal that Castelar made to their patriotism and common sense, and they passed a vote of censure. Castelar resigned. The Cortes went on wrangling for a day and night until, at daybreak on the 3rd of January 1874, General Pavia forcibly ejected the deputies, closed and dissolved the Cortes, and called up Marshal Serrano to form a provisional government.