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.]

What does caste forbid and punish? Freedom of thought, if not translated
into social act, has not been an offence against caste at any time in
the period under review, neither has caste taken cognisance of sins
against morality as such. The sins that caste has punished have been
chiefly five, as follows: Eating forbidden food, eating with persons of
lower caste, crossing the sea, desertion of Hinduism for another