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A Marriage Procession, Trichinopoly.| |15.

A Group of Brahmans.| Religion goes deep into the life of the Indian. It governs all his social relations. Here is a street at Trichinopoly, a hundred miles north of Madura. There happens to be the spire of a Christian church in the background. In the foreground is a temple elephant, heading a marriage procession. In white paint on the elephant’s head is the sect mark of the contracting parties. The Hindu community is divided not only in sects but also into castes, which are sternly separated, so that a man may not marry into another caste, or even eat with those of a lower caste. The tradition is that originally there were four castes; first the Brahmans, or priestly stock; then the Kshattriyas, or soldiers, the royal stock; third, the Vaishiyas, or merchants; and fourth, the Sudras, or artisans, labourers and agriculturists. But all these castes became sub-divided, and there are now more castes than callings.

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Processional Car, Trichinopoly.| A curious characteristic of Hinduism is the mixture of the squalid and crude with the grandeur of an architecture which in some respects is unsurpassed in the world. Not merely are the maimed and the beggars importunate in the temple passages, as in the church entries of Roman Catholic countries, but in every vacant corner of the outer courts of the temples are established little tradesmen. The properties of religious ceremony are often decrepit and tawdry. Here, for instance, we have a wooden processional car, rough roofed, awaiting the annual ceremony amid the live-stock of the yard. These warm-natured Southern people have the child’s power of making believe, and can worship the doll even when battered out of all recognition. They easily let loose the imagination and give devotion to the spirit embodied in a shapeless stone as sincerely as to that in the most finished allegorical sculpture.