The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [212]
That Juli shared his own feeling of completeness and belonging was something he knew without having to be told; just as he knew that she was fonder of him than anyone else in the world – as she had always been. But fondness was not love, and if what she felt for him was only the same single-hearted devotion that had been given him by an adoring little girl who had trotted at his heels and thought him the wisest and best of all brothers, it was not enough, and unless he could change that into something deeper he would surely lose her…
It was not as her brother that he could ask her to throw in her lot with him and face the consequences: the disgrace and the difficulties, and the incalculable dangers that might follow. And his own love for her was not in the least brotherly; it was as a wife that he wanted her. But even if she had grown to love him in the same way, that too was only a first step, for she was still Anjuli-Bai: a princess and a Hindu. And though the question of rank might seem trivial to her, that of caste might prove too strong for her to overcome.
Ash's foster-mother had been a devout Hindu, and as her son he had been brought up with a proper knowledge of religious matters. He had studied the Rig-Veda and was familiar with the tale of the sacrifice of Purusha, the primeval man, from whose immolation came all creation, together with the four Hindu castes. From Purusha's breath had come the Brahmans, the priestly caste; from his arms, the warriors, or Kshatriyas; from his thighs, the Vaisyas – agriculturalists and traders; and from his feet the servile caste, the Sudras. All other men were outcasts; ‘untouchables’ whose very presence was defilement. Wherefore, to a Hindu, caste was the most important thing in life, for it decreed every person's social status and the work they were permitted to do, and affected in one way or another every aspect of living. Nothing could change it. A man born a Sudra, in the lowest caste, must live and die as one; no riches or power that he might acquire could raise him to a higher one, and his children and grandchildren, and their children after them to the end of time, would always be Sudras. Only a life of great piety and good works might, after his death, make it possible for him to be reborn as a member of a higher caste. But apart from that, there was no other way in which he could escape his destiny.
Sita's people had been farmers: hill-men, claiming Rajput blood. Her husband too had been a Vaisya, and she had brought Ash up as strictly as though he had been her son. Juli's mother, on the other hand, had been a half-caste, and therefore, in the eyes of orthodox Hindus, tainted by her foreign blood. But her father had belonged to the warrior caste, and like many Kshatriyas, considered that they, and not the Brahmans, should by rights hold pride of place. He also happened to be an autocrat, a Rajput and a Rajah. On these counts he regarded himself as being above caste, and had he wished to marry the daughter of the lowliest of Untouchables, he would probably have done so and carried it off with a high hand. Nevertheless, on the grounds of caste alone he would certainly not have considered the foster-child of the waiting-woman, Sita (and even less the only son of Professor Pelham-Martyn), in any way a suitable husband for his daughter by the Feringhi-Rani. Nor would his heir – that was something that Ash could be certain of, despite the lowly origins of Nandu's own mother, or the fact that the dubious status of his half-sister, Anjuli-Bai, had caused so much argument and hair-splitting with the emissaries from Bhithor that only a lavish bribe and the promise of a munificent dowry had finally induced them to accept her as a suitable wife for their Rana.
At this date, however, the question of Nandu's approval or disapproval was wholly irrelevant; the fact remained that as the marriage contracts had been agreed and betrothal gifts exchanged, his sisters were to all intents and purposes already the legal property of the