Excerpt from The Red Year: A Story of the Indian Mutiny
On a day in January, 1857, a sepoy was sitting by a well in the cantonment of Dum-Dum, near Calcutta. Though he wore the uniform of John Company, and his rank was the lowest in the native army, he carried on his forehead the caste-marks of the Brahmin. In a word, he was more than noble, being of sacred birth, and the Hindu officers of his regiment, if they were not heaven-born Brahmins, would grovel before him in secret, though he must obey their slightest order on parade or in the field.
To him approached a Lascar.
"Brother," said the newcomer, "lend me your brass pot, so that I may drink, for I have walked far in the sun."
The sepoy started as though a snake had stung him. Lascars, the sailor-men of India, were notoriously free-and-easy in their manners. Yet how came it that even a low-caste mongrel of a Lascar should offer such an overt insult to a Brahmin!
"Do you not know, swine-begotten, that your hog's lips would contaminate my lotah?" asked he, putting the scorn of centuries into the words.
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