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reason is that the prestige of this class has disappeared with the spread of Western science and Western ideas. The Shāstrīs and Pundits are not the only representatives of learning. More than this: they are lacking in such learning as the society demands. The society finds it necessary to change; and the orthodox learning desires to stick to the old. The class of people who have greatest influence on the society to-day is the one which is oriented in the knowledge of Western as well as of Eastern lore. This class consists of men who are educated in colleges and schools where European sciences and philosophies, history, political economy as well as Sanskrit literature and philosophy are taught. This class has often produced Sanskrit scholars who would put the Shāstrīs and Pundits to shame, even in their own field. Again, this class controls the Press, and forms the public opinion.^[1] A careful observer cannot also fail to notice the tendency, in recent years, on the part of certain newspapers in Poona towards the usurpation of that authority and prestige which once belonged to the assemblies of Pundits. These facts mean that the Pundits in India are not entirely the representatives or the formers of public opinion. They have a following, to be sure, but it is mostly among the classes less educated than the average, and among women.

Moreover, on account of the inevitable clash of the old and the new, of the Eastern and the Western, the population is divided into two classes: (1) The traditionalists (Uddhāraka), and (2) the reformers (sudhāraka). The

1. ↑ The only important paper that is controlled by a man of orthodox education is the Dharma of Wai. The editor, a man of great learning, is known all over Mahārāshtra by his uncompromising attitude towards social reforms of various kinds.