Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c47.s2.3.2

c47.s2.3.2

Race, consanguinity, function, creed and policy cover respectively a considerable portion of the ground, but no one of them covers the whole or can be made the standard by which the divisions as they now exist can be graduated on the social scale. It might be thought that in view of the extreme value attached to conventional purity, and the minute rules in regard to it by which the intercourse between the different sections of the community is, by unanimous public opinion in each locality, undeviatingly regulated, a touchstone might be found in it by which social rank might be assayed. This, however, is not the case. Irrespective of the difficulty of obtaining a formal decision on individual cases, owing to prejudice and the general ignorance of the position of classes below them which prevails amongst those who would ordinarily be consulted, there is a marked difference in practice in regard to intercommunion between the greater part of Continental India and the Peninsula, and even between province and province. The criterion which would be adopted would be whether or not certain higher classes would take from the community in question water or certain kinds of food, and these lines of demarcation are in most cases so far apart, including that is, so many communities in each class, that they afford little or no graduation of the masses respectively enclosed within them, and without further internal subdivisions the groups are of little practical significance.