The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c21.29

v1.c21.29

The test of caste is not marriage alone but defilement by eating and touching what is unclean. In this regard the Sūtras show only the beginning of that formal theory of defilement which results in a pure man of the upper castes being defiled by the shadow of an impure man, and in the taboo of all contact with the impure. According to Gautama (*Dharma Sūtra*, XVII, 1 f.), a Brāhman may eat food given by any of the 'reborn' who are worthy members of their caste, and if in need of food to support life he may take food and other things even from a Çūdra. Food forbidden is that defiled naturally by hairs or insects falling into it and that touched by a woman during her courses, by a black bird (crow), or by a foot, etc., or given by an outcast, a woman of bad character, a person accursed, an hermaphrodite, a police-officer (*daṇḍika*), a carpenter, a miser, a jailer, a physician, a man who hunts without using the bow (i.e. a non-Āryan snarer of animals), a man who eats refuse or the food of a multitude, of an enemy, etc. The list continues with the taboo of food offered disrespectfully and of certain animals. Āpastamba (*Dharma S.*, I, 6, 18, 1 f.) allows the acceptance of gifts, including a house and land, even from an Ugra (low caste or mixed caste), though, like the later law-books, his code states that a priest may not eat in the house of anyone of the three orders (*varṇas*) below him; but he may eat the food of any other priest, and according to ‘some’ he may eat the food of people of any caste except Çūdras and even their food in times of distress. Forbidden by him is the food of an artisan, of people who let houses or land, a spy, an unauthorised hermit (Buddhist?), besides that of surgeon, usurer, and others. Caste is *varṇa* or *jāti*, ‘colour’ and ‘kin,’ the former embracing the latter, as a social order including clans or families. Even in the all-important matter of marriage, caste is not so important as family. The only test, when one seeks a wife, according to Çāṅkhāyana, is that of the family: ‘They ask the girl in marriage, reciting the clannames.’ The text of Āçvalāyana expressly mentions as a form of marriage that in which the bridegroom kills the relatives and rapes the weeping girl, evidently a form once countenanced as well as enumerated among possible forms; at any rate it bars out all examination of the bride’s social position. Indeed the marriage rules permit the marriage of a Çūdra woman, though as the last of four wives, with a member of the highest caste (e.g. Pār., *G.S.*, I, 4, 11), whose offspring, of course, being ‘mixed’ or impure, is not a member of the Āryan ‘reborn,’ but nevertheless is recognised legally. And what shall we say of those who are not ‘reborn’ although Āryans? The rule in this case is universal that, if priest, warrior, or member of the third estate fail to be ‘reborn in the Veda,’ i.e. if such a one is not duly initiated into his social order at the proper time, he loses his prerogatives and becomes an outcast: ‘No one should initiate such men, nor teach them, nor perform sacrifice for them, nor have intercourse with them,’ and further, ‘A person whose ancestors through three generations have been thus outcast is excluded from the sacrament of initiation and from being taught the Veda,’ that is, they become Vrātyas or entirely outcast persons with whom one may not even have intercourse unless they perform special rites¹.