Caste and Race in India c10.121

c10.121

To sum up, distinction by birth has been usually recognized by many primitive peoples and almost all the major civilizations of ancient times. The primitive peoples, in so far as their arts and crafts are neither many, nor highly specialized, have few classes whose status is fixed. But wherever status is recognized, privileges and restrictions in the matter of the choice of avocation are very common. Restriction on the choice of one's mate based on birth is comparatively infrequent among them. In tribal England, in Rome, and in Asiatic civilizations, occupations not only tended to become hereditary but were actually prescribed to be followed by specific classes and graded in certain order as high and low. Specialized occupations had come to form themselves into units of community life. Society was divided into two, three, four, or five well-marked status-groups, intermarriage between which was often prohibited. The Chinese civilization, before it was influenced by Indian ideas, seems to have been the freest in its social grouping.