Caste and Race in India c5.121

c5.121

So far we have treated of the distinctions between groups in the caste-society, which were held together in a chain by the fact that they were arranged in a system, the apex of which was formed by the group designated Brahmin. Each of these groups, major as well as minor, generally known as castes and sub-castes, has a name. When any group of the same name happens to have a wide distribution, language delimits effective social intercourse, which obtains only amongst members of the same group speaking the same language. Whatever might have been the situation in the past, when the jurisdictional factor, as Jackson terms it,² was a force affecting such social intercourse, in the beginning of the nineteenth century linguistic boundaries fixed the caste-limits. In any linguistic area there were from fifty to two hundred of these major groups divided into five hundred to two thousand minor groups. An individual's circle of community-feeling was any of these minor groups, in which he or she was born; but as far as civic life was concerned it was the major group that decided the status of an individual.