Caste and Race in India c5.142

c5.142

To sum up, in each linguistic area there were about two hundred groups called castes with distinct names, usually birth in one of which determined the status in society of a given individual, which were divided into about two thousand smaller units—generally known as sub-castes—fixing the limits of marriage and effective social life and making for specific cultural tradition. These major groups were held together by the possession, with few exceptions, of a common priesthood. Over a large part of the country they were welded together for civil life in the economy and civics of village communities. Common service to the civic life, prescriptive rights of monopolist service, and specific occasions for enjoying superiority for some of the castes, considered very low, made the village community more or less a harmonious civic unit. Complete acceptance of the system in its broad outlines by the groups making up that system and their social and economic interdependence in the village not only prevented the exclusivist organization of the groups from splitting up the system into independent units, but created a harmony in civic life. Of course, this harmony was not the harmony of parts that are equally valued, but of units which are rigorously subordinated to one another.