Caste and Race in India c6.2

c6.2

WE have seen that in the Hindu caste-society there are a number of groups with distinct names. The nature of these names is likely to furnish us with a clue to some understanding of the process by which distinction between groups came to be formulated. Of the major groups called castes many bear names derived from the principal professions they followed or the crafts they practised and, in the majority of cases, are still engaged in. Brahmin means one who recites the prayer, the ritual formulæ or incantations, and designates a group that was once wholly composed of individuals so engaged, though now it is the appellation of a group whose members are engaged not only in the priestly function, but also in the allied functions of clerks and writers, and even in pursuits absolutely foreign to the original ideals of a Brahmin.