Caste and Race in India c8.161

c8.161

The number of new groups formed by unions between the members of the four castes, and by further intermarriages between these groups and so on, is no longer the limited number that it was in the last period.¹ With all this multiplicity, however, to each group is ascribed some more or less definite occupation. It appears that in reality new occupational groups having the characteristics of castes had arisen, and the Brahmanic account of their origins was a mere theory based on permutations and combinations of the four original castes which bounded the Brahmins' mental horizon.