Caste and Race in India c8.197

c8.197

As regards the regulations of marriage, the four castes and the other groups are regarded as completely endogamous units, hypergamy being positively discouraged. The list of groups considered to have been the result of mixed unions becomes very large and includes almost all the groups, occupational or otherwise, known to the authors, as behaving like unit castes. Kamalākara’s list, for example, includes such groups as Kolhati or Bahurupi, Kandu, Sali, Mochi, Burud, Ghasi, and others.⁵ Mādhava tries to explain the origins only of about sixty groups and characteristically observes, “Innumerable are the caste-like groups that are produced by miscegenation.”⁶ It is clear that whatever element of reality this theory of the origins of the numerous caste-like groups, besides the four ancient castes, possessed at the outset, by now it was merely a hypothetical explanation of the increasing caste-groups in the society. The Brahmin writers could not rid themselves of the idea of the four original castes. To them numerous further groups could have been only produced as a result of unions between the members of the four castes, just as these latter were created from the body of the Supreme Being. In fact, this is the Brahmanical theory of the origins of the numerous castes. Mādhava makes a frank and rare admission that the practices and regulations about the four castes have been changing from age to age.¹