Caste and Race in India c8.37

c8.37

The idea that certain persons defile, while others sanctify the company, if they sit down to a meal in one row, is present in the Sūtras.⁸ In this idea lies the origin of the later practice not to dine in the same row with people of other castes than one's own. Āpastamba enjoins a Brahmin student, who has returned home, not to eat sitting in the same row with unworthy people.⁹ The shrewd Kauṭilya advises a spy, engaged in spreading discontent among certain corporations, to make the superiors interdine and intermarry with the inferiors if the custom of any corporation prevented such intercourse between the two classes or to prevent them from doing this if the custom allowed such interdining and intermarrying.¹ Evidently interdining, like intermarrying, was a mark of equality.