Caste and Race in India c8.74

c8.74

The lawgivers look upon marriage in one's own caste among the four orders as the most ideal and in a way the only sanctified practice, though they are prepared to recognize marriages outside the caste as perfectly lawful. Vasisṭha and Gautama exhort a person about to enter on the life of a householder, to marry a female of one's own caste and the latter opines that it is only the virtuous sons, born of wives of equal caste, who are married in accordance with the approved rites, that sanctify their father's family.¹ Baudhāyana recognizes only the son by a wife of equal caste as a sapiṇḍa, sons by wives of other castes being not so reckoned.² But, probably in conformity with the practice of their day, these lawgivers allowed males of higher castes to marry females of lower castes, though they refused to allow the issue of such marriages equal rights with the sons of equal marriages. In the matter of inheritance, for example, the share of a son in his patrimony varied according to the caste-status of his mother.³ The offspring of such unequal unions are said to belong neither to the caste of the father nor to that of the mother but are relegated to separate classes, called the intermediate castes. The names of these castes as given by Gautama do not correspond to those given by Baudhāyana except in the case of the issue of the marriage of a Brahmin male and a Śūdra female.⁴ In the case of the first three castes Baudhāyana declares that the offspring of a male of the higher caste and a female of the next lower caste are "savarṇas" or of equal caste. Consistently he gives the name of the issue of the marriage of a Brahmin with a Kshatriya female as a Brahmin, and that of the union of a Kshatriya male and a Vaiśya female as a Kshatriya. This seems to represent the old practice, when marriages between males of higher castes and females of castes next in order were regarded as perfectly regular and entailed no disqualification on the issue. For even Gautama calls the issue of the union of a Brahmin male and a Kshatriya female "savarṇa", though refusing to give a similar name to the progeny of a Kshatriya male and a Vaiśya female. Kauṭilya's nomenclature of the mixed castes agrees with that of Baudhāyana except in the case of the issue of a Vaiśya male and a Śūdra female. But he designates the children of the unions of males of the Brahmin and Kshatriya castes and females of the Kshatriya and Vaiśya castes respectively as "savarṇas", and does not explicitly speak of them as Brahmins and Kshatriyas.¹