Caste and Race in India c8.82

c8.82

We may conclude that in olden days Brahmins could marry females from any of the first three castes and Kshatriyas from their own and from among the Vaiśyas without any stigma. The lawgivers of this period restricted this custom. While some of them recognized marriages of males of higher castes with females of the next lower caste as unobjectionable, others confined this attitude to the marriage of a Brahmin with a Kshatriya female and regarded the marriage of a Brahmin or a Kshatriya with a Vaiśya female as outlandish. This view of marriage with a Vaiśya female might have been due to the progressive assimilation of the Vaiśya caste to the Śūdras, which we have delineated above.