Caste and Race in India c9.33

c9.33

Our survey of the regions of India other than Hindustan has made it abundantly clear that Hindustan is unique in this respect that here we have the Brahmin at the head of the physical hierarchy; then follows a high caste or two, hardly differing from him in physical type; then comes a group of castes, slightly differentiated from the Brahmin; low castes like the Chamar and the Pasi, whom we may look upon as the Hinduized representatives of the aborigines, stand far removed from him. This is just the situation that should have resulted from the regulations, which, as we have shown above, were being promulgated by the Brahmins to avoid their class being contaminated by the infusion of the aboriginal blood. The evidence from literature is thus amply corroborated by the physical facts. Restrictions on marriage of a fundamentally endogamous nature were thus racial in origin.