Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6: Part I: The Present

Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6

Language
English

Contents

Part I: The Present

c6.2

Introductory. I. General Ideas. II. Marriage Laws. III. Hereditary Occupations. IV. Intercourse and Impure Contact. V. Various Rules; Religion and Caste. VI. Organization and Jurisdiction. VII. Disintegration and Multiplication of Castes

Introductory

c6.s1.1

WE are all familiar with the word ‘caste’, and although the notion it conveys may be regarded with disfavour, the word itself has come to stay. It was borrowed from the Portuguese *casta*, which signifies properly ‘breed’.

c6.s1.2

When they entered into relations with the peoples of the Malabar coast the Portuguese were quick to observe that the Hindus were divided into a great number of exclusive hereditary groups distinguished by their special occupations. They were graded in a sort of hierarchy, the upper groups refraining with superstitious care from all intercourse with those considered more lowly. It was to these sections that the Portuguese gave the name of *castes*. Eighteen centuries earlier the first Greeks who had established anything approaching close intercourse with India were already struck by this peculiarity. Megasthenes, ambassador of Seleucus, informed his countrymen that the Hindus were split into ‘divisions’ (μέρη),¹ within which individuals were to some extent confined, being unable themselves to pass or to marry into any other section than that in which they were born, or to choose a profession different from that which had devolved on them by heredity.

c6.s1.3

¹ The statement by Megasthenes that the number of μέρη was seven certainly rests on a merely superficial knowledge or interpretation of the facts. It is curious that precisely in the north-west of India we still find to-day that subdivision into seven clans is usual in many castes. Does the Greek evidence rest fundamentally on confusion with some such custom? It is curious that Herodotus (II, 164), depicting Egyptian society as divided into castes, also enumerates seven of them. This number varies, however, among more recent authors (cf. Mallet, *Les Premiers Établissements des Grecs en Égypte*, pp. 410-11).

c6.s1.4

The fact, then, is obvious enough; its details and peculiar conditions are much more obscure. To every one, and to the foreigner especially, the private life of the Hindu is veiled in a kind of dignified shyness which is not at all easy to penetrate. The social organism of India, the play of its motive-forces, is, moreover, regulated infinitely more by custom, varying according to locality and baffling in its complexity, than by legal formulae laid down in authentic and easily accessible texts. The books which we are accustomed to regard as collections of laws do not represent rules rigidly enforced in the civil sphere. They are sacerdotal works, and leave undefined a number of interesting points. In many respects they express a certain theological ideal rather than actual statements adapted to meet real conditions.

c6.s1.5

Already complicated by the conflicting nature of the various facts, the student is therefore more hindered than helped by a legal theory misleading in its precision. Its authority is placed so high that this doctrinal barrier leaves free passage for a very different practice and a great variety of unforeseen developments. Its effects have at all times appeared wavering and uncertain. It is not then to be wondered at that the public mind, misled on so delicate and unfamiliar a subject, has formed certain conclusions which are as generally accepted as they are untrue. The nature of the facts has in consequence been gravely distorted.

c6.s1.6

The Hindu castes are generally conceived as a political system of inviolable stability, confining the individual to occupations handed down immutably from father to son. However great the personal initiative, it offers no chance of rising in the social scale. One imagined Brahmans who may only consecrate themselves to the religious life and ritual, soldiers who may only be recruited from the warrior class, chiefs who may only be drawn from the royal and military caste—all so arranged that nothing has ever disturbed, or ever can disturb, an order protected from time immemorial. It is thus, I believe, that Hindu society is commonly pictured.

c6.s1.7

Since the last century there has been abundant speculation on this view of the organization, and the same fixed idea has persisted down to our own times. Men of intelligence, whose pursuits have brought them into constant touch with the facts, have recently, even since the modern progress of comparative law, regarded the caste institution in this light; they denounce in it the deliberate and treacherous scheming of an ambitious class; the origin of social institutions may be discovered in a gratuitous pact.¹ Is it to be wondered at? To do so would be to forget how strong is the power of preconceived ideas coined into current phraseology. Such errors prove at least the difficulty of the question, and it is all the more interesting since it deals with a unique phenomenon—a social order known only in India. Its solution is therefore well worth consideration.

c6.s1.8

¹ I could quote numerous examples, but will content myself with referring to Sherring's article in the *Calcutta Review* of 1880 on the ‘Natural History of Caste’. It is striking how the pandit Jogendra Chandra Ghosh, in attempting to reply, remains influenced by analogous views, although rejecting them in some particulars.

c6.s1.9

This solution has to-day assumed more importance than ever, but has also become less difficult. The relationship established between the Indo-European languages has brought the Āryan conquerors of India very near to us and aroused our curiosity about them. The affinity which has been revealed little by little between ancient peoples, not only in religious tradition but in the elements of social organization, has strengthened those bonds which were formed at first by a similarity of idiom. From this community of language and customs has there not been a tendency sometimes to draw too sweeping conclusions as to community of race? Certainly the common origin of institutions which, having dominated the past of our remote ancestors, are still evident in our own times, endows the different stages of evolution through which they have passed with a peculiar interest for us, and, if I may venture to say so, with an unusual piquancy.

c6.s1.10

At first comparison was made between those races whose idioms showed relationship. Curiosity quickly outgrew these bounds and embraced indiscriminately all the various kinds of primitive constitutions. I will not assert that scholarship has not sometimes lost in accuracy what it has gained in breadth. Though rash, these bold voyages of discovery into the unknown have not been altogether fruitless. They have given training in observation and critical insight, which has been of the greatest use to more timid, or, if you will, more prudent, research. During this time documents were accumulating from which we have gained a more complete and precise knowledge of the prevailing conditions in India. The official publications of the vice-regal government enjoy a well-earned reputation. A number of reports based on the last census returns add to statistical data, which are themselves very valuable, accounts and actual memoirs which are no less important. We are obtaining more information at a time when we are becoming better able to profit by it.

c6.s1.11

The able works of Nesfield and Ibbetson on the North-West Provinces and the Panjab were afterwards supplemented by the researches of Risley on the *Tribes and Castes of Bengal*. This work, carried out with all the elaboration peculiar to anthropology, finally resulted in a vast ethnographical glossary. In this the author has condensed his comprehensive views together with an infinite number of facts. The care and systematic labour with which he has assembled and checked his scattered information can be imagined. Inspired with a legitimate faith in his great task, he makes an urgent appeal to technical criticism. I do not flatter myself that I can answer that appeal here. I desire merely to make use of some of his ideas and indications.

c6.s1.12

These are primarily concerned with actual facts, and it may perhaps be of interest to consider them from the point of view of archaeology and history, which is my own province.¹

c6.s1.13

¹ I should like to mention here the general reports of J. Baines on the census of India in 1891. This vast production, the work of a resourceful and penetrating mind, forms a worthy conclusion to the series of documents of the same order to which I have referred in this study. As it is designed in the first place to summarize and co-ordinate statistical results, it is not of a nature to furnish me with much fresh information bearing upon either the general survey or the historical views which it is my intention to present here.

I. General Ideas

c6.s2.1

WE are inclined, when dealing with social customs foreign to our country and civilization, to judge them by our own standards of conduct; but we must drop this habit when we are discussing India.

c6.s2.2

Our Western world is enclosed in a network of institutions and laws which leave the least possible margin for the unexpected and for variety and conflict of ideas. India is governed essentially by custom, an authority both tenacious and capricious, and subject to endlessly changing local influences. It is very powerful in its immediate action, and disregards completely the importance of general and dispassionate views. The rule of custom involves complex processes of an unstable and incoherent nature as opposed to those of an ordered simplicity. This springs from the fact that Hindu society, in spite of the years behind it, has down to our own times remained very primitive in type. It has given rise to no state which is comparable even with the narrow government of the cities of antiquity, still less with our modern state. In the absence of all proper political law, the influence, both religious and social, of the Brahmans has found it an easy task, by exercising incessant pressure throughout the centuries, slowly to imprint on the whole a common physiognomy and to reduce below a certain level the most blatant contradictions. It has not effected unity, still less uniformity. It has not even been able to produce national unity, the lack of which is significant and extremely important.

c6.s2.3

The Āryan penetration has taken place gradually and unequally throughout India. It is doubtful whether, even in the north-west, the influx of the conquering race was great enough to overwhelm or completely to absorb the former populations, which were of different origin. In the south the infiltration came later and was more restricted, so that the non-Āryan races form a substantial element throughout India, even if not the major part of the population. In spite of the uniform veneer spread over the whole by the conquering civilization, certain customs, traditions, and tendencies foreign or contrary to it have therefore survived. Even to-day groups of these ancient populations are entering under our very eyes into the general structure of the vast Brahmanic community.

c6.s2.4

It will be foreseen what complications and incoherences so active and unstable a mixture is bound to cause, and how these must be taken into account by any one who wishes for a true and vivid picture of the existing conditions. Even the most general facts are subject to an infinity of exceptions. A systematic exposition would be immense, so vast is the ground to be covered, and any summary is necessarily imperfect, and in a sense fallacious, so varied are the aspects of the question. It is not my business to attempt here either one or the other; but it is necessary at least to try to present the problem clearly.

c6.s2.5

Leaving out of account certain populations definitely inferior by race, isolated by geographical conditions and by history, and secondary in numerical importance, the whole of India appears to us not as a simple collection of individuals, but as a mass of corporate unities. Their numbers, names, character, and functions are infinitely diverse; they form everywhere the invariable and apparently necessary framework of the population. The family-community has been maintained or restored in vast regions; the village-community owes its right of self-government either to traditional custom or, more especially, to the impotence of the central power, which, before the advent of British rule, drew up no wise measures: it was inclined to confine its normal activities to tax-collecting. But I have in view groups less restricted than these. They are not by their nature attached to any definite geographical division; they include many villages, or are involved in the same domain with a multitude of analogous groups. Unequal in number and opposed in customs, they have, however, common traits which place them in the same category: they are distinguished by special names, and meet together in assemblies to confer on certain matters. They isolate themselves sedulously in order to avoid intermarriage and to keep the rule which prohibits any contact or sharing of meals between them. Each is differentiated by his special hereditary occupation. Their jurisdiction keeps watch over the strict observance of the rules sanctioned by tradition. These groups are *castes*—or, it should be added, *quasi-castes*.

c6.s2.6

In reality, all these, in spite of the general resemblance both of the practices they observe and of the machinery by which they are maintained, are profoundly different. Many have entirely local existences, and several have very exceptional laws. The military aristocracy of the Nayars, confined to the coast of Malabar, is founded on polyandry. In the Panjab, where the Muslim conquest and the constant infiltration of foreign elements has reacted perceptibly on the social constitution of the country, large classes—for example, the Pathans and the Baluchis,¹ whose name attests a more or less purely geographical origin—are free from several laws which are essential characteristics of the caste, as properly defined. At another extremity of India, in Bengal, a number of corporate unities, while approximating as closely as they can to the constitution laid down for the caste by Brahmanic precepts, are betrayed either by their name or by the authoritative agreement of all witnesses, as imperfectly assimilated non-Aryan groups. Their inclusion in the scheme of Hindu organization is more or less arbitrary. It is the same everywhere, so that the ideas of tribe and caste are closely connected and sometimes even confused.

c6.s2.7

¹ Denzil Charles Jelf Ibbetson, *Report on the Census of the Panjab* (1881), Calcutta, 1883, v. I, p. 176.

c6.s2.8

It is necessary, however, that we should determine approximately the most general features which characterize caste, in so far as it is possible to trace its lesser branches to a common type.

c6.s2.9

The castes have often been compared—particularly by Hindus of English upbringing, who are very anxious at heart to lessen the distance between our races and theirs and to lower the barriers which separate India from Europe—with the social distinctions that exist amongst us. The gradations among the different castes, varying according to district, but clearly established in each by public feeling, furnish a natural excuse for this comparison. Caste, however, corresponds only very remotely to our social classes. Its constitution is far stronger and its implications far more precise. It is an institution, and an essential one.

c6.s2.10

It embraces not only a very great majority of the population of India, but it forms the normal framework of society, and is intimately connected with its religious life. It has been found possible, therefore, not without apparent justification, to regard it as the very soul of this somewhat indeterminate, fluid collection of customs and beliefs which is called Hinduism. A great many doctrines, more or less heterodox, have arisen which—either in clear theoretical terms, or indirectly by the logic of their teaching—attacked its legitimacy or undermined its foundations. These doctrines have either disappeared or lingered on in obscurity; caste has survived indestructible. Islam, having penetrated into India by main force, has won an important place there. Little by little caste has triumphed over natural opposition and distaste, and has seldom failed to draw the Muslims into its irresistible bonds. It is by adopting the official type of the caste that, even in our own times, the aboriginal populations, which have remained longest outside Hindu civilization, force an entry and claim common rights.

c6.s2.11

In spite of the confusion which is due to inexactitude of speech, there are, properly speaking, no *outcasts* in India. Individuals, driven by various causes from their native caste, quickly form the nucleus of new groups. Two courses only are open to them : either to become members of the lower castes, or to join with companions in misfortune and form new castes. It is obvious that in the normal working of all these exclusive sets there is no possible life for the isolated individual. The Pariah, upon whom, since Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, so much sympathy has been lavished, is not the lonely, banished creature one generally imagines. He belongs to a group, though it may be very poor and much despised. There are Pariah castes which, in spite of the disdain of the Brahmans, are not deterred from holding a high opinion of themselves ; they find neighbours to look down upon.

c6.s2.12

This shows the vast number of these groups of people, castes or tribes analogous to castes. There may be hundreds of them in one province. I have counted more than 120 in the district of Poona alone, which has about 900,000 inhabitants, yet this figure gives only an imperfect idea of the real partition : it represents the number of castes properly so-called. The greater part, however, are split up into subdivisions, which, though they share a generic name and have similar customs, form in several respects, notably in the matter of marriage, so many distinct castes. In this same district of Poona the Brahmans, whom theoretically we have been accustomed to regard as a single caste throughout the whole of India, are really divided up into fifteen castes. Some of them, and those not the most extensive, are themselves split up into several subdivisions, which never intermarry. It is the same everywhere.

c6.s2.13

Surveys, drawn up on the census returns of 1881, record no less than 855 different castes, numbering at least a thousand members or divided amongst several provinces or native states. If we add those which are less numerous or which exist only in one province or in one state, we reach the figure of 1929. But these calculations are far exceeded by the truth. Under a single head are registered nearly 14,000,000 Brahmans, 12,000,000 Kunbis, 11,000,000 Chamars, etc. All these, though claiming the same title, are in reality resolved into a multitude of secondary castes, which form as many autonomous bodies. These last, more often than not, despise each other and refuse as a rule either to intermarry or to eat together. It is, indeed, a characteristic tendency among all the castes to subdivide into more and more multiple groups, like coteries in the same social sphere.

c6.s2.14

The names borne by castes and sub-castes are not always clear in their meaning. Apart from two or three generic and traditional titles, such as those of Brahman and Rajput, the greater number of those whose meaning can be discerned trace their origin to one or other of the following four categories: geographical names borrowed either from a mere locality or from a province; professional names, referring either to an occupation peculiar to the group, or, in the case of some of the Brahman castes, a special feature in their sacerdotal functions—names of objects or of animals particularly connected with the group by traditional legends or religious practices; and lastly, family names going back, either directly or through a nickname, to a supposed ancestor. As may easily be imagined, the castes bearing names which seem to call for explanation are rarely at a loss for legends, however improbable, to account for their origin. In most cases the connexion has to be reversed: it is more usual for the name to have inspired the story than for the story to have given rise to the name.

c6.s2.15

Of such tales those most deserving of belief are undoubtedly the traditions which refer to more or less remote migrations, which are commemorated in the name of the caste. They show that these migrations were very frequent, especially among the higher castes, and are not the less significant for that. National feeling exists hardly at all; life is much more narrowly focused. The community of the caste or the tribe is strong enough in its solidarity and tradition to fulfil all needs. This society constitutes the true fatherland. Under its protection there is little stability, and in the past there was even less. Individuals carried about with them the household gods which they prized most highly; the swarming groups were re-established without difficulty in new surroundings under the permanent influence of the same instincts. India thus appears to us more than ever as an immense complexity of mobile organisms. They are united by widely different factors, amongst which it is at once evident that varieties of origin and race occupy an important position.

c6.s2.16

Is it to the persistence of memories and to the enmities which they awaken that we must trace the dissensions which are perpetuated in many places between various castes? They are all the more striking as the peoples concerned are by nature the more peace-loving. The most lasting and notorious hostility is that which, in the south of India, divides what is called the ‘right hand’ and the ‘left hand’. The two sets correspond roughly, it seems, to a division into artisan and agricultural castes.¹ It has never been possible to explain its origin and history. So much is certain, that their rivalry has been and still is the source of violent quarrels which divide the population into opposing camps. Certain privileges claimed by one or the other ‘hand’, if ever so slightly infringed, kindle the conflict.¹ It has often provoked risings which ‘spreading from place to place, have sown trouble over a wide stretch of territory and given occasion for all kinds of excesses which often end in bloody battles’.

c6.s2.17

¹ Cf. Burnell-Yule, *Hobson Jobson*, s.v. ‘Caste’.

c6.s2.18

¹ Abbé Dubois, *Mœurs*, etc., v. I, pp. 15 et seq.

c6.s2.19

Similar facts, though on a smaller scale, are found in many parts of the country.² Often rival claims to honours give rise, either as cause or pretext, to these struggles. Trivial enough in our eyes, they inflame those concerned to an extra-ordinary degree. The reason is that the organization of the castes has become the foundation of a veritable hierarchy: each one has its particular rank, defined by tradition or public opinion, and each one maintains it at all costs, or strives to advance itself. This is a trait which is entirely characteristic of the general nature of the institution.

c6.s2.20

² E.g. cf. the account ‘Caste Factions’ by Elliot in the *Asiatic Quarterly*, April 1892, pp. 438 et seq.

c6.s2.21

The pivot of this hierarchy is the recognized superiority of the Brahmanic caste and of its numerous branches. Some writers have gone so far as to say that the place assigned to each caste depends essentially on its relation to the Brahmanic caste, on the marks of consideration or disdain which it receives from the latter.¹ In spite of the relative disrepute into which a number of their castes have fallen the Brahmans hold a dominant position almost everywhere.² Their religious ascendancy has assured a high degree of authority to sects which, to a great extent, are founded on religious precepts and prejudices. It is very rarely that their superiority has been disputed.³ Often, however, the struggle among less favoured classes to emulate them has been obstinate and violent. All the castes, even the most despised, are animated by vanity and by a passion to be exclusive, which has strangely embittered these quarrels. Every means, from trickery and corruption to open force, is brought into play by the various groups in order to confirm or acquire such prerogatives as will raise them in public esteem.⁴

c6.s2.22

¹ Jogendra Chandra Ghosh, *Calcutta Review*, October 1880, pp. 81-2; cf. Guru Proshad Sen, ibid., July 1890, pp. 61-5.

c6.s2.23

² E.g. cf. Dubois, op. laud, v. I, pp. 143-4 and 161.

c6.s2.24

³ Cf., however, Dubois, I, 13.

c6.s2.25

⁴ Guru Proshad Sen, *Calcutta Review*, July 1890, pp. 54-5; Stecle, *Hindoo Castes*, pp. 96-7.

c6.s2.26

We have to deal with vast territories, where races differing in origin and habits jostle and mingle with one another; where groups are intermixed and unequally developed; split up *ad infinitum*, are easily changed about, and are sometimes engaged in bitter struggles amongst themselves. Must we therefore abandon the attempt to give a picture of the caste institution as a whole? The attempt cannot indeed fail to be incomplete, but it will not necessarily be false and misleading. Whatever incongruities may be cloaked by the apparent unity of the system, it is really based on many fundamental analogies. It will be enough to remember that no assertion should be regarded as absolute, that the relationship of facts leaves room for a multitude of fine shades of difference, and that only the most general characteristics are common to the whole domain.

c6.s2.27

This being clearly understood, let us picture a corporate group, exclusive and, in theory at least, rigorously hereditary. It possesses a certain traditional and independent organization, a chief and a council, and as occasion demands it meets in assemblies endowed with more or less full authority. Often united in the celebration of certain festivals, it is further bound together by a common profession and by the practice of common customs which bear more especially upon marriage, food, and various cases of impurity. Finally, it is armed, in order to assure its authority, with a jurisdiction of fairly wide extent, capable by the infliction of certain penalties, especially of banishment, either absolute or revocable, enforcing the power of the community. Such, briefly, is the caste system as it appears to us.

II. Marriage Laws

c6.s3.1

W E are in the presence of an hereditary organization; marriage laws therefore must and do occupy the first place in its mechanism. This is so striking that some writers have been led to represent the rules and restrictions concerning it as the very essence of the caste—an exaggeration, but a significant one.

c6.s3.2

Whatever may have been the rule in earlier times, polygamy is to-day the recognized and authorized system of marriage in India. This does not mean that it is universally or even generally practised. It is kept within bounds by poverty, and also, within a restricted circle, by the slow infiltration of Western ideas. Nevertheless, it exists absolutely in law and often in fact. However, except in particular cases, we may suitably leave it out of account when describing caste, and all the more readily because a special sanctity seems always to have attached to the first marriage, and a superior authority and dignity to have been reserved for the first wife.¹

c6.s3.3

¹ Ibbetson, § 380.

c6.s3.4

This point being disposed of, it is permissible to summarize in a very comprehensive survey the essentials of the law that caste imposes on marriage. This law has a twofold aspect: it both prescribes and limits. It describes a double circle: the wider one within which marriage must take place, and the narrower one drawn inside the first, within which it is forbidden to marry. Our own prohibited degrees of consanguinity give us an idea, although inadequate, of the second; while the restrictions imposed by the first are, legally at any rate, unknown to us. We may formulate the double rule by saying that one is obliged to marry within the caste and forbidden to marry within the family.

c6.s3.5

These terms, however wide they may be, demand a mass of commentaries and limitations in order to achieve exactitude. The anthropological sciences have within recent years created certain technical terms, somewhat uncouth but too convenient and already too widespread for me not to ask permission to introduce them here. They will save us from confusing periphrases. The custom which imposes marriage within the fixed circle has been called *endogamy*, and the law which ordains marriage outside a fixed circle *exogamy*. Now, with us there is only a law of exogamy—that which forbids marriage within the radius of degrees of close consanguinity.

c6.s3.6

The law of the caste, on the contrary, is a law of endogamy as regards the caste and of exogamy as regards the family. Within these vague confines it is absolute. But it must be seen in operation.

c6.s3.7

The first rule is very general; it displays, however, strongly marked distinctions in the actual caste, and in the tribe. It is much more strict in the first, more strict at least than in the Muslim tribes or quasi-castes. Though generally endogamous, they are not strictly so; the Baluchis and the Pathans¹ merely require that the first wife of a chief be taken in the tribe. The Gakkhars of the Panjab ally themselves with other tribes, while the Awans hardly ever unite except with women of their own race.² But we are here on the frontier, amongst the populations in which the memory of a foreign origin survives. Farther into the interior of India the Muslims, probably in imitation of the true castes, are usually stricter. They seldom marry outside the *Kuff*—that is to say, a certain group of villages inhabited by Muslims of their caste.³ The still more or less barbarous tribes which general opinion holds to be chiefly aboriginal, approximate roughly to the usages of the castes.

c6.s3.8

¹ Ibbetson, § 391.

c6.s3.9

² Ibid., §§ 464, 466.

c6.s3.10

³ Guru Proshad Sen, *Calcutta Review*, July 1890, p. 57.

c6.s3.11

They all split up almost invariably into a sometimes considerable number of divisions. Although included under a common name, these really constitute so many castes between which marriage is never allowed. As a Hindu himself remarks: ‘The Brahmans of Bengal do not marry with the Brahmans of other regions, nor the Kāyasths (scribes) or other castes of Bengal with their respective castes in other parts of India. Moreover, amongst the Brahmans of Bengal, the Rahri Brahmans do not marry with the Varendra or Vaidika or Dakkhinatwa Brahmans. The Ballalseni Vaidyas (doctors) who live in eastern Bengal do not marry with the Lakmanseni Vaidyas who live in the west of the province, and the four classes of the Bengali Kāyasths never intermarry amongst themselves. In Upper India, marriage is forbidden between the sections of the Kāyasths, the number of which here amounts to twelve.’ This is only one example. The most resolute advocate of the purely professional origin of the castes, Nesfield, states that all the nominal castes are thus resolved into a number of sections which are castes proper. In the north-west provinces he counts seven of these among the Barhais or carpenters, ten among the Kāyasths or scribes, thirty among the Chatris (cultivators or landed proprietors), and forty among the Brahmans.¹ Elsewhere things are no different, and it would be both superfluous and tedious to mention more names.

c6.s3.12

¹ Nesfield, *Caste System*, § 192.

c6.s3.13

We find the same tendency, either natural or copied from the Brahmans, prevailing among peoples who by reason of their primitive habits are regarded as aboriginal.¹ And it is in the guise of endogamous groups that they enter the common pale of Hinduism. Risley ² puts their divisions into several categories : ethnic, linguistic, local, occupational, sectarian, and social, according to the basis on which each group has been established. We are such slaves to habit that even numbers are apt to become conventionalized : the division into seven castes seems, if I may venture so to express it, to be the fashion in the Panjab.³

c6.s3.14

¹ E.g. on the four great sections of the Minas, cf. Lyall, *Asiatic Studies*, p. 162 ; on the Mhars, *Poona Gazetteer*, I, p. 262, etc.

c6.s3.15

² *Ethnogr. Gloss.*, pp. lxxi et seq.

c6.s3.16

³ Among the Chamars, the Dhanuks, the Khobis, the Karchis, etc. ; cf. Elliot, *The Races of the North-Western Provinces of India*, ed. Beames, v. I, pp. 70, 79, 81, 145, etc.

c6.s3.17

The principle is very widespread, but never absolute. A caste such as that of the Khatris in the Panjab ⁴ is regulated in this respect by complicated arrangements which authorize marriage between certain sections of the caste and not between others. Among various Rajput populations ⁵ several clans intermarry, while they exclude others from this privilege; but this rule is often broken by anomalies. We see, for example, the Gaur Brahmans agreeing at Delhi to unions that similar castes reject in the Doab and Rohilkhand.¹ These are some examples amongst a hundred similar eccentricities. In spite of the value unanimously accorded to equality between husband and wife, more than one caste, and not necessarily the lowest, making very substantial concessions in practice, accepts betrothal from a lower caste.² It is a spirit of compromise imposed by special circumstances, reviving a state of things which must have been regarded long ago with less disfavour than is now the case.

c6.s3.18

⁴ Ibbetson, § 540.

c6.s3.19

⁵ Cf., for example, Elliot, loc. laud., s.v. ‘Bisens’.

c6.s3.20

¹ Elliot, p. 112. Likewise the Rajput Gautamas, ibid., p. 119.

c6.s3.21

² For the Srotriyas of Bengal cf. Nil Kant Chatterjee, *Calcutta Review*, July 1891, p. 132. Other examples in Ibbetson, § 512.

c6.s3.22

These exceptions do not impair the validity of the law; the endogamy of the caste or of the tribe is, on the contrary, one of the most constant rules. It has its no less essential opposite point in the exogamy of the family or of the clan.

c6.s3.23

It is not easy to find a suitable name for this little exogamous circle enclosed within the wider periphery of the caste. Its limits, definition, and title vary to an extreme degree. On the other hand, it exists almost invariably and its effects make themselves felt everywhere. So great is the confusion that Hindu casuists have been obliged to abandon the attempt to establish systematic regulation. They have accepted as law the recognized usage in each family or in each group.¹ In spite of everything, the general rule stands out in very high relief. It may be summed up in a word: marriage in the *gotra* to which an individual belongs is forbidden.² Such at least is the traditional law established by the Brahmans.

c6.s3.24

¹ V. N. Mandlik, *Vyavahāra Mayūkha*, pp. 353 et seq., 412 et seq.

c6.s3.25

² I leave on one side the community of *Pravara* (concerning which cf. V. N. Mandlik, op. laud., p. 414), which is essentially one with the *gotra*.

c6.s3.26

The *gotra* denotes an eponymous group which is reputed to descend in its entirety from a common ancestor, who should properly be a *rishi*, a legendary priest or saint. The number of these is limited, so that the same *gotras* are to be met with, however abnormal this arrangement may appear to us, amongst people who belong to different castes. The *gotra* is peculiar to the Brahmanic caste. It is true that we find it extended to the other high castes by religious law, to the Kshatriyas and Vaiśyas, but at the price of obvious artifices.³ Brahmanic *rishis* can hardly in strict logic have been able to found any but Brahman stock. It is as frivolous to attribute to families the *gotra* of their priests and religious preceptors, who are necessarily of different orders, as to include all the families who do not know their *gotra* in that which recognizes Jamadagni as its founder. In fact, the Brahmans are alone in the somewhat general possession of *gotras*.¹ But a more or less faithful imitation of the institution and even of its name, has been transplanted into a great number of castes, especially amongst the merchant classes, who pride themselves on conforming to the Brahmanic rule.² The name has travelled so far afield that in many cases it has ended by assuming a meaning very distant from its primitive one, a fact from which considerable confusion has resulted, even in the census returns.

c6.s3.27

³ V. N. Mandlik, pp. 412-13.

c6.s3.28

¹ V. N. Mandlik, p. 352; Guru Proshad Sen, *Calcutta Review*, July 1890, pp. 59, etc.

c6.s3.29

² As examples it is enough to refer to Steele, *Hindoo Castes*, pp. 36, 37, 162, 166; Elliot, op. laud., pp. 3, 32, 535; Hunter, *Orissa*, t. II, pp. 39-40; Ibbetson, §§ 353, 533; *Poona Gazetteer*, v. I, pp. 266, 375, 401.

c6.s3.30

The exogamous group exists even amongst the Muslim tribes of the frontier zone, who can barely be regarded as forming part of the Hindu community. Sometimes it is very restricted; but it is present everywhere in spite of the tendency of the Muslim populations to marry within a limited radius.³ The exceptions, if such there be, are so rare and can be explained by such special circumstances that they are negligible.⁴

c6.s3.31

³ Ibbetson, §§ 136, 357, 380, 393.

c6.s3.32

⁴ Risley, *Ethnogr. Gloss.*, pp. xlvii-xlviii; v. I, p. 41.

c6.s3.33

To an even greater degree does this statement apply to the Hindus. Risley has carefully studied this category of facts. He has distinguished the very different moulds in which, according to circumstances, the exogamous sections from various levels of Hindu society seem to have been cast, particularly in the very low castes which have sprung from the strata of aboriginal populations : vicinity ; common ancestry, authentic and supposed ; a common surname regarded as a sign of relationship ; a common cult for that category of objects or animals to which ethnography gives the name of *totem*, which are connected with the clan by some superstitious legend. Several of these principles of division, the last especially, have an archaic, uncivilized aspect, which carry us back to a remote period previous to any Āryan influence. This is not, however, the moment to explore the delicate question of origins. Brahmanic influence has been at work for long centuries past. It is recognizable by certain errors ; the zeal for imitation is more ardent than judicious. A low caste, claiming to follow Brahmanic rules, may resolve itself into exogamous fractions, while constituting a single eponymous group and even expressly attaching itself to one single *gotra*.¹

c6.s3.34

¹ Ibbetson, § 544.

c6.s3.35

However different may be the names taken by these groups according to circumstances and locality, it is convenient to have a simple term by which to denote them as a whole. *Gotra* may be retained for this purpose, since the word is sanctioned both by technical language and by common parlance where its meaning is not always obvious. Its influence has made itself felt everywhere but is not always equally strict.

c6.s3.36

It may be said that individuals are everywhere forbidden to marry within the *gotra* of which they bear the name, hence within the paternal *gotra*. But this prohibition does not exhaust the legal impediments. The usual rule is that a man may not marry into the *gotra* of his mother either, nor often into that of his father's mother, nor sometimes into the clan of his mother's mother.¹

c6.s3.37

¹ Ibbetson, § 683; Elliot, p. 110; Risley, v. I, p. 310.

c6.s3.38

Exogamy on the maternal side varies very much in scope. Castes or tribes may be cited which, beside and below the *gotras*, have smaller groups for the purpose, it seems, of delimiting exogamy on the maternal side.² In any case, the impediments resulting from the *gotra* are further complicated by a table of prohibited degrees. The *gotra* itself varies according to caste, locality, and time. It is, all things considered, very much more comprehensive than that in which are embodied among us the surviving remnants of exogamic reservations. Marriage is forbidden between betrothed persons who stand in the relationship denoted in Sanskrit by the word *sapinḍa*. This relationship extends to the sixth degree if the common ancestor is a man; if a woman, opinions differ: prohibition comprises according to some six degrees, according to others four only.¹ Commentators have reckoned that on an exhaustive calculation this rule excludes marriage in the case of 2,121 possible relationships. In the usages, the variants and the uncertainties to which they are subject, there is a fine source of hair-splitting, academic discussion; it is easy to imagine how it has appealed to the Hindu experts! It has no attraction for us and only an indirect bearing on the question with which we are concerned.²

c6.s3.39

² Risley, pp. lv-lvi.

c6.s3.40

¹ H. Mayne, *Hindu Law and Usage*, p. 77; J. S. Siromani, *Comment. on the Hindu Law*, pp. 70 et seq.

c6.s3.41

² It will suffice to refer the curious to the chapter which V. N. Mandlik, has devoted to this subject, *Vyavahāra Mayūkha*, pp. 346 et seq.

c6.s3.42

From the point of view of the caste, the general and curious fact which it is important to bear in mind is the double rule which we stated in the beginning: the prohibition of marriage outside the caste and the obligation of marriage outside the *gotra*. The relationship which prevents marriage is above all agnatic relationship—relationship on the male side. The results of relationship on the female side are always much less prohibitive. In certain cases the obstacles which it sets up are narrowly limited, and castes are cited in which a certain relationship, although distant, on the female side is considered desirable, if not necessary, between the betrothed.¹

c6.s3.43

¹ Lyall, *Berar Gazetteer*, p. 187.

III. Hereditary Occupations

c6.s4.1

A RECENT theory, supported by an exceedingly shrewd and expert judge, has claimed that common occupation forms the very foundation and principle of the caste. This is perhaps the conception which remains uppermost in the minds of those who content themselves with a certain amount of approximate ideas on the subject. But it would be an exaggeration to imagine Hindu society as enclosed according to the occupations of its members in a chessboard of unchangeable and impassable squares. It is true that many castes are called by the name of the profession which in general they follow: potters, blacksmiths, fishermen, gardeners, etc. It is necessary to remember that the names of trades which are presented to us as caste-names really embrace a larger area, and that the true caste, characterized and limited by the marriage laws, is much more restricted. Thus Banyas, or merchants, in the Panjab,¹ to take only one example, are split up into sections under geographical names such as the Agarwals, the Oswals, etc., which, being endogamous, clearly form as many distinct castes. A professional caste therefore does not embrace in one single unit all the people who live by the calling from which it takes its name. It is even a common experience to find gathered under a single trade-name people who very obviously derive from distinct castes and tribes.¹

c6.s4.2

¹ Ibbetson, § 532.

c6.s4.3

¹ See the case of the Sangtarash or stone-cutters according to Nesfield, *Caste System*, § 62; cf. Ibbetson, § 366. At Poona the Salis and the Sangars are both weavers, *Poona Gazetteer*, pp. 365, etc.

c6.s4.4

On the other hand, members of the same caste may earn their living in very different ways, the most notable instance being the low and despised castes, reputed to be of non-Aryan origin. Condemned to perform all the menial tasks, they follow to some extent any and every kind of inferior occupation. The Baris, in the North-West Provinces, make torches and act as barbers,² the Banjaras³ comprise merchants, bards, shepherds and agriculturists. Elsewhere cotton-beaters, oil-pressers, and butchers rub elbows in a single caste.⁴ Examples could be multiplied *ad infinitum*. They are not confined to the lowlier castes. Nesfield⁵ himself explains that among the merchants the professional distinction is practically nil, and that all their castes may engage in trade without possessing prescriptive rights to any one branch. He states⁶ that numbers of people change their occupations without leaving their caste. That is quite evident.

c6.s4.5

² Elliot, p. 49.

c6.s4.6

³ Ibid., pp. 52-5; on the Kunbis, p. 156.

c6.s4.7

⁴ Ibbetson, §§ 646-7.

c6.s4.8

⁵ *Caste System*, p. 78.

c6.s4.9

⁶ Ibid., § 81.

c6.s4.10

It is no less certain that the enormous number of castes devoted to agriculture does not correspond to the same number of professional distinctions, present or past. The castes in this category have shown an incessant tendency to gain ground In proportion as the non-Aryan tribes have drawn closer to Hindu civilization, they have become predominantly agricultural; in proportion as the peace maintained by British rule has discouraged the profession of arms, agriculture has gained in man-power. This is but one of the elements which, from the point of view of allocation, conspire to disturb uniformity.

c6.s4.11

Let us begin, first of all, at the very top of the scale. It is perhaps among the Brahmans that there occurs the most complicated mixture of occupations and confusion of trades. If we were to go no farther than the old idea of a caste of Brahmans consecrated solely to religious practice and study and to a life of austerity or meditation, this would be extremely disconcerting. Those who have seen Brahmans girded with the sacred thread offering water at Indian stations to travellers, and who have also seen them drilling among the sepoys of the Anglo-Indian Army, are prepared for surprises of this kind. As a matter of fact, people who proudly bear the title of Brahman and to whom everywhere this title assures great respect, may be found engaged in all sorts of tasks : priests and ascetics, learned men and religious beggars, but also cooks and soldiers, scribes and merchants, cultivators and shepherds, even masons and chair-porters.¹

c6.s4.12

¹ Hunter has in this connexion entered into very curious details, whatever may be the value of the theories which he mingles with facts, Orissa, I, pp. 239 et seq. On Brahman cultivators the reader may also compare Ibbetson, § 512, Elliot, I, p. 94 ; on Brahman tradesmen, Ibbetson, § 361 ; and generally, on the variety of the professions followed by Brahmans, Dubois, Mœurs, etc., I, pp. 410 et seq. ; Nesfield, Caste System, § 133, etc.

c6.s4.13

There are even more extraordinary facts : the Sanauriya Brahmans of Bundelkhand ² have robbery as their hereditary profession. It is true that they only follow it by day, and the respect of the Hindus for the Brahmans goes so far that, if one is to believe a perhaps ironical proverb, to be robbed by them should be regarded as a favour from heaven. For the rest, there are not wanting other castes of robbers, although of less lofty pretensions.³

c6.s4.14

² Nesfield, § 134.

c6.s4.15

³ Dubois, I, pp. 5, 77 ; Steele, Hindoo Castes, p. 121 ; Poona Gazetteer, I, pp. 464 et seq.

c6.s4.16

This diversity of occupations in the Brahmanic caste is nothing new. A very similar state of things is already sanctioned by the laws of Manu and by other equally venerable authorities. I hasten to add that in many cases these distinctions give birth to those new sub-castes which are to me the true castes; but this result is far from being invariable.

c6.s4.17

The intrusion of these numerous peoples, who, inferior to the average level of Āryan castes, cause disturbance and instability in the system, may also have contributed to break down the rigour of the principle. I readily admit that speciality and heredity of occupation have not only been a powerful bond within the caste, but have often been the centre of attraction round which new groups have gathered. In spite of everything it is evident that hereditary community of profession is seriously upset by the arrangement of the caste-system.

IV. Intercourse and Impure Contact

c6.s5.1

THE proverb according to which ‘caste is only a question of food’ is an answer to those to whom it is a question of trade. It proves at least that habit has not been able to lessen, even for the Hindus, the surprise we experience at the scrupulous care with which they observe two very complicated and hampering laws: the first is to refuse any food which may have been prepared or merely touched by people of a caste which they consider inferior; the second is never to take meals with people of a lower caste, which, by virtue of a natural reciprocity, amounts to not taking meals with anybody but equals. Here is a rule which would be strangely disturbing to our democratic habits. Even in India it is not without its drawbacks. The scruples which it maintains have done much to render intercourse between Europeans and natives rarer and more difficult and to prevent Hindus reaping in their travels the benefits of Western civilization.

c6.s5.2

The Hindus are at all times great lovers of feasts; common meals occur on all solemn occasions.¹ These restrictions are therefore the more significant. Their authority is so absolute that the Santals—a very low caste in Bengal—have been known to die of hunger in times of famine rather than touch food even prepared by Brahmans.² This reservation, applied to the caste which is regarded as the highest and surrounded by such grovelling respect, shows how ingenious and fertile scruples can be and what variations they often embroider on a primitive theme.

c6.s5.3

¹ Cf. Jogendra Chandra Ghosh, *Calcutta Review*, October 1880, p. 280.

c6.s5.4

² Barth, *Revue Critique*, 1880, v. II, p. 243.

c6.s5.5

Speaking generally, we may take it that only those may eat together who are allowed to intermarry. So here also we must interpret caste in the narrow sense. The twelve sections of the Kāyasths of Bengal may no more eat in company than they may permit alliances with one another.³ However, all things considered, the prohibition here is less strict. Many sections of castes between which marriage is unlawful do not refrain from sharing meals together. Moreover, custom in this respect varies from one part of the country to another, still more than do the marriage laws, and even in the same caste according to the districts amongst which it is dispensed.⁴ The law, however, exists everywhere, though it is complicated by distinctions which seem odd but are exceedingly instructive. ‘Broadly speaking,’ says a report quoted by Ibbetson,¹ ‘no superior tribe will eat or drink from the hands or vessels of an inferior one. But the reputed purifying influences of fire, especially as exercised upon butter and sugar, and the superior cleanliness of metal over earthen vessels, are the foundation of a broad distinction. All food is divided into *pakkī rōṭī*, i.e. bread fried dry with butter; and *kachchhī rōṭī*, i.e. bread not so treated. A Gujarat Brahman will eat the *pakki* but not the *kachchi rōṭī* from a Gaur; a Gaur from a Taga; any Brahman or Taga from a Rajput; any Brahman, Taga, or Rajput from a Jat, Gujar, or Ror. With the exception of Brahmans and Tagas, each caste will drink water from a metal vessel, if previously scoured with earth, from the same people with whom they will eat *pakkī* bread, but they will not drink from earthen vessels except with those whose *kachchhī* bread they can eat. Jats, Gujars, Rors, Rahbaris, and Ahirs eat and drink in common without any scruples. These again will eat a goldsmith’s *pakkī* bread, but not in his house. A Mussulman will eat and drink from a Hindu, but no Hindu will touch either *pakkī* or *kachchhī* from any Mussulman, and will often throw it away if only a Mussulman’s shadow falls upon it. Sugar and most sweetmeats can be eaten from almost anybody’s hand, even from that of a leather-worker or sweeper; but in this case they must be whole and not broken.’ These details will, I think, suffice as an example. The reader will not only excuse me but call down blessings on my head for not aspiring to be exhaustive.

First 106 of 300 passages. Read on

Linked texts (7)