Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s2.12

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.