Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s3: II. Marriage Laws
Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s3
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II. Marriage Laws
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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.
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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
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¹ Ibbetson, § 380.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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¹ Ibbetson, § 391.
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² Ibid., §§ 464, 466.
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³ Guru Proshad Sen, *Calcutta Review*, July 1890, p. 57.
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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.
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¹ Nesfield, *Caste System*, § 192.
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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
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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.
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² *Ethnogr. Gloss.*, pp. lxxi et seq.
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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.
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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.
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⁴ Ibbetson, § 540.
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⁵ Cf., for example, Elliot, loc. laud., s.v. ‘Bisens’.
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¹ Elliot, p. 112. Likewise the Rajput Gautamas, ibid., p. 119.
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² For the Srotriyas of Bengal cf. Nil Kant Chatterjee, *Calcutta Review*, July 1891, p. 132. Other examples in Ibbetson, § 512.
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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.
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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.
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¹ V. N. Mandlik, *Vyavahāra Mayūkha*, pp. 353 et seq., 412 et seq.
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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*.
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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.
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³ V. N. Mandlik, pp. 412-13.
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¹ V. N. Mandlik, p. 352; Guru Proshad Sen, *Calcutta Review*, July 1890, pp. 59, etc.
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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.
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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
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³ Ibbetson, §§ 136, 357, 380, 393.
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⁴ Risley, *Ethnogr. Gloss.*, pp. xlvii-xlviii; v. I, p. 41.
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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
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¹ Ibbetson, § 544.
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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.
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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
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¹ Ibbetson, § 683; Elliot, p. 110; Risley, v. I, p. 310.
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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
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² Risley, pp. lv-lvi.
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¹ H. Mayne, *Hindu Law and Usage*, p. 77; J. S. Siromani, *Comment. on the Hindu Law*, pp. 70 et seq.
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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.
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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
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¹ Lyall, *Berar Gazetteer*, p. 187.