Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s3.13

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