Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s3.7

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.