Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s6: V. Various Rules; Religion and Caste

Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s6

Language: English

V. Various Rules; Religion and Caste

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WE are bordering here on another category of facts. By the side of the most general laws governing caste, which are, so to speak, essential to it and characterize and maintain its organization—the laws which fix the open limits and the barriers imposed on marriage, which protect heredity of occupation, which, by preventing too easy admixture, safeguard the individuality of each section—there exist also in each particular caste certain prohibitions and customs, some very widespread, but none universal. By their nature they are attached, directly or indirectly, to one or other of these main headings. In their entirety they constitute a little code of customs the strict observance of which, in the circle where it prevails, is maintained with uncompromising rigour. These rules have no less authority because they are less uniform in their application and less serious in their consequences. They unite to endow the various castes with individual traits. It is therefore fitting to acquire at least some idea of them.

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It is natural enough that persons forbidden to eat in common should also be forbidden to smoke together out of the same *hukka*. It is natural also that this prohibition should not be put on the same plane as the first. It happens then that intercourse is avoided in both cases with regard to the same castes or sub-castes; on the other hand, tolerance is more frequent in the second case than in the first. The use of the same bowl, if it is made of metal, is, for instance, considered permissible provided that there are two pipe-stems. But there exists a very lively fear of this pollution: in certain regions in order to avoid awkward confusions, pipes, since they are often left in fields or in places of assembly, have some mark of identification on the stem—a blue rag for a Muslim, red for a Hindu, a bit of leather for a Chamar, a cord for a sweeper, etc.¹ It is evident that this care is observed everywhere; it is kept up even among the castes who might have escaped it by their common debasement.

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¹ Ibbetson, §§ 358, 650.

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Similarly, the precautions taken against food which may have been polluted by impure contact are completed by restrictions concerning the food itself. Every one knows the veneration in which Hindus hold the cow and their horror when they see its flesh eaten. Respect for all animal life is a trait which runs through the whole of India’s past. Buddhism and Jainism have developed it to extreme limits, and Brahmanism without being equally categorical is also deeply imbued with it. With the Buddhists as with the Hindus the use of spirituous liquors is likewise severely disapproved; it is regarded as a serious offence. It is evident also, both from certain persistent customs and from authorized texts, that certain foods are, although the reason escapes us, the objects of special disapproval:¹ for example, onions, garlic, and mushrooms. But there is frequent disagreement between local usages, and the same book often presents conflicting passages which obscure the true facts. Ancient practices have been and are still daily impaired by the effects of foreign example.² Any general assertion, therefore, is dangerous. Who would dare to say that modern Brahmans, even of high caste, abstain from meat, even with the exception authorized by the rule in favour of meats used in sacrifices or served at funeral feasts? We are assured that even now the use of fermented liquor forms a line of demarcation between the high and the low castes. How are we to know exactly where the dividing line is drawn in each region?

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¹ Guru Proshad Sen, *Calcutta Review*, April 1890, p. 335.

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² Nesfield, § 60.

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The truth is that each caste—that is to say, each endogamous group—observes in this respect rules which, though not absolutely immutable, form part of the common heritage and are strictly observed so long as they are generally in force. They are sometimes very special, as in that very minute caste the Halalkhors at Poona, who, in spite of a life anything but luxurious, refuse the flesh of the hare, since its patron, Lāl Beg, is reputed to have been suckled by a hare.¹

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¹ Poona Gazetteer, I, 436.

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It is of little interest here to note that certain Brahmans eat meat while others abstain from it, or that certain classes allow or do not allow pork or chicken on their table. What is important to observe is that the caste as such accepts a series of prescriptions or rather of prohibitions concerning food to which, however odd they may seem to us, it attaches a high importance, and which sometimes involves severe penalties when evaded. And let it be well noted that it is not merely a question of a somewhat flimsy casuistry confined to the fastidious classes. Many tribes of an exceedingly coarse, primitive character feed without scruple upon any dead animal they may happen to come across; but the exclusion of certain wild or particularly repugnant animals will be enough to form the basis of a new caste-section whose members will look down on the others and soon proudly refuse them the *connubium*. This fact is instructive: it shows the caste to be bound concerning food by customs which are a part of its traditional constitution—one of the elements which strengthen its power and unity.

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It is the same with divers practices which arise in the important domain of marriage, and which in a number of cases are added to the essential rules of endogamy and exogamy. It becomes more than ever impossible to enter here into the infinite detail in which the description of enormously complicated ceremonies and usages would involve us.¹

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¹ V. N. Mandlik has assembled a certain number of facts in a special table, *Vyavahāra Mayūkha*, p. 395 et seq.

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It has already been mentioned that various castes show, by the side of very severe rules of exogamy on the paternal side, a peculiar tendency in favour of alliance with a relatively near kinswoman on the maternal side.² A rarer case is that in which polygamy is punished by exclusion.³ The custom of *levirate* authorized, in the absence of male issue, the husband's brother or, in his default, a very near kinsman, to take his place after his death, or even in his lifetime, in order to give his wife an heir. This custom, curious because of its wide diffusion, is very characteristic on account of the importance laid by the ancient family constitution on the continuity through successive males of the cult of the family.⁴ It is of great antiquity in India,¹ and survives in an attenuated form and deflected from its original significance in places where it is customary to marry the widow to her deceased husband's younger brother.² Many castes practise it in this form, but much more common among them is the absolute prohibition of second marriage for widows.

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² Dubois, I, 10-11; V. N. Mandlik, pp. 415 et seq.

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³ V. N. Mandlik, pp. 406-7.

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⁴ Cf. Hearn, *Aryan Household*, pp. 102 et seq.

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¹ Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, p. 329.

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² Cf. Henry Mayne, *Hindu Law and Usage*, pp. 62 et seq.; Grant, *Central Prov. Gazetteer*, pp. 276-7; V. N. Mandlik, p. 443; Lyall, *Berar Gazetteer*, p. 188; Risley, *Ethnogr. Gloss.*, p. lxxiv.

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The rigorous attitude of Hinduism towards widows is well known, and we may recall the difficulty with which the British Government suppressed the barbarous custom whereby the surviving wife was condemned to follow her husband on the funeral pyre. The custom which encouraged by every means, if it did not explicitly exact, such a sacrifice could not well be indulgent towards second marriages for women. Their condemnation may not go back to primitive times, but it is undoubtedly very ancient, as is testified by literary tradition. It has taken on extraordinary authority throughout the whole of India. Certainly this prohibition is not nearly universal, but it is general in the higher castes.³ Ardently propagated, to all appearance, by the example and precept of the Brahmans, it has become a touchstone for the social status of the castes; those who practise it are alone esteemed. Its abandonment by the higher castes causes them to sink in the social scale ; ¹ its adoption by the lower castes is a means of raising and of strengthening their position in the Brahmanic scheme of society.

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³ H. Mayne, pp. 84-5.

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¹ Ibbetson, pp. 174-5 ; Dubois, pp. 14-15 ; V. N. Mandlik, p. 444 ; Risley, pp. lxxxii-lxxxiii onwards.

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In the opinion of the best judges this rule, if not Vedic, is of Brahmanic origin, ² and has spread gradually. Be that as it may, it is still a caste-law, in relation to which each follows the hereditary custom, reputed immemorial, of the group to which he belongs by birth.

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² H. Sumner Maine, *Village Communities*, pp. 53 et seq. ; H. Mayne, *Hindu Law and Usage*, pp. 82-4 ; Risley, pp. lxxxi et seq.

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Other peculiarities are connected with this. Divorce, for instance, illegal for the Hindu who is a faithful follower of the law, is practised, together with the second marriage of widows, in a number of inferior castes.³ On the other hand, the custom which demands child-marriages in the case of girls, often several years before married life has become possible, is regarded as a mark of social superiority. Here, again, the tradition of the caste exerts supreme pressure. A Hindu has ingeniously attempted to explain this custom as a means of ensuring the integrity of the caste. To wait for the age of awakened desire would be to run the risk that personal fancies might outweigh religious scruples.⁴

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³ H. Mayne, pp. 84-5 ; V. N. Mandlik, p. 428, onwards.

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⁴ Jogendra Chandra Ghosh, *Calcutta Review*, April 1880, p. 284.

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The interest of the caste plays a more indubitable part in a case which must be referred to in passing, not so much, however, for its own sake as for the tendency which it reveals.

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Strictly speaking, a man is only allowed to choose a betrothed within his caste. Undoubtedly, however, actual practice tempered by the facilities offered by polygamy has always allowed many exceptions. There lingers, in fact, a great deal of that primitive feeling in virtue of which the man, by raising his wife to his level in admitting her to his domestic cult, may enjoy a wider liberty in his choice. It is even admitted by Brahmanic theory that marriage between a woman of high caste and a man of low caste entails for their posterity a much more serious loss of caste than the inverse association. The idea of never marrying their daughters beneath them and, better still, of marrying them into a higher class, has become among many castes a tendency sufficiently well-marked and dominant to merit a special name: it has been called *hypergamy*.

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Judging by reports from many quarters¹ it is among the Kulīna Brahmans in Bengal that it has, up to now, produced the most striking consequences, so much so that for this caste at least it has become characteristic. The ardent desire among the less well-born Brahmans to marry their daughters to the Kulīnas, together with the impossibility of the latter marrying theirs into a lower rank, and the ease with which they may, without suffering sensible loss of caste, take wives from the less exalted Brahmanic castes, has had the effect of producing among the Kulīnas an absolutely abnormal development of polygamy.¹ The result is a moral and social situation which has provoked most justifiable complaints. But this is an extreme case, not one of those positive rules such as I am endeavouring to unravel in my attempt to give a clear picture of this system so remote from our own customs.

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¹ Cf., for example, Nesfield, p. 18; Ibbetson, §§ 456, 512; Risley, pp. lxxxii et seq.

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¹ Ward, *View of the History, etc., of the Hindus*, I, 79 et seq. ; V. N. Mandlik, pp. 448-9, note.

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It may be a matter of surprise that I have not yet dealt with the religious aspect of caste. In a type of society like that of the Hindus, in the main very primitive, the religious idea is not connected with every fact or every cog in the machine, and it is precisely one of the most outstanding characteristics of Brahmanic civilization that religious inspiration is everywhere present, and orders all its activities. Our analysis is none the less entitled to distinguish between the elements which are especially religious and those which, for all that they are under more or less remote religious influences, are dependent on what we generally consider as the social system.

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The caste as such never presents itself in a religious light. Various beliefs often rub elbows there without hostility or apparent inconvenience, and religious conversion alone in no way affects the individual’s position in the caste.¹ Mixed castes are, for example, composed of Jains and Hindus. Difference of religious belief forms no obstacle to *connubium*.² Even the influence that Islam has been able to exert over the system has been gradual and indirect. In cases where dissolution has occurred, it is because certain rules of purity have been violated or endangered by contrary practices, and not in the name of a new dogma. The caste-system is regularly practised by certain non-Aryan tribes whose peculiar beliefs are but little in harmony with the theories of the degraded Brahmans who act as their priests.³

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¹ Ibbetson, § 346.

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² Nesfield, § 201 ; Ibbetson, p. 130.

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³ Ibid., § 295.

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Scholars have, I think, gone too far in denying that the evolution and action of religion have had any influence upon the grouping of the castes. And yet it is evident that, generally speaking, such influence is no longer exerted, except rarely and to a slight extent.

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In events which are nearly related to the religious life — marriages, funerals, etc. — the various castes observe a great many practices often strictly peculiar to themselves. These usages are dear to those among whom they are a tradition. They in no way involve belief and only indirectly affect the religious conscience. A description of them might be entertaining, but would throw no new light on the caste-institution. At most, like so many other indications, they would serve by their originality and diversity to show the caste to be an organism possessing in its isolation a considerable degree of independence, and enveloping itself in a complete network of small institutions which help to create and enhance its individuality in every way.

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Under one form or another each celebrates in its own fashion, with a more or less meticulous ceremonial, those rites which in all countries mark the rhythm of man’s career in its different stages. But there is a ceremony belonging only to certain castes, to which the others possess no equivalent, and the primitive religious significance of this is certain. It is worth consideration ; we shall be obliged to return to it later when dealing with Brahmanic teaching. I refer to ‘initiation’, the *upanayana* of the Sanskrit.

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Theory divides all Hindus into two great categories, Śūdras and Dvijas. The Dvijas, that is to say ‘twice-born’, comprise all the members of the three high castes, to which we shall return presently--all those who have received a sort of religious birth by this initiation, the essential point of which is investiture with the sacred thread. The three high castes no longer exist, if they ever have existed, in the theoretic condition; but we still meet in India a multitude of people who wear, like a bandolier, slung over the left shoulder, and hanging down to the right hip, a slender thread formed of a nine-stranded cotton-string plaited in threes. They regard this badge as the most precious of their prerogatives. It denotes, in effect, that they have been duly inducted into the religious life, and that an essential ceremony has given them access to the Veda and the sacred studies; it has endowed them with the right to participate in all the acts of worship; and in short has made them, if I may so express it, fully practising Hindus, in much the same way that baptism operates in the case of Christians.

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Investiture is commonly practised at the age of about seven, eight, or nine years. It applies only to men. Woman, always more or less a minor in the archaic organism of the family, only belongs to the religious community before marriage through her father, and after marriage through her husband, who associates her with his semi-religious character of father of the family. Investiture is therefore a very serious matter, and is accompanied by rites and feasts which last for several days.

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We are chiefly interested in the extent to which the custom has spread. Whatever it may have been formerly, the situation has certainly changed very much since ancient times. Investiture to-day should in strict justice be reserved at most for a few Brahman castes. Many others have appropriated it as the supreme consecration of their social claims. The sacred thread has been assumed not merely by all the Brahmans, even the most debased, and those least justified in priding themselves on imaginary purity of race, not only by the merchant classes who claim to be the descendants of the Vaiśyas of tradition, but, lower still, by the Kāyasths of Bengal.¹ It has even been usurped by very low classes like the Sūds of the Panjab,² whom this pretension does not preclude either from eating meat, drinking spirits, or authorizing the marriage of widows. In general, this extreme laxity is incompatible with the wearing of the thread.³ But here again we must be prepared for every possible irregularity. In the Panjab, for example, I note that one division of the rather low caste of the Kanets wears the thread, while the other does not. Wherever the usage has spread it is strictly maintained, as constituting one of the outstanding privileges and most jealously guarded rules.

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¹ *Calcutta Review*, October 1880, p. 279.

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² Ibbetson, § 537.

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³ H. Mayne, op. laud., pp. 84, 85.

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It is the whole of these rules, often so trivial, which defines the character of each caste. Each, indeed, has a sense of cohesion to which it owes its continuance and its strength. It is sometimes personified in a special cult of some divine or legendary patron:¹ Chitragupta, the infernal recorder, for the scribes; Lāl Guru or Lāl Beg for the sweepers² and the blacksmiths³; Rāja Kiḍar for certain fishermen, etc. In default of such special protectors, certain divinities, although belonging to the common Pantheon, are preferred in the worship of this or that class. The traces of true ancestor-worship appear to be rare. Observers have rightly drawn attention to them,⁴ but have wrongly leapt to positive conclusions on the subject. For in those cases where our information is at all circumstantial we find that almost all the castes have memories or legends⁵ concerning their origin and migrations, which imply that each possesses a sense of its genealogical cohesion as definite as would be revealed by the invention of some common eponym. This eponym itself is not always lacking.⁶

Linked texts (1)

Vyavahāramayūkha — Nīlakaṇṭhabhaṭṭa 1610, Sanskrit