Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s6.27

c6.s6.27

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*.