Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s6.28

c6.s6.28

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.