Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s6.41

c6.s6.41

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.