Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s7.4

c6.s7.4

This organization, be it understood, is regulated by custom alone; it is, therefore, subject to all the uncertainties and incoherences of those institutions which time, circumstances, even casual caprice may modify, without being held in check by any strictly legal restraints. Its essential elements seldom vary; they are those which governed the organization of that wider family, the clan. In India they are to be met with not only in the caste, they are found also in the constitution of the village with or without common property. Even such distant observers as ourselves can see that its machinery, side by side with that of the caste, gives rise to considerable confusion.