Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s8.30

c6.s8.30

Aboriginal populations, still far from civilized, gradually become Brahmanized. By slow degrees they enter the pale of Hinduism by a procedure which Lyall has skilfully disclosed.⁵ Risley,⁶ analysing in turn this evolution, distinguishes four types. A certain number of chiefs, having acquired some landed property and the importance which it entails, surround themselves with Brahmans who invent for them a genealogy and a legendary origin; or else groups of aborigines throw themselves into the arms of some Hindu sect and discard their primitive nomenclature. Again, a whole tribe will enrol themselves under the banner of Hinduism, creating thereby a new caste; or finally, the evolution comes about slowly and is made manifest by the change of name. In all these cases this development is marked and authorized by the adoption of Hindu festivals and religious usages, the practices of purification, and the laws which govern marriage, and, above all, by the respect lavished on the Brahmans, who are recognized as priests and religious leaders of the tribe. Examples abound on all sides: the Mīnas of Central India,¹ the Bāgrīs² of the North-West Provinces, the Khaṇḍs and Santiās of Orissa,³ and numberless others. The process is always the same.⁴ These facts explain why several Rajput clans bear the name of non-Āryan tribes; there can be no doubt that they belong to them by birth.⁵ It would be no more surprising to discover that many Rajputs of the Panjab were drawn from the debris of several clans or castes as their accession to landed property gradually conferred on them a growing social importance and coloured their ambition.⁶