Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s3.12

c8.s3.12

Still less can I fathom how Nesfield, holding this point of view, comes to reserve to the Brahmans so decisive a part in this genesis. Indeed, he affirms that ‘the Brahman was the first-born of castes, the model upon which all the other castes were subsequently formed, extending gradually from king or warrior to the tribes practising hunting and fishing, whose rank is no higher than that of the savage’. It is from the Brahmans, thanks to the contagion of example and the necessity for self-defence, that the exclusivism of all the castes emanated.¹ The Brahman is the founder of the system. He it is ² who has invented for his own benefit the rule which alone rendered their constitution complete, the rule prohibiting marriage with a woman of another caste; a curious contradiction of later passages where he derives the regulation of marriage from the traditional usages of the tribe.