Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s3.41

c8.s3.41

A Hindu judge, endowed with a lively sense of the situation with which he is in familiar contact (Guru Proshad Sen ³), desiring to summarize the permanent traits of the caste, has left occupation completely out of account. The essence of the caste must surely be found in those rules which, strictly observed, assure its perpetuity, and, when even slightly violated, entail degradation for the individual and dissolution for the community. Between these rules and occupations there is no connexion, or only an indirect one operating through the medium of scruples of purity. The soul of the caste is elsewhere.