Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s4.10

c8.s4.10

If in its strictness the endogamous rule of the caste belongs properly to India, the exogamous rules, which work on parallel lines, are much more general. In unequal degrees and varying forms exogamy is a universal law. Exogamous groups are met with under different names at the top and at the bottom of Hindu society : eponymous *gotras* among the Brahmans, clans united by the totem among the aboriginal peoples meet, strengthen one another, and sometimes merge together. The lower classes are always jealous to assimilate their old organization to that Brahmanic legislation, the adoption of which confers on them a title of nobility.