Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s4.11

c8.s4.11

On this point we recognize in Risley, as in Nesfield, a lively sense of the influence which the traditions and customs of the aboriginal tribes have exerted on the final condition of the castes. While, however, they agree to derive a number of castes from the successive dismemberment of small autonomous peoples, the part which each of them assigns to the institutions of the tribe, and more specifically of the aboriginal tribe, is singularly unequal: Nesfield sees in them the original source of several of the laws which govern caste—for example, the endogamous rule; Risley sees in them nothing more than curious analogies to the customs which the Āryan element has furnished, such as exogamous restrictions; but such universal facts cease to have any significance.