Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s5: IV. Caste and the Āryan Constitution of the Family

Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s5

Language
English

IV. Caste and the Āryan Constitution of the Family

c8.s5.1

THE caste is the framework of the whole Brahmanic organization. In order to become Brahmans, the aboriginal peoples form themselves into castes and accept the strict caste-rules; this phenomenon goes back to very early times. Now Brahmanism may have adopted foreign elements, and it may, in the course of history, have been subject to external influences; but, generally speaking, it remains in India the representative of Āryan tradition. Without in any way excluding the possibility of subsidiary influences, we are justified in first seeking Āryan sources for an institution which appears to us so intimately bound up with Brahmanic doctrine and life.

c8.s5.2

The history of the old Āryan societies rests on the evolution, which varies according to locality, of the ancient family-constitution, so far as we can divine its character by a comparison of the traits scattered throughout the various branches of the race.

c8.s5.3

By the idea of relationship which permeates caste; by the jurisdiction which somewhat tyrannically regulates private life, marriage, food, ceremonial usages; by the habitual practice of certain special cults, and by its corporate organization, the caste-system does in fact recall the family-group such as we observe it in its various degrees in the family, in the *gens*, and in the tribe. Its original features are no less clearly defined. There is scarcely a single feature, however, which, if examined closely, will not reveal germs of this past, although the common elements may not elsewhere have developed either on the same lines or with the same degree of diffusion. Fundamentally it is the same phenomenon of which India gives us so many other examples. In almost all matters which provoke comparison with cognate branches of the Āryan stock, we meet with the most exact resemblances hand in hand with profound differences. The relationship penetrates even to those elements which have evidently been shaped here in a new mould.

c8.s5.4

Amongst the rules which govern marriage in the caste, the exogamous laws which prohibit any union between people belonging to the same section, *gotras*, or clans, are remarkably strict. In all primitive societies they have exercised a wide dominion, which soon decreased wherever a more advanced political constitution flourished. In principle these rules were certainly familiar to the Āryan race as well as to others. According to Plutarch’s evidence,¹ the Romans of the early period never married women of their own blood, and indeed among the matrons known to us we do not find one bearing the same family (gentilitial) name as her husband. The *gotra* is peculiar to the Brahmans, but its role is certainly an ancient one. The exogamous rule undoubtedly goes back to the most remote past of the immigrants. It is so definitely primitive under this form of the *gotra* that it is antecedent to the caste, the limits of which it exceeds; for the same *gotras* are found in a multitude of different castes. The caste-system has therefore been superadded to it, and the two institutions, incompletely merged, are not inherently bound together. This is precisely what happened at Athens when the establishment of the ‘demes’ assigned to different districts families belonging to a single *gens* (γένος).

c8.s5.5

¹ Cf. Kovalevsky, *Famille et Propriété primitives*, pp. 19 et seq.

c8.s5.6

It is the endogamous law which strikes us most, the law which only authorizes marriage between betrothed of the same caste. It is scarcely less widespread than the exogamous law in the primitive phases of human societies; it has not only left very obvious traces among the Āryan peoples, but is there bound up with a whole world of fact and sentiment which bespeaks its origin. In Athens, at the time of Demosthenes, it was necessary, in order to become a member of a phratry, to be the offspring of a legitimate marriage in one of the families composing it. In Greece, Rome, and Germany the laws or customs only granted the sanction of legal marriage to a union contracted with a woman of equal rank, i.e. a free citizeness.¹

c8.s5.7

¹ Cf. Hearn, op. laud., pp. 156-7.

c8.s5.8

Every one remembers the struggle that the Roman plebeians had to wage for centuries in order to win the *jus connubii*, or the right to marry patrician women. It is generally regarded as a political conflict between rival classes, but it hides something quite different. It was more in the cause of a sacred right than of any pride of nobility that the pure-bred patrician ‘gentes’, who faithfully upheld their ancient religion, rejected alliance with impure plebeians who were mixed in origin and destitute of family-rites. The patricians obeyed the same scruple which is inspired today in a new setting by the endogamous law of the caste. Under the caste-system, however, it becomes increasingly severe and restricted in India. The struggle of the classes in Rome, under a political system, lowered the barriers and soon widened the circle so as to admit indiscriminately the whole category of citizens. Up to this point, and even in such opposed conditions, the analogy may be pursued to a surprising length. The *connubium* went beyond the city; it was granted successively to several friendly peoples. Is this not, *mutatis mutandis*, the counterpart of what happens in India when caste-sections accept or refuse marriage with other sections, and when the limits vary according to place and circumstance with a facility which seems completely to break down the strictness of the general precepts? The drawing of this parallel is somewhat belated, but it seems to suggest a common source for two streams whose course is otherwise widely divergent—the Hindu caste and the Roman city.

c8.s5.9

Even in theory a man of higher caste may marry women of lower caste. It was the same in Rome and Athens; the duty of marrying a woman of equal rank did not exclude unions with women of inferior stock—foreigners or freedwomen. The case of the Śūdra woman is precisely the same in the Hindu family. She is excluded in theory, though not in practice, but she cannot give birth to children who are the equals of their father, since there rises between husband and wife the eternal barrier of religious inequality.

c8.s5.10

According to Manu,¹ the gods will not eat an offering prepared by a Śūdra woman. In Rome the presence of a foreigner at the sacrifice of the *gens* was sufficient to offend the gods.² The Śūdra woman is a foreigner; she does not belong to the race which by the investiture of the sacred thread is born into the fullness of the religious life. Even if it is lawful for the high castes to marry a Śūdra woman, in addition to the legitimate wife possessed of full rights, yet the union must be celebrated without the customary prayers.¹ In the Āryan conception of marriage, husband and wife form the sacrificing couple attached to the family altar of the hearth. This common conception forms the basis of the endogamy of the Hindu caste and the limitations imposed on the family in classical antiquity.

c8.s5.11

¹ III, 18.

c8.s5.12

² Fustel de Coulanges, *La Cité Antique*, p. 117.

c8.s5.13

¹ *Indische Studien*, X, p. 21.

c8.s5.14

It is forbidden to eat with people of another caste and to consume food prepared by those of a lower order. This is one of the anomalies which puzzle but do not baffle us. We must remember the religious role which from time immemorial the Āryans have assigned to the repast.² Prepared on the sacred hearth, it is the external symbol of the family-community, of its continuity in the past and in the present; and this aspect gives rise to the libations and, in India, to the daily offerings to ancestors. Even where, owing to the decay inevitable in all institutions, the primitive significance may have weakened, it remains very much alive in the funeral feast (the *perideipnon* of the Greeks, the *silicernium* of the Romans) which on the occasion of the death of relations manifests the indissoluble unity of the line.¹

c8.s5.15

² Hearn, p. 32; Fustel de Coulanges, p. 182.

c8.s5.16

¹ Leist, *Altarisches Jus Civile*, pp. 201 et seq.

c8.s5.17

There are abundant proofs that the repast has kept a religious meaning for the Hindus. The Brahman avoids eating at the same time or out of the same vessel not only with a stranger or an inferior, but even with his own wife and his yet uninitiated sons.² This is so definitely a matter of religious scruple that it is forbidden to share the food even of a Brahman, if, for some cause or another, although accidental and involuntary, he is suffering from a defilement.³ Even a Śūdra cannot without contamination eat the meal of a defiled *dvija*.

c8.s5.18

² *Mānava Dh. Ś.*, IV, 43; *Apast. Dh. S.*, II, 4, 9, 7, and the note by Bühler.

c8.s5.19

³ *Viṣṇu Smṛiti*, XXII, 8–10.

c8.s5.20

Impurity is contagious, and therefore excludes its victim from the religious function of the repast, and for this reason it is that by sitting down to a common banquet with his caste-companions an offender who has been temporarily excluded consecrates his rehabilitation. In virtue of the same principle, the spouses in the solemn marriage of the Romans shared a cake before the sacred fire, which was an essential ceremony marking the adoption of the wife into the family-religion of her husband. This should not be regarded as a singular or unrelated fact; it has actually been said that in the worship which united the curia or the phratry the most significant religious act was the taking of the meal.¹ The Roman feasts of the Charistia, which gathered kinsmen together, excluded not merely all strangers but any relation whose conduct appeared to render him unworthy.² The Persians had retained similar usages.³ The daily repasts of the prytanes had remained among the Greeks one of the official rites of the city religion, where, moreover, the composition of the meal was not a matter of indifference, the nature of the dishes and the kind of wine to be served being defined by rules which varied with the locality. In excluding various foods, India may have generalized the application of the principle, but she did not invent it, for this too has in the common past its analogies and its germ.

c8.s5.21

¹ Fustel de Coulanges, p. 135.

c8.s5.22

² Leist, *Altarisches Jus Civile*, pp. 49-50, 263-4.

c8.s5.23

³ Ibid., pp. 49-50, 263-4.

c8.s5.24

It is a remarkable thing that the Hindus, who have in other respects preserved more faithfully than any one else the significance of the common meal, and have to all appearance extended it, should, more than other peoples, have departed from the primitive type in the liturgical form of the funeral feast, Śrāddha. The banquet, according to theory, instead of bringing the relations together, is offered to Brahmans. But they are regarded as representatives of the ancestors and receive food in their name. Further, the Brahman who offers the sacrifice must, symbolically at least, join in the feast with the people, as was the practice among their ancestors. In spite of new conceptions which may have been introduced into it by the more highly developed ritual, this is certainly the ideal prolongation of the family-repast.

c8.s5.25

The invited Brahmans must be chosen with a care which recalls the law of purity imposed on primitive guests. If Brahmans are substituted for relations, the novelty is sufficiently explained by the encroachment of sacerdotal power.¹ Commentators similarly assert that even the acquittal of a murder case, shall be turned to the profit of the Brahmans.² In the Āryan past, however, it was undoubtedly paid to the family of the deceased. The insistence shown by the law-books on reserving the śrāddhas for the Brahmans³ betrays the tendency which they follow. But there is always a place reserved for the relations.⁴ What clearly emerges from these very restrictions is that in current practice the śrāddhas were the occasion of actual common meals. The Hindus hold various kinds which are in no way connected with funerals.⁵

c8.s5.26

¹ Leist, *Altarisches Jus Gentium*, p. 205.

c8.s5.27

² Hopkins, *Journ. Amer. Orient. Soc.*, XIII, p. 113.

c8.s5.28

³ *Mānava Dh. Ś.*, III, 139 et seq.

c8.s5.29

⁴ Ibid., III, 148.

c8.s5.30

⁵ Ibid., III, 254.

c8.s5.31

Some purificatory *śrāddhas* (*goṣṭhī-śrāddha*) seem to be the ritualistic reflection of feasts celebrating the readmission of an offending member. In incorporating them in the series it was remembered that they were intimately related by their significance to the ancient family-repast.

c8.s5.32

Its consecration is derived from the sanctity of the domestic fire. In Roman antiquity expulsion from the religious and civil community was expressed by ‘deprivation of fire’, but also, at the same time, by ‘deprivation of water’. It seems likewise in India¹ that contact with a strange fire and polluted water renders particularly impure the food offered or prepared by an unworthy hand. I have said that some of the higher castes accept parched grain from certain lower castes, but on condition that it contains no admixture of water;² and that some Hindus, who would take pure milk from certain Muslims, would reject it with indignation if they thought that water had been added. In the rites which accompany expulsion from the caste the offender’s jar is filled with water and a slave upsets it, uttering the formula: ‘I deprive so-and-so of water.’³ We see that these ideas have remote connexions and curious analogies in Āryan life, and at the same time explain why certain texts dating back to the early period of sacerdotal literature place on an equal footing admission to community of water and to the *connubium*.¹

c8.s5.33

¹ Nesfield, §§ 189-90.

c8.s5.34

² Ibid., § 82.

c8.s5.35

³ Gautama *Dh S.*, XX, 2 et seq.

c8.s5.36

¹ *Indische Studien*, X, pp. 77-8.

c8.s5.37

The meaning of the common meal and its correlated prohibitions is so strongly marked in the life of the people that it strikes the contemporary observer who is free from all archaeological bias. ‘Community of food,’ says Ibbetson, ‘is formally used as an outward and visible token of community of blood.’² Kinsmen gather around the same table.

c8.s5.38

² Ibbetson, p. 185.

c8.s5.39

It is the same principle conversely applied which forbids participation in the same meal, and in a more general way all contact between people who have no share in the same family rites. This tradition has left traces elsewhere than in India. The *jus osculi*, contact by embrace, is a sign of kinship.³ Here too, then, the germ is ancient. Even the impurity of a corpse is no doubt partly explained by the consideration that the deceased is necessarily excluded from the rites by death. It places him therefore outside the family; his contact and presence defile the relatives in the same way as would an outcast.⁴ We must not forget that exclusion from caste is by the very nature of the ceremonial likened to death; in both cases a funeral is celebrated. The impurity from which the relatives suffer during the days of mourning is a conception common to all Āryan antiquity. Impurity is transmitted by near approach; and from the man it extends to the woman and to the servant. All contact which pollutes must therefore be carefully avoided, as well as all intercourse with people who, if they do not fall under the misfortune of accidental defilement, are impure from the fact that they do not belong to the community of the same fire and water. The development of this law in the caste is perfectly logical.

c8.s5.40

³ Cf. Leist, *Altarisches Jus Civile*, pp. 49-50, 261.

c8.s5.41

⁴ Leist, *Græco-Ital. Rechtsgesch.*, pp. 34 et seq.

c8.s5.42

The very tribunal of the caste, with its limited jurisdiction, does not lack in antecedents. The family of antiquity had a council, which in Rome, Greece, and Germany surrounded and assisted the father on grave occasions, notably when an offending son was to be tried.¹ Exclusion from the family is the counterpart of exclusion from the caste. In both cases it is equivalent to an excommunication, which in its most redoubtable form is expressed in Latin by the qualification *sacer*.² Among the Romans it created a religious and civil situation very much like that of the outcast, the Hindu *patita*. The Latin *gens* possessed a chief who tried litigious cases among his own people. In the same way as the caste, the *gentes* took decisions which were respected by the city,¹ and like the castes they obeyed particular usages which were incumbent on their members.²

c8.s5.43

¹ Leist, *Altarisches Jus Civile*, pp. 273 et seq.; Kovalevsky, *Famille et Propriété primitives*, pp. 119 et seq.

c8.s5.44

² Leist, *Græco-Ital. Rechtsgesch.*, p. 319, al.

c8.s5.45

¹ Fustel de Coulanges, *La Cité Antique*, pp. 118-19.

c8.s5.46

² Max Müller cited by Hearn, op. laud., p. 121; *Indische Studien*, X, pp. 88 et seq.

c8.s5.47

On the other hand, certain Vedic families are distinguished by given ceremonies and by a predilection for certain divinities,³ in which there seems to survive the religious peculiarity that reserves to the classic family—to the *gens*—special cults and exclusive rites.

c8.s5.48

³ Becker-Marquardt, *Röm. Alterth.*, II, p. 49.

c8.s5.49

Although in several cases the worship of a common ancestor or of a recognized patron in India recalls the Graeco-Roman worship of eponymous heroes, it cannot be said that this is a prominent feature of the caste. Religious individualism here, thanks to the more liberal course of speculation, has made an advance, which has elsewhere been impeded by the advent of a political constitution definitely opposed to all religious innovation. Religion in India has been free to localize itself, to split up *ad infinitum*, and on occasion to mobilize with a liberty unknown in classical societies. It is chiefly in practice, and in usages directly inspired by very ancient conceptions, that the continuity of tradition manifests itself in the heart of the caste.

Linked texts (4)