Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s5.14

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