Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s5.3

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.