Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s5.32

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