Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s5.4

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).