Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s5.42

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