Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s5.6

c8.s5.6

It is the endogamous law which strikes us most, the law which only authorizes marriage between betrothed of the same caste. It is scarcely less widespread than the exogamous law in the primitive phases of human societies; it has not only left very obvious traces among the Āryan peoples, but is there bound up with a whole world of fact and sentiment which bespeaks its origin. In Athens, at the time of Demosthenes, it was necessary, in order to become a member of a phratry, to be the offspring of a legitimate marriage in one of the families composing it. In Greece, Rome, and Germany the laws or customs only granted the sanction of legal marriage to a union contracted with a woman of equal rank, i.e. a free citizeness.¹