Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s5.8

c8.s5.8

Every one remembers the struggle that the Roman plebeians had to wage for centuries in order to win the *jus connubii*, or the right to marry patrician women. It is generally regarded as a political conflict between rival classes, but it hides something quite different. It was more in the cause of a sacred right than of any pride of nobility that the pure-bred patrician ‘gentes’, who faithfully upheld their ancient religion, rejected alliance with impure plebeians who were mixed in origin and destitute of family-rites. The patricians obeyed the same scruple which is inspired today in a new setting by the endogamous law of the caste. Under the caste-system, however, it becomes increasingly severe and restricted in India. The struggle of the classes in Rome, under a political system, lowered the barriers and soon widened the circle so as to admit indiscriminately the whole category of citizens. Up to this point, and even in such opposed conditions, the analogy may be pursued to a surprising length. The *connubium* went beyond the city; it was granted successively to several friendly peoples. Is this not, *mutatis mutandis*, the counterpart of what happens in India when caste-sections accept or refuse marriage with other sections, and when the limits vary according to place and circumstance with a facility which seems completely to break down the strictness of the general precepts? The drawing of this parallel is somewhat belated, but it seems to suggest a common source for two streams whose course is otherwise widely divergent—the Hindu caste and the Roman city.