Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s5.9

c8.s5.9

Even in theory a man of higher caste may marry women of lower caste. It was the same in Rome and Athens; the duty of marrying a woman of equal rank did not exclude unions with women of inferior stock—foreigners or freedwomen. The case of the Śūdra woman is precisely the same in the Hindu family. She is excluded in theory, though not in practice, but she cannot give birth to children who are the equals of their father, since there rises between husband and wife the eternal barrier of religious inequality.