Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s6.30

c8.s6.30

Everything goes to show, however, that intercourse and intermarriage with the aborigines was not without influence in the establishing of the caste, an influence which, if indirect, was powerful. The clash of the Āryans with populations which were despised on account of their colour and their state of barbarity could not but exalt their pride of race, strengthening their native scruples with regard to degrading contacts, and redoubling the rigour of endogamous rules; in a word, it encouraged all the practices and prejudices which paved the way for the caste. By this I mean that hierarchical exclusivism which crowns the system, and which, properly speaking, transfers it from the domain of the family to the social and semi-political domain.