Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s6.5

c8.s6.5

The terms here correspond very adequately: *gens*, *curia*, tribe in Rome; family, *phratria*, *phylē* in Greece; family, *gotra*, caste in India. The general harmony is striking and all the more instructive since in the beginning, to judge by all the analogies, the most essential difference between the clan and the tribe, as between the section and the caste, is summed up in the fact that the more restricted group is exogamous while the larger is endogamous. Even at the somewhat late epoch when the classical countries are well known to us, political organization has merely undermined or displaced certain customs; it has, for example, substituted as regards the rule of endogamy the whole city for the mere tribe. If there is anything to cause surprise, it is the fact that the guiding principles have on both sides so obviously survived the separation, which even then was already ancient, of the ethnical branches wherein we trace their destiny.