Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c3.21

c3.21

And then I said they must all be from one jati, from a single caste group. They said, ‘No, no! We are not from one jati—we are from several jatis.’ I said, how could that be? They said that there was no jati on a yatra—not on a pilgrimage. I didn't know that. I was around 38 years old, and like many others in this country who know little about the ways of the ordinary Indian—the peasants, artisans and other village folks.