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180 INDIA AS DESCRIBED IN DARLY TEXTS
'no hard and fast line to be drawn betweentöne and the other, for the producer or the manufacturer might himself appear to be a seller, shop or storekeeper. Those who followed a common profession, were led by a gregarious instinct to settle down or live in one and the same locality, from which circumstance the localities came to be distinguished as vaạạbakigāma, kammāra-gāma, kumbhakāra-găma, and the like. By their habitual adherence to the rules of marriage and eating within their own class or group, the guilds were being hardened into castes. The social process was further complicated by the general tendency to segregate one class of workers from another within the same profession, the oil-pressers, for instance, being distinguished from the owners of oilmanstores, the elephant-trainers from the elephantdrivers, the coach-builders from the coachdrivers. Among the barbers, washermen, shampooors, eto., the degrees of their family prestige depended on their working for the royal household or for that of the courtiers, noblemen, senāpatis, purohitas, and the like. The gradation proceeded almost by insensible degrees. Although, as a rule, the Vessas, Suddas, and outcastes did not or could not aspire to marry from the Khattiya and Brāhmaṇa families, it was not always possible to prevent - the intermingling of the various classes.
