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MAY, 1912.)
THE CASTES IN INDIA
107
The edifice is faulty in its very basis by the unmeasured importance which Mr. Ibbetson, on this point in accord with Mr. Nesfield, attributes to the professional community. If the caste bad
ally in this its primitive bond, it would have shown less tendency to break up and to dislocate itself; the agent which would have unified it at the beginning, would have maintained its colesion.
Experience, on the contrary, shows how the prejudices of caste kept at a distance people, whom, the same occupation carried on in the same places, should bring together. 13 Wo have seen what a
ariety of professions may separate members of the same caste, and this not only in the lower, but even in the best qualified classes. The giving up of the prevailing professions is by itself in no way
sufficient cause of exclusion. The occupations are graduated upon a ladder of respectability, but their degrees are fixed by notions of religious purity. All professions which do not entail poliation, or at least an increase of impurity, are open to every caste. Mr. Nesfield states himself that one can meet Brahmins who practise all professions, "except those which imply a ceremonial defilement and, consequently, loss of caste." If the most despised castes split themselves into new
sections which disdain the primitive stock, the reason is not, because these sections adopt a different . occupation, but it is simply, because they renounce such detail of their hereditary occupations, as, according to the prejudices in vogue, bring on deflement. Such is the case for certain groups of streepers 15
It is true that many castes pay some kind of worship to the instruments appertaining to their zyrofession. 16 The fisherman sacrifices a goat to his new boat; the shepherd bestears the tails and the horns of his animals with ochre; the labourer spreads an oblation, mixed with sugar, ghi and rice upon his plough at the spot where it turns the first clod; the artisan consecrates his tools; the warrior pays homage to his weapons; the writer to his pen and to bis inkstand. Curious as whey may be, what do such usages prove? Given to various occupations, people of the same caste may render this sort of respect to the most diverse symbols.
Many castes borrow their name from their principal occupation; but it is nothing more than a general denomination; its extension does not at all necessarily answer that of the caste. Bania werchant is, like Brahmin, or Kshatriya, a term in which one may only very improperly see a <aste-name. In the same province it will comprise many different sections, which, having the right neither of intermarrying, nor of eating together, form the real castes. The cultivating castes count by tens in the same district, and the Kayasthas, or writers of Bengal, in spite of a common professional nume, are in reality divided into as many castes, distinguished by geographical, or patronymie names, * there exist among them groups bound to particular usages and a special jurisdiction. It is the sme everywhere,
It may be that, in certain cases, a professional local title embraces a group altogether united into one single caste. This will be the exception. The bond of profession is frail in the extreme unity is dislocated by the action of the smallest trifle. The pivot of the caste is not there.
Sprung from the speciality of occupations, it would not be more than a guild, as the guilds of the middle ages, or those of the Roman world. Who could mix up these two institutions? The ope, being limited to artisans alone, enclosed in a regular system, confined in its action to the economical functions, the necessities, or interests of which have created it; the other, penetrating the whole social condition, regulating the duties of all, intruding itself and acting everywhere and at all levels, govo-aing private life even in its innermost machinery? That castes and ancient guilds have certain points in common, nothing could be more plain, both are corporations. Nobody denies that community of profession has contributed to unite or limit certain castes of labourers or artisans, One may certainly see sometimes individuals drawn within the orbit of a new
Ibbetson, 1588.
183.
16 Ibbotson, 154.
16 Noafold, 133 ; cf. also
Neafield, 161.
