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JAY, 1912.]
THE CASTES IN INDIA
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of castes. The endogamous laws are the foundation of the regime. In the presence of a despised population the Aryans would have erected this rampart, in order to protect the purity of a blood of which they were proud. The caste is for Mr. Nesfield an affair of profession, for Mr. Risley an affair of marriage. Analogy, imitation of this primitive grouping, spreading from place to place with the authority lent to it by the sanction of the leading classes, would have multiplied to no end the ramifications, derived alternately and in accord with the cases, from diverse causes, or occasions : & community of language, neighbourhood, identity of profession, beliefs or social relations.
If by a round-about way, he finally falls back pretty closely to the orthodox system of the Bra! mins 21 the predominance step by step acquired by the priesthood would be the principal source of the whole evolntion.23 Although vitiated by simplification carried to the extreme, the theory of the mixed castes remains for him2 & precious testimony of that incessant crossing of populations, the raixing of which in varying degrees is the capital cause which to his mind bas multiplied the splitting into minor sections.
If strictly speaking, the endogamous rule of the caste belongs properly to India, the exogamous rules, the parallel action of which we have stated, are much more general. In unequal degrees and under varying forms, exogamy is an universal law. Under shifting names the exogamous groups appear on the summit and at the basis of Hindu society; eponymic gotras with the Brahmins, clans united by the totem with the aboriginal populations, meet, take strength from, and sometimes melt into each other; the inferior classes are ever eager of assimilating their old organization to the Brahminical legislation, the adoption of which becomes for them a title of nobility.
At this point we find with Mr. Risley, as with Mr. Nesfield, a very keen sense of the action which the traditions and customs of autochthonous tribes have exercised on the final condition of the castes. But if they agree in deriving numbers of castes from the successive dismemberment of autochthonous tribes, the part which each of them assigus to the institutions of the tribe, or more exactly, of the aboriginal tribe, is singularly unequal ; Mr. Nesfield draws from them the original Bource of several of the laws which regulate the caste, the rule of endogamy for instance ; Mr. Risley seeks in them almost only curious analogies with the customs which the Aryan element on its side has brought with it, such as the exogamous restrictions; bat facts so universal fail to mean or prove anything.
Too timid theories which do not dare to emancipate themselves from Hindu tradition, remain powerless. We must be no less on our guard against theories which are too vague, tou comprehensise. If community of occupation were sufficient to found the regime of caste, it ought to be in force in many other countries besides India. The objection is obvious. It condemng no less the system which is satisfied, without historical concatenation, in a general way to characterize the laws of caste as a survival of the ancient organization of tribe or clan.
Shall we appeal to the common features of an organization which is so natural to the archaic periods of human sociability that is found with the most different races? We remain in the vaguewe prove nothing. If we think exclusively, or even principally of the organization of the aboriginal tribes of India, if we admit that it has reacted with so decisive a force upon the general condition of the Hindu world, that an ambitious class of priests would have seized upon it and made of it a weapon for fight, we upset the probable course of history and ascribe to factors which are too minute, a power out of proportion. Everything indicates that the determining action in the march of Indian civilisation belongs to the Aryan elements; the aboriginal elements have only exercised a modifying, partial and subordinate action.
11 Risley, op. c. p. xxiv, N.
Risløy, op. cit. See Art, 'Brahman.'
Bisloy, op. cit rili uvi-vii.
