Indian Antiquary Vol 41

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 114

110
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MAY, 1919
Does that mean that this connecting of caste with tribe is sterile ? I see in it, on the contrary, a new, a capital, idea provided that the facts are grappled with somewhat closely, and that the dazzling effect of commodious generalities does not make us lose sight of the necessary concatena. tion of historical realities. So I foel dispensed from entering into the detail of speculations which recent researches on the primitive legal organization have incidentally devoted to caste. Even those which have wisely confined theniselves to the Aryan domain, 24 being too summary, have Bcarcely entered into the quicksand of evolution. We shall make use of them occasionally. B we wanted before all to point out the danger of too abstract statements.
Caste exists only in India. Therefore we have to look for its key in the situation which is special to India. Without closing our eyes to other information we must seek light from the facta themselves, from the analysis of the characteristical elements of the regime, such as observation exhibits them in the present and helps to reconstitute in the past.
IV.-Caste and the Aryan Constitution of the Family. Caste is the frame of the whole Brahminical organization. It is in order to come within the pale of Brahminism that the aboriginal populations constitute themselves in caste and accept the strict regulations of caste, and the phenomenon goes back high into the past. Now, Brabminism may have taken up foreign elements, it may in the course of history have had to undergo exterior influences. It remains on the whole the representative in India of Arjun tradition. Without excluding in any way the eventuality of subsidiary actions, we are justified first to look out for Aryan sources of an institution wbich appears to us so closely blended with Brahminical doctrine and life.
The history of the old Aryan societies rests on the evolution, varying according to the places, of the ancient family constitution, such as its physiognomy may be guessed from the comparison of features scattered in the different branches of the race.
By the notion of kinship which penetrates it, by the jurisdiction which regulates rather tyrannically private life, marriage, food, ceremonial usages, by the customary practice of certain particular worships, by its corporative organization, caste, in fact, recalls to our mind the family group, such as may be dimly discerned in its various degrees in the family,--the gens and the tribe. Its original features are no less pronounced. There are, however, on closer inspection, hardly any of them of which we do not perceive the germ in the past, even if the common elements have not developed elsewhere in the same line, or spread equally far. At bottom this is the same phenomenon of which India gives us many other examples. In almost all the matters which call forth comparison with the kin branches of the Aryan stock we strike, at the same time, against minute coincidences and deep divergencies. Kinship is seen even in elements which, evidently have been cast here in a new mould.
Of the rules which control marriage in caste, the exogamic laws which exclude every union between people belonging to the same section, gotras or clans of different sorts are marked by their rigour. These rules have exercised a wide influence in all primitive societies. It quickly dwindled down in those gurroundings where a more advanced political constitution was flourishing. The principle was certainly familiar to the Aryan race as to others, According to the testimony of Plutarch, 25 the Romans in the ancient period never married women of their blood. Amongst the matrons who are known to us, it has been remarked that actually none bears the same gentile name as her husband. Gotra is properly Brahminical; the part which it plays, is certainly ancient. The exogamic rule is rooted, one cannot doubt it, in the remotest past of the immigrants. It is
I think, for instance of Mr. Hearn, The Aryan Household. * Op. Kovalevskay, Famille et Proprieté Primitiver, p. 19 sa.