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MAY, 1912.]
THE CASTES IN INDIA
113
The Brahmins that are invited, must be selected with a care which reminds us of the law of purity imposed on the primitive guests. If Brahmins are substituted for relations, the novelty is sufficiently explained by the encroachment of sacerdotal power.37 Do not the commentators prescribe in the same way that the fine for a murder must be paid to the Brahmins 739 Yet it had been paid, in the Aryan past, most certainly to the family of the murdered person. The way in which the law-books insist upon reserving the Srádlhas to the Brahmins betrays the tendency which they obey.39 One place always remains eventually reserved to relations.10 It is visible, it springs from the very restrictions that in the current practice, the Sraddhas were the occasion of true common repasts. The Hindus distinguish various kinds, which are in no way connected with funerals.1 Such a purificatory Sraddha' (goshthi Srád tha) really appears to be the ritualistic reflection of that caste repast which celebrates the rehabilitation of a culpable member. In incorporating it in the series, they remembered that a close relationship connected its meaning with the ancient family repast.
It derives its sacredness from the sanctity of the domestic fire. In Roman antiquity the exclusion from the religious and civil community is expressed by the interdiction of fire,' but also and at the same time by the interdiction of water.'42 It seenis, likewise, that in India, the association of an extraneous fire and of polluted water renders the food, offered, or prepared by an unworthy hand, particularly impare. I bave related that higber castes accept grain roasted by certain lower castes, but on condition that it contains no admixture of water 43 ; that the Hindus who accepted pare milk from certain Mussulmans, would reject it with indignation, if they thought that water was added to it. In the rites which accompany the exclusion from caste they fill the vessel of the culprit with water, and a slave upsets it, with the formula: "I deprive sucb a one of water."'44 We see that these notions have, in Aryan life, 'distant connections and curious analogies. They explain, moreover, how certain texts which belong to the ancient period of racerdotal literature, place in the same rank the admission to the communion of water and to marriage.15
The sense of the common repast and of the correlative prohibitions is so forcibly marked in the manners, that it is surprising to the contemporaneous observer who is free of every archæological bias. "The communion of food," says Mr. Ibbetson, " is used as the exterior sign, the solem manifestation of the communion of blood."46 The relations assemble round the same table.
The same principle, applied inversely, prohibits sharing of the same repast; and, more generally, every contact with people who have no share in the same family rites. This tradition has left traces not only in India, but also elsewhere. The jus osculi, the contact by embrace, proves kinship." The germ, therefore, is ancient also in this point. The impurity even of the corpse, is, no doubt, explained in part by this consideration that death forcibly excludes the departed from the rites. It therefore places bim outside the family ; his contact, bis presence defiles the relations in the manner of an outcaste. Let us remember that exclusion from caste is, by the ceremonial itself, likened upto death; for both the cases funerals are celebrated. The impurity which stains relatives on the days of mourning is a conception common to the whole Aryan antiguity. Imparity is transmitted by contact. From the man it spreads to the woman and to the servant. It is therefore necessary to avoid carefully every staining touch, every contact with people, who, if they do not fall under the influence of an accidental defilement, are impure by the fact, tbat they do not belong to the communion of the same fire and the same water. The development of this law in the caste is perfectly logical.
s Hopkins, Jour. Amer. Orient. Soc., xiii, p. 113. 37 Leist, Altar. Jus Gentium, p. 205.
** Manava DA. S. op. cit., loc. cit. iii., 148. 19 Manava Dh. S., iii. 139 88.
- Nesfield, 189, 190. 11 Mänava Dh. S, op. cit., loc cit. iii., 254, * Negfield, 82.
# Gautama Dh. 8. xx. 2 s. *5 Indische Stud. x. pp. 77, 78.
16 Ibbetson, p. 185. * Of. Leist, Altar. Jus. Civ. pp. 49-50, 261.
Leist Graeco-ital. Rechtsgesch. p. 34 ss.
