Indian Antiquary Vol 46

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

Page 96

84
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[May, 1917
groups. Caste in India means an artificial chopping off of the population into fixed and definite units, each one prevented from fusing into another through the custom of endogamy. Thus the conclusion is inevitable that endogamy is the only characteristic that is peculiar to Caste, and if we succeed in showing how endogamy is maintained, we shall practically have proved the genesis and also the mechanism of Caste.
It may not be quite easy for you to anticipate why I regard endogamy as a key to the mystery of the Caste system. Not to strain your imagination too much, I will proceed to give you my reasons for it.
It may not also be out of place to emphasize at this moment that no civilized society of to-day presents more survivals of primitive times than does the Indian society. Its religion is essentially primitive and its tribal code, in spite of the advance of time and civilization, operates in all its pristine vigour even to-day. One of these primitive survivals, to which I wish particularly to draw your attention, is the custom of exogamy. The prevalence of exogamy in the primitive world is a fact too well known to need any explanation. With the growth of history, however, exogamy has lost its efficacy and, excepting the nearest blood-king, there is usually no social bar restricting the field of marriage. But regarding the peoples of India the law of exogamy is a positive injunction even to-day. Indian society still savours of the clan system, even though there are no clans : and this can be easily seen from the law of matrimony which centres round the principle of exogamy, for it is not that sapindas (blood-kins) cannot marry, but a marriage even between sagotras (of the same class) is regarded as a sacrilege.
Nothing is therefore more important for you to remember than the fact that endogamy is foreign to the people of India. The various gotras of India are and have been exogamous : so are the other groups with totemic organization. It is no exaggeration to say that with thd people of India exogamy is a creed and none dare infringe it, so much so that, in spite of the endogamy of the Castes within them, exogamy is strictly observed and that there are more rigorous penalties for violating exogamy than there are for violating endogamy. You will, therefore, readily see that with exogamy as the rule there could be no Castes, for exogamy means fusion. But we have Castes; consequently in the final analysis creation of Castes, so far as India is concerned, means the super. position of endogamy on exogamy. However, in an originally exogamous population an easy working out of endogamy (which is equivalent to the creation of Caste) is a grave problem, and it is in the consideration of the means utilized for the preservation of endogamy against exogamy that we may hope to find the solution of our problem.
Thus the superposition of endogamy on exogamy means the creation of Caste. But this is not an easy affair. Let us take an imaginary group that desires to make itself into a Caste and analyse what means it will have to adopt to make itself endogamous. If a group desires to make itself endogamous a formal injunction against intermarriage with outside groups will be of no avail, especially if prior to the introduction of endogamy, exogamy had been the rule in all matrimonial relations. Again, there is a tendency in all groups lying in close contact with one another to assimilate and amalgamate, and thus consolidate into a homogenous society. If this tendency is to be strongly counteracted in the interest of Caste formation, it is absolutely necessary to circumscribe a circle outside which people should not contract marriages.
Nevertheless, this encircling to prevent marriages from without creates problems from within which are not very easy of solution. Roughly speaking, in a normal group the