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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[NOVEMBER, 1920
emphasizing, in opposition to the dragging in of the incalculable diversity of present day Indian life into investigations about antiquity-the claims of this antiquity itself, so that it may not be deprived of its character of old-world simplicity.
In this sense I would like to make a few observations on a work which, in spite of differences of opinion in which I feel myself opposed to the author, appears to be one of the most prominent works of the new Indian research-Senart's book, Les Castes dans I'Inde, les faits et le système (Paris 1896). I enjoy a substantial advantage over Senart, inasmuch as I am now in a position to avail myself of the excellent compilations and researches which R. Fick has embodied in his book, The Social Condition in North-Eastern India in Buddha's Time (Kiel 1897). I can by no means suppress the observation that the sources upon which Fick has drawn, were already accessible before, and that in my opinion, they must, without fail, have been approached for the solution of the questions that Senart has to deal with.
Senart proceeds to describe the modern castes: it is impossible to do this with greater mastery than his. With the picture that he has thus made up, he next approaches the ancient tradition, in order to investigate it thoroughly with regard to the more or less clear traces therein of the same state of things.
We endeavour to reproduce here the substance of his exposition of the subject.3
The modern caste--if its typical form is kept in sight and the exceptions-numberless. as may easily be conceived, they are-be left out of consideration-represents a corporation, to which the members belong hereditarily, by virtue of their birth. This corporation has its organisation with a chief and a council at the head. It exercises, partly through this organ, partly direct, a certain control over the affairs of its members, a certain jurisdiction; it inflicts penalties and expulsion. They marry-especially so far as it concerns the first marriage which is associated with special sanctity in the regulations about polygamy-inside the caste, because only a mother of the same caste can bear children who inherit the caste of the father. On the other hand they marry outside a certain narrower section of the caste, outside the family or the clan. They avoid community of meals with persons of lower caste, and also other forms of contact, of course under closer restrictions of the most varied kind. Many kinds of special customs, especially in relation to food and married life, serve to characterise the caste and to fix its superior or inferior position in the social order: certain restrictions about food, the abstention from spirituous liquors, the marriage of girls in childhood, the prohibition of widow-marriage, and so forth. Similarity of occupation and profession amongst the members of a caste is the rule, but this is broken by innumerable exceptions, and also inversely, the followers of the same profession do not in any way belong to one caste but to more or less numerous and distinct castes: thus the Baniyas or traders in the Punjab are split up into sections with geographical names such as the Aggarwals, the Oswals etc., and these sections, characterised by endogamy, must be taken as even so many separate castes. Such castes, larger and smaller, occupy the stage in an immense crowd, in an inextricable tangle. Constantly new castes spring up into existence; now the introduction of a new custom, of a new rule of purity, calls a new caste into being, and now again, religious or even geographical separation has the same
3 Cf. Jolly, ZDMG, 50, 507ff.; Barth, Bulletin des religions de l'Inde (Revue de l'hist, des Religions XXX), p. 76 ff. of the separate reprint.
3 An apology is necessary that this fresh summary makes its appearance here, after Jolly has already given an excellent résumé of Senart's book elsewhere in this Journal. Yet it is indispensable for me to give in my own way the necessary foundation for the criticism which follows.
