The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1

by R. V. Russell

91. Development of the occupational caste from the tribe.

The Roman population, as already seen, consisted of a set of clans or gentes. The clans were collected in tribal groups such as the curia, but it does not appear that these latter were endogamous. The rite which constituted a Roman citizen was participation in the Suovetaurilia, the communal sacrifice of the domestic animals, the pig, the ram, and the bull. Since all the Roman citizens at first lived in a comparatively small area, they were all able to be present at the sacrifice. The other states of Greece and Italy had an analogous constitution, as stated by M. Fustel de Coulanges. It may be supposed that the Aryans were similarly divided into clans and tribes. The word visha, the substantive root of Vaishya, originally meant a clan.[233] But as pointed out by M. Senart, they did not form city-states in India, but settled in villages over a large area of country. Their method of government was by small states under kings, and probably they had a kind of national constitution, of which the king was the centre and embodiment. But these states gradually lost their individuality, and were merged in large empires, where the king could no longer be the centre of the state or of the common life of his people, nor perform a sacrifice at which they could all be present, as the Roman kings did. This religious idea of nationality, based on participation in a common sacrifice, was the only one which existed in early times. Thus apparently the Aryans retained their tribal constitution instead of expanding it into a national one, and the members of clans within a certain local area gathered for a communal sacrifice. But there was a great class, that of the Sūdras or indigenous inhabitants, who could not join in the sacrifices at all. And between the Sūdras and the Vaishyas or main body of the Aryans there gradually grew up another mixed class, which also could not properly participate in them. The priests and rulers, Brāhmans and Kshatriyas, tended to form exclusive bodies, and in this manner a classification by occupation gradually grew up, the distinction being marked by participation in separate sacrificial feasts. The cause which ultimately broke down the religious distinctions of the Roman and Greek states was the development of a feeling of nationality. In the common struggle for the preservation of the city the prejudices of the patricians weakened, and after a long internal conflict, the plebeians were admitted to full rights of citizenship. The plebeians were employed as infantry in the Roman armies, while the patricians rode, and the increased importance of infantry in war was one great cause of the improvement in the position of the plebeians.[234] In India, in the absence of any national feeling, and with the growth of a large and powerful priestly order, religious barriers and prejudices became accentuated rather than weakened. The class distinctions grew more rigid, and gradually, as the original racial line of cleavage was fused by intermarriage and the production of groups of varying status, these came to arrange themselves on a basis of occupation. This is the inevitable and necessary rule in all societies whose activities and mode of life are at all complicated. Racial distinctions cannot be preserved unless in the most exceptional cases, where they are accentuated by the difference of colour, and such a moral and social gulf as that which exists between the whites and negroes in North America. In primitive society there is no such mental cleavage to render the idea of fusion abhorrent to the superior race; the bar is religious, and while it places the inferior race in a despised and abject position, there is no prohibition of illicit unions nor any such moral feeling or principle as would tend to restrict them. The ideas of the responsibilities and duties of parentage in connection with heredity, or the science of eugenics, are entirely modern, and have no place at all in ancient society. As racial and religious distinctions fade away, and social progress takes place, a fresh set of divisions by wealth and occupation grows up. But though this happened also in the Greek and Italian cities, the old religious divisions were not transferred to the new occupational groups, but fell slowly into abeyance, and the latter assumed the simply social character which they have in modern communities. The main reason for the obliteration of religious barriers, as already stated, was the growth of the idea of nationality and the public interest. But in India the feeling of nationality never arose. The Hindu states and empires had no national basis, since at the period in question the only way in which the idea of nationality could be conceived, was by participation of the citizens in a common sacrifice, and this participation is only possible to persons living in a small local area. Hence Hindu society developed on its own lines independently of the form of government to which it was subject, and in the new grouping by occupation the old communal sacrifices were preserved and adapted to the fresh divisions. The result was the growth of the system of occupational castes which still exists. But since the basis of society was the participation of each social group in a communal meal, the group could not be extended to take in persons of the same occupation over a large area, and as a result the widely ramified system of subcastes came into existence. The subcaste or commensal group was the direct evolutionary product of the pre-existing tribe. Its size was limited by the fact that its members had to meet at the periodical sacrificial feasts, by which their unity and the tie which bound them together was cemented and renewed. As already seen, when members of a subcaste migrated to a fresh local area, and were cut off from communication with those remaining behind, they tended as a rule to form a fresh endogamous and commensal group. Since the tie between the members of the subcaste was participation in a sacrificial meal of grain cooked with water, and as this food was held to be sacred, the members of the subcaste came to refuse to eat it except with those who could join in the communal feast; and as the idea gradually gained acceptance, that a legitimate child must be the offspring of a father and mother both belonging to the commensal group, the practice of endogamy within the subcaste became a rule.