Outside of this endogamic rule marriage is forbidden in all castes between relatives to the sixth degree on the paternal side and to the fourth degree on the maternal side. Caste has no religious character; men of different creeds may belong to it. It is ruled by a chief and a council (panchâyet), and has not limits as rigid as is commonly supposed; the way is smoothed by compromises and liberal interpretations of rules for rich and clever people to pass from a lower to a higher caste.
In this way or some other a man may rise from one caste to another: in Mirzapur many Ghonds and Korvars have become Rajputs, etc. (Crooke). Employment is by no means the criterion of caste, as is very often supposed. “Those who have seen Brahmans,” says Sénart, “girdled with the sacred cord, offer water to travellers in the railway stations of India, who have seen them drilling among the sepoys of the Anglo-Indian army, are prepared for surprises of this kind.”[452] And in conclusion the castes do not always agree with ethnic and somatic divisions.[453]
FIG. 126.—Group of Paniyan men and children of Malabar.
(Phot. Thurston.)
Side by side with caste another characteristic institution of the Cisgangetic Aryan or Aryanised peoples must be noted; it is the village (grama) with common proprietorship of the soil and family communities, on which I cannot dilate for want of space (see p. [247]).
FIG. 127.—Young Irula girl.
(Phot. Thurston.)
India was the cradle of two great religions which have become international, Brahmanism and Buddhism. This fact deserves to be borne in mind on account of the impress left on these two religions by the national Hindu character. The foundation of both is formed of those characteristically Hindu beliefs,—the ideas of metempsychosis, final deliverance, and the doctrine of the moral world, which form a contrast with the Semitic religions. Brahmanism is professed by about three-fourths (72 per cent.) of the inhabitants of India, while Buddhism and its derivative Jainism only number, apart from the island of Ceylon, three per cent. of the total population of the peninsula. The most widespread religion after Brahmanism is Islamism (20 per cent. of the whole population of India).