7. And the same writer goes on to say:—
“Manu represents, indeed, all the castes of Hindu society, and their number is considerable, as the result of mixed marriages between the four original castes. According to him the four primitive castes by intermarrying in every possible way gave rise to sixteen mixed castes, which by continuing their inter-marriages produced the long list of the mixed castes. It is extremely doubtful, however, whether Manu meant to say that at all times the offspring of a mixed marriage had to enter a lower caste. He could not possibly maintain that the sons of a Brâhman father and a Vaisya mother would always be a physician or Vaidya, this being the name given by Manu to the offspring of these two castes. At present the offspring of a Sûdra father and a Brâhman mother would find no admission in any respectable caste. Their marriage would not be considered marriage at all. The only rational explanation of Manu’s words seems to be that originally the Vaidyas or physicians sprang from the union of a Brâhman father and a Vaisya mother, though this, too, is of course nothing but a [[xiv]]fanciful theory. If we look more carefully we shall find that most of these mixed castes are in reality the professions, trades and guilds of a half-civilised society. They did not wait for mixed marriages before they came into existence. Professions, trades and handicrafts had grown up without any reference to caste in the ethnological or political sense of the word. Some of their names were derived from towns and countries where certain professions were held in particular estimation. Servants who waited on ladies were called Vaidehas, because they came from Videha, the Athens of India, just as the French call the “porteur d’eau” a “Savoyard.” To maintain that every member of the caste of the Vaidehas, in fact, every lady’s maid, had to be begotten through the marriage of a Vaisya and a Brâhmani, is simply absurd. In other cases the names of Manu’s castes were derived from their occupations. The caste of musicians, for instance, were called Venas from vîna, the lyre. Now, it was evidently Manu’s object to bring these professional corporations in connection with the old system of castes, assigning to each, according to its higher or lower position, a more or less pure descent from the original castes. The Vaidyas, for instance, or the physicians, evidently a respectable corporation, were represented as the offspring of a Brâhman father and a Vaisya mother, while the guild of the fishermen, or Nishâdas, were put down as the descendants of a Brâhman father and a Sûdra mother. Manu could hardly mean to say that every son of a Vaisya father and Kshatriya mother was obliged to become a commercial traveller, [[xv]]or to enter the caste of the Magadhas. How could that caste have been supplied after the extinction in many places of the Kshatriya and Vaisya castes? But having to assign to the Magadhas a certain social position, Manu recognised them as the descendants of the second and third castes, in the same way as the Herald’s office would settle the number of quarters of an earl or a baron.”
8. Before leaving the consideration of caste as found in Manu’s “Institutes,” it may be noted that we find side by side two discrepant views as to the connubium of the orders. According to the milder, and apparently the older view, caste is determined by descent from the father, and a Dvija or twice-born man may take a wife from among Brâhmans, Kshatriyas or Vaisyas. With a Sûdra woman alone he could not intermarry. By the other view a man was advised to marry a virgin of his own caste as his first wife, and after that he may proceed according to the rank of the castes. There is some reason to believe that under this rule he might take even a Sûdra woman as a second wife.[8] This, it is needless to say, represents a very different state of things from that which prevails under the modern rigid law of caste endogamy.
Caste subsequent to Manu. 9. It was caste in or about the stage of its development exhibited in the “Institutes” of Manu which Megasthenes, first of all [[xvi]]the barbarians, observed in his embassy to the court of Sandrocottus or Chandragupta (306–298 B.C.). He found seven, not four, castes—the philosophers, husbandmen, shepherds, artizans, soldiers, inspectors and counsellors of the king. The philosophers were the Brâhmans, and the traveller indicates the prescribed stages of the Brâhmanical life. He distinguishes the Brachmanes from the Sarmanai, the latter of whom are supposed to represent the Buddhist Sramanas or monks, while the inspectors were the Buddhist supervisors of morals, afterwards referred to in the sixth edict of Asoka.
10. This hasty survey of the historical development of caste sufficiently disposes of the popular theory that caste is a permanent institution, transmitted unchanged from the dawn of Hindu history and myth.
Caste not peculiar to Hinduism. 11. Another and even graver misconception is to suppose that caste is peculiar to Hinduism and connected in some peculiarly intimate way with the Hindu faith. It is needless to say that caste as an institution is not confined to Indian soil. The Zendavesta shows that the early Persian community was divided into three castes or tribes, of which one lived by hunting, a second by grazing flocks, and the third by agriculture. “In this respect also,” says Herodotus,[9] “the Lacedaemonians resemble the Egyptians: their heralds, musicians and cooks succeed to their fathers’ professions: so that a musician is son to a musician, a cook, of a cook, and a herald, of a herald: nor do others, on [[xvii]]account of the clearness of their voice, apply themselves to this profession and exclude others; but they continue to practise it after their fathers.” This occupational or hereditary guild system of caste, which, as will be seen, was the most important factor in the development of this institution, prevailed and still prevails, as a matter of fact, all the world over. Nor is caste confined to votaries of the Hindu faith. On the contrary it is in its nature much more social than religious. It has been one of the most perplexing problems which beset the Christian Missionary to reconcile the restrictions of caste with the perfect liberty of Christianity. Islâm has boldly solved the difficulty by recognising and adopting caste in its entirety. Not only does the converted Râjput, Gûjar or Jât remain a member of his original sept or section; but he preserves most of those restrictions on social intercourse, intermarriage and the like, which make up the peasant’s conception of caste. As Mr. Ibbetson remarks,—“Almost the only difference which the convert makes is to shave his scalplock and the upper edge of his moustache, to repeat the Muhammadan creed in a mosque, and to add the Muhammadan to the Hindu marriage ceremony. As far as religion goes he worships Khuda instead of Parameswar, keeps up his service in honor of Bhawâni, and regularly makes the due oblation for the repose of the sainted dead.” On the other hand, as will be seen everywhere in the course of the present survey, the members of orthodox Hindu castes worship the quintette of the Pânch Pîr, or famous local saints like Miyân or Mîrân Sâhib, Shâh Madâr or Sakhi Sarwar. [[xviii]]
Caste not immutable. 12. By another popular theory caste is eternal and immutable. The ordinary Hindu will say that it has always existed, that it is based on what he calls the Shâstras, a vague body of religious literature of which he knows little more than the name. We have already shown that the vague reference to caste in the Vedas discloses the institution at a very different stage from what we see it in the “Institutes” of Manu or at the present day. Even in an age so comparatively recent as that of Manu, the rules of connubium and social life were very different from those which prevail at present. The modern Vaishnava, for instance, would shudder at the comparatively liberal permission given in these days for the use of meat.[10] But in addition to this we meet all through the range of Hindu history and myth with numerous illustrations of the mutability of caste. Thus in the Mahâbhârata Bhîma is married by his brother Yudhishthira to the Asura woman Hidimbi, and the marriage rites are regularly performed: while Draupadi, a Kshatriya girl, accepts as her husband at the Swayamvara Arjuna who pretends to be a Brâhman. Viswamitra, a Kshatriya by birth, compelled Brahma by the force of his austerities to admit him to the Brâhmanical order, so that he might be on a level with Vasishtha, with whom he had quarrelled.[11] It is even more significant to learn from the Mahâbhârata[12] [[xix]]that all castes become Brâhmans when they have crossed the Gomati on a visit to the hermitage of Vasishtha, and we are told that the country of the five rivers is contemptible because there a Bahîka or Panjâbi “born a Brâhman becomes afterwards a Kshatriya, a Vaisya or a Sûdra, and eventually a barber.” It would be easy to repeat examples of this kind almost indefinitely.[13]
Modern development of caste. 13. As regards the castes of the present day the case is similar. Instead of castes being a clearly-defined entity, an association complete in themselves, a trade guild the doors of which are rigidly barred against the admission of strangers, they are in a constant state of flux and flow. New endogamous groups are constantly being created, the process of fission is ever in operation, and what is more important still the novus homo, like his brethren all the world over, is constantly endeavouring to force his way into a higher grade and acquire the privileges of the “twice-born.” This process is specially observable among the Gonds and other Dravidian races of the great hill country of Central India. Thus the Râj Gonds who “in appearance obstinately retain the Turanian type, in aspiration are Hindus of the Hindus, wearing the sacred cord and carrying ceremonial refinements to the highest pitch of parvenu purism. Mr. Hislop says [[xx]]that not content with purifying themselves, their houses, and their food, they must even sprinkle their faggots with water before using them for cooking. With all this exterior coating of the fashionable faith they seem, however, to retain an ineradicable taint of the old mountain superstitions. Some of these outwardly Brâhmanised chiefs still try to pacify the gods of their fathers for their apparent desertion of them by worshipping them in secret once every four or five years and by placing cow’s flesh to their lips, wrapped in a cloth, so as not to break too openly with the reigning Hindu divinities.”[14] And Captain Forsyth writes:—“In Gondwâna numerous chiefs claim either a pure descent from Râjput houses, or more frequently admit their remote origin to have sprung from a union between some Râjput adventurer of noble blood and one of the daughters of the aborigines. Few of them are admitted to be pure Râjputs by the blue blooded chiefs of Rajasthân: but all have their bards and genealogies.”[15]
14. The same process of elevation of the aboriginal races has been going on for centuries throughout Northern India. To quote Mr. Nesfield[16]:—“Local traditions in Oudh and the North-Western Provinces abound in tales of Brâhmans being manufactured out of low caste men by Râjas when they could not find a sufficient number of hereditary Brâhmans to attend some sacrifice or [[xxi]]feast. For example, the Kunda Brâhmans of Partâbgarh are said to have been manufactured by Râja Mânik Chand, because he was not able to collect the quorum of one hundred and twenty-five thousand Brâhmans to whom he had vowed to make a feast: in this way an Ahîr, a Kurmi or a Bhât found himself dubbed a Brâhman and invested with the sacred thread, and their descendants are Brâhmans to this day.[17] A similar tale is told of Tirgunait Brâhmans and Pâthaks of Amtara:[18] of the Pândê Parwârs in the Hardoi District: of the large clan called Sawalakhiyas in the Gorakhpur and Basti Districts, who have nevertheless assumed the high-sounding titles of Dûbê, Upâdhya, Tiwâri, Misra, Dikshit, Pândê, Awasthi and Pâthak.[19] Only about a century-and-a-half ago a Luniya, or man of the salt-making class, which ranks decidedly low, was made a Brâhman by Râja Bhagwant Râê of Asothar, and this man is the ancestor of the Misra Brâhmans of Aijhi.”[20]
Brâhmans an occupational group. 15. In fact there can be little doubt that the Brâhmans, so far from forming a homogeneous group, have been made up of very diverse elements, and this strongly confirms the occupational theory of their origin, to which reference will be made later on. There are grades of so-called Brâhmans which in appearance and function present little analogy to the pure bred Pandit of Benares or Mathura. Thus [[xxii]]the Ojha Brâhman is the direct successor of the Dravidian Baiga, and of similar menial origin are probably many of those Brâhmans who live by begging, fortune-telling and the like, such as the Dakaut, Joshi, Barua or Husaini, and the Mahâbrâhman or funeral priest whose functions render him an abomination to all orthodox Hindus. The Bhuînhârs and Tagas, if they are really of genuine Brâhmanical descent, have in the same way differentiated themselves by function, and having abandoned priestly duties are agriculturists and landowners pure and simple. This separation of function must have prevailed from very early times, because it was specially laid down that each caste may adopt the occupation of another in case of distress, and thus a Brâhman may do the work of a Kshatriya or Vaisya, but not of a Sûdra.[21]