rules are jealously watched by the other members of the sept, and are liable—in accordance with the general custom in which communal matters are regulated in India—to be brought before a special council (panchāyat), originally consisting of five (pancha), but now no longer limited to that number, since it is chiefly the greater or less strictness in the observance of caste rules and the orthodox ceremonial generally that determine the status of the sept in the social scale of the caste. Whilst community of occupation was an important factor in the original formation of non-tribal castes, the practical exigencies of life have led to considerable laxity in this respect—not least so in the case of Brahmans who have often had to take to callings which would seem altogether incompatible with the proper spiritual functions of their caste. Thus, “the prejudice against eating cooked food that has been touched by a man of an inferior caste is so strong that, although the Shastras do not prohibit the eating of food cooked by a Kshatriya or Vaiśya, yet the Brahmans, in most parts of the country, would not eat such food. For these reasons, every Hindu household—whether Brahman, Kshatriya or Sudra—that can afford to keep a paid cook generally entertains the services of a Brahman for the performance of its cuisine—the result being that in the larger towns the very name of Brahman has suffered a strange degradation of late, so as to mean only a cook” (Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya, Hindu Castes and Sects). In this caste, however, as in all others, there are certain kinds of occupation to which a member could not turn for a livelihood without incurring serious defilement. In fact, adherence to the traditional ceremonial and respectability of occupation go very much hand-in-hand. Thus, amongst agricultural castes, those engaged in vegetable-growing or market-gardening are inferior to the genuine peasant or yeoman, such as the Jat and Rajput; whilst of these the Jat who practises widow-marriage ranks below the Rajput who prides himself on his tradition of ceremonial orthodoxy—though racially there seems little, if any, difference between the two; and the Rajput, again, is looked down upon by the Babhan of Behar because he does not, like himself, scruple to handle the plough, instead of invariably employing low-caste men for this manual labour. So also when members of the Baidya, or physician, caste of Bengal, ranging next to that of the Brahman, farm land on tenure, “they will on no account hold the plough, or engage in any form of manual labour, and thus necessarily carry on their cultivation by means of hired servants” (H. H. Risley, Census Report).
The scale of social precedence as recognized by native public opinion is concisely reviewed (ib.) as revealing itself “in the facts that particular castes are supposed to be modern representatives of one or other of the original castes of the theoretical Hindu system; that Brahmans will take water from certain castes; that Brahmans of high standing will serve particular castes; that certain castes, though not served by the best Brahmans, have nevertheless got Brahmans of their own whose rank varies according to circumstances; that certain castes are not served by Brahmans at all but have priests of their own; that the status of certain castes has been raised by their taking to infant-marriage or abandoning the re-marriage of widows; that the status of others has been modified by their pursuing some occupations in a special or peculiar way; that some can claim the services of the village barber, the village palanquin-bearer, the village midwife, &c., while others cannot; that some castes may not enter the courtyards of certain temples; that some castes are subject to special taboos, such as that they must not use the village well, or may draw water only with their own vessels, that they must live outside the village or in a separate quarter, that they must leave the road on the approach of a high-caste man and must call out to give warning of their approach.” . . . “The first point to observe is the predominance throughout India of the influence of the traditional system of four original castes. In every scheme of grouping the Brahman heads the list. Then come the castes whom popular opinion accepts as the modern representatives of the Kshatriyas; and these are followed by the mercantile groups supposed to be akin to the Vaiśyas. When we leave the higher circles of the twice-born, the difficulty of finding a uniform basis of classification becomes apparent. The ancient designation Sudra finds no great favour in modern times, and we can point to no group that is generally recognized as representing it. The term is used in Bombay, Madras and Bengal to denote a considerable number of castes of moderate respectability, the higher of whom are considered ‘clean’ Sudras, while the precise status of the lower is a question which lends itself to endless controversy.” . . . In northern and north-western India, on the other hand, “the grade next below the twice-born rank is occupied by a number of castes from whose hands Brahmans and members of the higher castes will take water and certain kinds of sweetmeats. Below these again is rather an indeterminate group from whom water is taken by some of the higher castes, not by others. Further down, where the test of water no longer applies, the status of the caste depends on the nature of its occupation and its habits in respect of diet. There are castes whose touch defiles the twice-born, but who do not commit the crowning enormity of eating beef. . . . In western and southern India the idea that the social state of a caste depends on whether Brahmans will take water and sweetmeats from its members is unknown, for the higher castes will as a rule take water only from persons of their own caste and sub-caste. In Madras especially the idea of ceremonial pollution by the proximity of an unclean caste has been developed with much elaboration. Thus the table of social precedence attached to the Cochin report shows that while a Nayar can pollute a man of a higher caste only by touching him, people of the Kammalan group, including masons, blacksmiths, carpenters and workers in leather, pollute at a distance of 24 ft., toddy-drawers at 36 ft., Pulayan or Cheruman cultivators at 48 ft., while in the case of the Paraiyan (Pariahs) who eat beef the range of pollution is no less than 64 ft.”
In this bewildering maze of social grades and class distinctions, the Brahman, as will have been seen, continues to hold the dominant position, being respected and even worshipped by all the others. “The more orthodox Sudras carry their veneration for the priestly class to such a degree that they will not cross the shadow of a Brahman, and it is not unusual for them to be under a vow not to eat any food in the morning, before drinking Bipracharanamrita, i.e. water in which the toe of a Brahman has been dipped. On the other hand, the pride of the Brahmans is such that they do not bow to even the images of the gods worshipped in a Sudra’s house by Brahman priests” (Jog. Nath Bh.). There are, however, not a few classes of Brahmans who, for various reasons, have become degraded from their high station, and formed separate castes with whom respectable Brahmans refuse to intermarry and consort. Chief amongst these are the Brahmans who minister for “unclean” Sudras and lower castes, including the makers and dealers in spirituous liquors; as well as those who officiate at the great public shrines or places of pilgrimage where they might be liable to accept forbidden gifts, and, as a matter of fact, often amass considerable wealth; and those who officiate as paid priests at cremations and funeral rites, when the wearing apparel and bedding of the deceased are not unfrequently claimed by them as their perquisites.
As regards the other two “twice-born” castes, several modern groups do indeed claim to be their direct descendants, and in vindication of their title make it a point to perform the upanayana ceremony and to wear the sacred thread. But though the Brahmans, too, will often acquiesce in the reasonableness of such claims, it is probably only as a matter of policy that they do so, whilst in reality they regard the other two higher castes as having long since disappeared and been merged by miscegenation in the Sudra mass. Hence, in the later classical Sanskrit literature, the term dvija, or twice-born, is used simply as a synonym for a Brahman. As regards the numerous groups included under the term of Sudras, the distinction between “clean” and “unclean” Sudras is of especial importance for the upper classes, inasmuch as only the former—of whom nine distinct castes are usually recognized—are as a rule considered fit for employment in household service.
The picture thus presented by Hindu society—as made up of a confused congeries of social groups of the most varied standing, each held together and kept separate from others by a traditional body of ceremonial rules and by the Theology. notion of social gradations being due to a divinely instituted order of things—finds something like a counterpart in the religious life of the people. As in the social sphere, so also in the sphere of religious belief, we find the whole scale of types represented from the lowest to the highest; and here as there, we meet with the same failure of welding the confused mass into a well-ordered whole. In their theory of a triple manifestation of an impersonal deity, the Brahmanical theologians, as we have seen, had indeed elaborated a doctrine which might have seemed to form a reasonable, authoritative creed for
