Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/22

The Religion of the Veda
members of the four original castes. Such marriages
are now strictly taboo. Gradually, differences of
occupation, trade, and profession, and, to a consider-
able extent also, difference of geography, established
themselves as the basis of caste distinction, until the
number of castes became legi At the present
time there are nearly 2000 Brahman castes alone.
According to an intelligent IIindu observer of our
own day' the Sarasvata Brahmins of the Panjab
alone number 469 tribes; the Kshatriyas are split
up into 590; the Vaiçyas and Çüdras into even
more. There is a Hindustani proverb, "eight
Brahmins, nine kitchens." In the matter of food
and intermarriage all castes are now completely shut
off one from the other. A tailor may not, as is the
custom with all other peoples, invite his neighbor,
an honest shoemaker, to share his humble fare. The
son of the shoemaker may not woo and wed the
blooming daughter of the barber. Even a minor
deviation, some new trick of trade, will at once breed
a new caste. In certain parts of India fisher-folk
who knit the meshes of their nets from right to left
may not intermarry with them that knit from left to
right. In Cuttack, the most southerly district of
6
¹ Rai Bahadur Lala Baij Nath, B.A., of the North-western Province
Judicial Service, and Fellow of the University of Allahabad, in his
very interesting little book, Hinduism, Ancient and Modern (Meerut,
1889), p. 9.