1 PANJAB CASTES.
2 (Being a reprint of the chaptek ox ' The Races, Castes and Tribes of
3 THE People' in the Report on the Panjab Census of 1881.)
4 »!. <'^^« '"■»'=i'e«ed figure* in the margin refer to the pages of the original edition and
5 thoae without brackets to the pages of this reprint.) >:"i"on ana
6 PART I.— CASTE IN THE PANJAB.
7 '2] 233. The popular conception of caste.— An old agnostic is said to have
8 summed up his philosophy in the following- words :— '- The only thing I know
9 " IS that I know^ nothing ; and I am not quite sure that I know that." His
10 words express very exactly my own feelings regarding caste in the PanjSb. My
11 experience is that it is almost impossible to make anv statement whatever re-
12 garding any one of the castes we have to deal with, absolutely trae as it may be
13 as regards one part of the Province, which shall not presently be contradicted
14 with equal truth as regards the same people in some other district. Yet I
15 shall attempt to set forth briefly what seem to me the fundamental ideas upon
16 which caste is based; and in doing so I shall attempt partly to explain why it
17 IS that the institution is so exti-aordinarilv unstable, audits phienomena so
18 diverse in different localities. What I propound in the following paragraphs
19 IS simply my working hypothesis as it at present stands ; but I shall not stop
20 to say so as I write, though almost every proposition made must be taken sub-
21 ject to limitations, often sufficiently ob\nons, and not unfrequently involved in
22 some other proposition made in the very next paragraph. Mv views are of
23 little weight so long as they are not illustrated and supported by instances drawn
24 from actually existing fact. Such instances I have in great abundance, and they
25 will be found m part in the detailed description of castes which follow this dis-
26 cussion. But I have leisure neither to record all my evidence, nor to marshal
27 what I have recorded ; and I give my conception of caste with a crudeness of
28 exposition which lack of time forbids me to modifv, not because I think that
29 It is anything even distantly approaching to the whole truth, but because I
30 believe that it is nearer to that truth than is the generally received theory of
31 caste nij T iTi'lrrstand it.'
32 The popular and currently received theory of caste 1 take to consist of
33 three main articles : —
34 (1) that caste is an institution of the Hindu religion, and wholly
35 peculiar to that religion alone :
36 t (2) that it consists primarily of a foui-fold classification of people in
37 o general under the heads of Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and
38 -D Siidra :
39 tr-
40 ^ Owing to the limitation of the time aUowed me to complete the report, the whole of this
41 chapter except Part II was written in less than three weeks. It would have taken me as many
42 months to have digested and put into shape the whole of my material.