1 PANJAB CASTES.
2 (3) that caste is perpetual and immutable, and has been transmitted
3 from generation to generation lhrou£^hout the ages of Hindu
4 history and myth without the possibility of change.
5 Now I should doubtless be exaggerating in the opposite direction, but I
6 think that I should still be far nearer to the truth if, in opposition to the
7 popular conception thus defined, I were to say —
8 (1) that caste is a social far more than a religious institution ; that it has
9 no necessary connection whatever with the Hindu religion, fur-
10 ther than that under that religion certain ideas and customs
11 common to all primitive nations have been developed and per-
12 petuated in an unusual degree ; and that conversion from;
13 1 Hinduism to Islam has not necessarily the slightest efEecD
14 upon caste :
15 ,' (2) that there are Brahmans who are looked upon as outcasts by those
16 who under the fourfold classification would be classed as Sudras j
17 that there is no such thing as a Vaisya now existing ; that it is
18 very doubtful indeed whether there is such a thing as a
19 Kshatriya, and if there is, no two people are agreed as to where
20 we shall look for him ; and that Sudra has no present significance
21 save as a convenient term of abuse to apply to somebody else
22 whom you consider lower than yourself; while the number of
23 castes which can be classed under any one or under no one of the
24 foiu- heads, according as private opinion may vary, is almost in-
25 numerable :
26 (3) that nothing can be more variable and more difficult to define than
27 caste ; and that the fact that a generation is descended from
28 ancestors of any given caste creates a presumption, and nothing
29 more, that that generation also is of the same caste, a pre-
30 sumption liable to be defeated by an infinite variety of circum-
31 stances.
32 SS*. The hereditary nature of occupations. — Among all primitive
33 peoples we find the race split up into a number of tribal communities held
34 together by the tie of common descent, each tribe being self-contained and
35 self-sufficing, and bound by strict rules of marriage and inheritance, the common
36 object of which is to increase the strength and preserve the unity of the tribe.
37 There is as yet no diversity of occupation. Among more advanced societies,
38 where occupations have become differentiated, the tribes have almost altogether
39 disappeared ; and we find in their place corporate communities or guilds held
40 together by the tie of common occupation rather than of common blood, each
41 guild being self-contained and self-governed, and bound by strict rules, the
42 common object of which is to strengthen the guild and to confine to it the
43 secrets of the craft which it practises. Such were the trades-guilds of the
44 middle ages as we first meet with them in Em-opean history. But all modem [P.
45 inquiry into their origin and earlier constitution tends to the conclusion— and
46 modern authorities on the development of primitiA^e institutions are rapidly
47 accepting that conclusion — that the guild in its first form was, no less than the
48 tribe, based upon common descent ; and that the fundamental idea which lay
49 at the root of the institution in its inception was the hereditary nature of
50 occupation. Now here we have two principles, community of blood and com-
51 munity of occupation. So long as the hereditary nature of occupation was in-
52 (
53 r