1 10 PANJAB CASTES.
2 gony of a ptirely artificial set of niles, regulating mairiage and intermarriage,
3 declaring certain occupations and foods to be impui-e and polluting, and
4 prescribing the conditions and degree of social intercourse permitted between
5 the several castes. Add to these the pride of social rank and the pride of
6 blood which ai-e natural to man, and which alone could reconcile a nation to
7 restrictions at once irksome from a domestic and bui'densorae from a material
8 point of view ; and it is hardly to be wondered at that caste should have
9 assumed the rigidity which distinguishes it in India.
10 342. The tribal type of caste. — Thus caste in the Panjab is based pri-
11 marily upon occupation, and given that the "occupation is that most respect-
12 able of all occupations, the owning and cultivation of land, upon political
13 position. But there are other forins which are assumed by caste, or at least
14 by what most nearly corresponds with it in some parts of the Province, which
15 may in general be refen-ed to two main types. The fii-st type is based upon
16 community of blood ; the second is atrades-guild pure and simple. Both are
17 strictly analogous to caste proper ; but the existence of both in their present
18 forms appears to be due to the example of those Musalmtin nations who have
19 exerted such immense influence iu the Panjab, and both differ from caste
20 proper in the absence of those artificial restrictions which are the peculiar
21 product of Brahminism. The j^'ii'est types of the ethnic or national caste aiv
22 the Pathans and Biloches, both untainted by any admixture of Hindu feeUng
23 or custom. Here the fiction which unites the-caste, race, nation, or whatever
24 you may choose to call it, is that of common descent from a traditional
25 ancestor. In the main it is something more than a fiction, for if the common
26 ancestor be mythical, as he probably is, there is still a very real bond of
27 , common origin, couunon habitat, common customs and modes of thought,
28 i and tribal association continued through several centm-ies, which holds these
29 people together. But even here the stock is not even professedly pure.
30 It will be seen from my description of the two gi-eat frontier races whom
31 I have quoted as types, that each of them includes in its tribal organisa-
32 tion affiliated tribes of foreign origin, who sometimes but by no means
33 always preserve the tradition of their separate descent, but are recognised C^-
34 to the full as being, and for all practical purposes actually are Biloch
35 or Pathan as truly as are the tribes who have certainly sprung from the
36 parent stock. Still more is this the case with the Mughal, Shekh, and
37 Saiyad, who are only strangers in the land. " Last year I was a weaver, this
38 " year 1 am a Shekh ; next year if prices rise I shall be a Saiyad." The process
39 of manufacture in these cases is too notorious for it to be necessaiy for me to
40 insist upon it ; and so long as the social position of the new claimant is
41 worthy of the descent he claims, the true j\Iughals, Shekhs, and Saiyads, after
42 waiting for a generation or so till the absm-dity of the story is not too obvious,
43 accept the fiction and admit the brand new brother into their fraternity.
44 Throughout the Western Plains, and in a somewhat lower degree through-
45 out the cis-Indus Salt-range Tract, where Islam has largely superseded
46 Brahminism and where the prohibition against marriage with another caste is
47 almost universally neglected, we find the distribution of the landowning classes
48 based upon tribe rather than upon caste. The necessity for community of pre-
49 sent caste as a condition of intermarriage having disappeai'ed, the more com-
50 prehensive classification of caste has become a mere tradition of ancestral
51 status, and the immediate question is, not is a man a Rajput or a Jat, but is
52 he a Sial or a Chhadhar, a Janjiia or a Manhaa. The restrictions upon inter-