1 CASTE IN THE PANJAB. 11
2 marriage are in actual practice almost as strict as ever ; bnt they are based
3 upon present social rank, without reference to the question whether that rank
4 has ytt received the impress or sanction of admission into the caste with which
5 it would coiTespond. In fact the present tendency even in the case of Rajputs,
6 and still more in that of lower castes of Indian origin, is markedly to reject
7 their original Hindu caste, and to claim connection with the Mughal con-
8 querors of their country or the Arab founders of theu- faith. Thus we have
9 no broad classification of the people under a few great castes with their
10 internal division into tribes, such as we find in the Hindu portion of the
11 Panjab ; or rather this classification is of far less importance, being little more
12 than a memory of origin, or a token of a social rank which is more precisely
13 expressed by the tribal name. .
14 343. The effect of occupation upon the tribal form of caste. — So too, the
15 lines which separate Occupatiou.s one from another are relaxed. In the case of
16 the impure occupations which render those who follow them outcasts, this is
17 not indeed the case. The Pathau who should becoiiii.' a scavenger would no
18 longer be recognised as a Pathau, though he might still claim the name;
19 indeed, as already pointed out in the Chapter on Religion, the prejudice is
20 carried into the very mosque, and the outcast who has adopted Islam is not
21 recognised as a ]Musalmau unless at the same time he abandon his degrading
22 Occupation. But the taint is not so markedly hereditary, nor is the prejudice
23 against menial occupations or handicrafts generally so strong. A Pathiin who
24 became a weaver would still remain a Pathiin, and would not be thought to be
25 polluted ; though, as in all countries, he would be held to have fallen in the
26 social scale, and the better class of Pathan would not give him his daughter to
27 wife. In fact the difference between ihe condition of a Pathan who took to
28 weaving on the frontier and the Rajput who took to weaving in the Dehli
29 Territory, would be precisely that between caste in India and social standing
30 in Europe. The degradation would not in the case of the former be cere-
31 monial or religious, nor would it be hereditary save in the sense that the
32 children would be horn in a lower condition of life ; but the_ immediate and
33 individual loss of position would be as real as among the strictest castes of the
34 Hindus. Thus we find on the frontier men ot" all castes engaging from
35 poverty or other necessity in all occupations save those of an actually degrad-
36 ing nature. Between these two extremes of the purely Jfahomedan customs
37 of the Indus and the purely Hindu customs of the Jamna we meet with a
38 veiy considerable variety of intermediate conditions. Yet the change is far
39 less gradual than might have been supposed probable, the break from Islam to
40 Brahminism, from tribal position and freedoui of occupation to the more rigid
41 restraints of caste, taking place with some suddenness about the meridian of
42 Lahore, where the great rivers enter the fertile zone and the arid grazing
43 grounds of the West give place to the arable plains of the East. The
44 submontaue zone retains its social as well as its physical characteristics
45 much further west than do the plains which lie below it, and here the
46 artificial restrictions of caste can hardly be said to cease till the Salt-range is
47 crossed.
48 Closely allied with these tribal or ethnic communities based upon identity
49 of recent descent, is the asso;iation which binds together small colonies of
50 foreign immigrants under names denoting little more than their origin. Such
51 are the Purbi, the Kashmiri, the Bangali. These people have theii- own dis-
52 tinctions of caste and tribe in the counti'ies whence they came. But isolation