Panjab Castes: 02a-Is Caste immutable?
This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. |
[The arguments given here apply to all Hindu societies, indeed to all of India.]]
PART I.— CASTE IN THE PANJAB
The popular conception of caste.-An old agnostic is said to have summed up his philosophy m the following words :-- The only thing I know IS that I know nothing^; and I am not quite sure that I know that His words express very exactly my own feelings regarding caste in the Paniab. My experience is that it is almost impossible to make any statement whatever re garding any one of the castes we have to deal with, absolutely true as it may be as regards one part of the Province, which shall not presently be contradicted with equal truth as regards the same people in some other district. Yet f shall attempt to set forth briefly what seem to me the fundamental ideas upon which caste is based ; and in doing so I shall attempt partly to explain why is that the institution IS so extraordinarily unstable/ and its phænomena so diverse in different localities What I propound in the following paragraphs IS simply my working hypothesis as it at present stands ; but I shall not stop to say as I write, though almost every proposition made must be taken sub ject to limitations, often sufficiently obvious, and not unfrequently involved in some other proposition made in the very next paragraph. My views are of little weight so long as they are not illustrated and supported by instances drawn from actually existing fact Such instances I have in great abundance, and they will be found in part in the detailed description of castes which follow this dis cussion. But I have leisure neither to record all my evidence, nor to marshal what I have recorded ; and I give my conception of caste with a crudeness of exposition which lack of time forbids me to modify, not because I think that it IS anything even distantly approaching to the whole truth, but because I believe it is nearer to the truth than the generally received theory of caste as I understand it
The popular and currently received theory of caste 1 take to consist of three main articles : —
(1) that caste is an institution of the Hindu religion, and wholly peculiar to that religion alone :
(2) that it consists primarily of a fourfold classification of people in general under the heads of Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra;
(3) that caste is perpetual and immutable, and has been transmitted from generation to generation throughout the ages of Hindu history and myth without the possibility of change.
Now I should doubtless be exaggerating in the opposite direction, but I think that I should still be far nearer to the truth if, in opposition to the popular conception thus defined, I were to say —
(1) that caste is a social far more than a religious institution ; that it has no necessary connection whatever with the Hindu religion, fur ther than that under that religion certain ideas and customs common to all primitive nations have been developed and per petuated in an unusual degree ; and that conversion from Hinduism to Islam has not necessarily the slightest effect upon caste :
(2) that there are Brahmans who are looked upon as outcasts by^ those who under the fourfold classification would be classed as Sudras ; that there is no such thing as a Vaisya now existing ; that it is very doubtful indeed whether there is such a thing as a Kshatriya, and if there is, no two people are agreed as to where we shall look for him ; and that Sudra has no present significance save as a convenient term of abuse to apply to somebody else whom you consider lower than yourself; while the number of castes which can be classed under any one or under no one of the four heads, according as private opinion may vary, is almost in numerable :
(3) that nothing can be more variable and more difficult to define than caste ; and that the fact that a generation is^ descended from ancestors of any given caste creates a presumption, and nothing more, that that generation also is of the same caste, a pre sumption liable to be defeated by an infinite variety of circum stances.
The hereditary nature of occupations
Among all primitive peoples we find the race split up into a number of tribal communities held together by the tie of common descent, each tribe being self-contained and self-sufficing, and bound by strict rules of marriage and inheritance, the common object of which is to increase the strength and preserve the unity of the tribe. There is as yet no diversity of occupation. Among more advanced societies, where occupations have become differentiated, the tribes have almost altogether disappeared ; and we find in their place corporate communities or guilds held together by the tie of common occupation rather than of common blood, each guild being self-contained and self-governed, and bound by strict rules, the common object of which is to strengthen the guild and to confine to it the secrets of the craft which it practises. Such were the trades-guilds of the middle ages as we first meet with them in European history. But all modern inquiry into their origin and earlier constitution tends to the conclusion— and modern authorities on the developurent of primitive institutions are rapidly accepting that conclusion — that the guild in its first form was, no less than the tribe based upon common descent ; and that the fundamental idea which lay at the root of the institution in its inception was the hereditary nature of occupation. Now here we have two principles, community of blood and com munity of occupation. So long as the hereditary nature of occupation was in violable, so long as the blacksmith's son must be and nobody else could be a blacksmith the two principles were identical. But the struggle for existence is too severe^ the conditions of existence too varied^ and the character and capacity of individuals too diverse to permit of this inviolability being long main tained ; and in any but the most rudimentary form of society it must, like the socialist's dream of equal division of wealth, cease to exist from the very instant of its birth. And from the moment when the hereditary nature of occupation ceases to be invariable and inviolable, the two principles of community of blood and community of occupation become antagonistic. The antagonism still con tinues. In every community which the world has ever seen there have been grades of position and distinctions of rank; and in all societies these grades and distinc tions are governed by two considerations, descent and calling. As civilisation advances and the ideas of the community expand in more liberal growth, the latter is ever gaining in importance at the expense of the former ; the question what a man is, is ever more and more taking precedence of the question what his father was. But in no society that the world has yet seen has either of these two considerations ever wholly ceased to operate ; in no community has the son of the coal-heaver been born the equal of the son of the nobleman, or the man who dies a trader been held in the same consideration as he who dies a statesman ; while in all the son has begun where the father left off. The com munities of India in whose midst the Hindu religion has been developed are no exceptions to this rule ; but in their case special circumstances have com bined to preserve in greater integrity and to perpetuate under a more advanced state of society than elsewhere the hereditary nature of occupation, and thus in a higher degree than in other modern nations to render identical the two prin ciples of community of blood and community of occupation. And it is this difference, a difference of degree rather than of kind, a survival to a later age of an institution which has died out elsewhere rather than a new growth pecu liar to the Hindu nation, which makes us give a new name to the old thing and call caste in India what we call position or rank in England.
Occupation the primary basis of caste
The whole basis of diver sity of caste is diversity of occupation. The old division into Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, Sudra, and the Mlechchha or outcast who is below the Sudra, is but a division into the priest, the warrior, the husbandman, the artisan, and the menial ; and the more modern developurent which substitut ed trader for husbandman as the meaning of Vaisya or the people did not alter the nature of the classification. William Priest, John King, Edward Farmer, and James Smith are but the survivals in England of the four varnas of Manu. But in India which, as I have already explained in chapter IV, sections 211-12, to which I would here refer the reader, was priest-ridden to an extent unknown to the experience of Europe even in the middle ages, the dominance of one special occupation gave abnormal importance to all distinctions of occupation. The Brahman, who could at first claim no separate descent by which he should be singled out from among the Aryan community, sought to exalt his office and to propitiate his political rulers, who were the only rivals he had to fear, by degrading all other occupations and conditions of life. Fur ther, as explained in the sections just referred to, the principle of hereditary occupation was to him as a class one of the most vital importance. As the Brahmans increased in number, those numbers necessarily exceeded the possible requirements of the laity so far as the mere performance of priestly functions was concerned, while it became impossible for them to keep up as a whole even the semblance of sacred learning. Thus they ceased to be wholly priests and a large proportion of them became mere Levites. The only means of preserving its overwhelming influence to the body at large was to substitute Levitical descent for priestly functions as the basis of that influence, or rather perhaps to check the natural course of social evolution which would have substituted the latter ' for the former ; and this they did by giving the whole sanction of religion to the principle of the hereditary nature of occupation. Hence sprang that tangled web of caste restrictions and distinctions, of ceremonial obliga tions, and of artificial purity and impunity, which has rendered the separation of occupation from descent so slow and so difficult in Hindu society, and which collectively constitutes what we know as caste. I do not mean that the Brahmans invented the principle which they thus turned to their own purpose ; on the contrary, I have said that it is found in all primitive societies that have outgrown the most rudimentary stage. Nor do I suppose that they deliberately set to work to produce any craftily designed effect upon the growth of social institutions. But circumstances had raised them to a position of extraordinary power ; and naturally, and probably almost unconsciously, their teaching took the form which tended most effectually to preserve that power unimpaired .
Indeed in its earlier form, neither caste nor occupation was even supposed in India to be necessarily or invariably hereditary. It is often forgotten that there are two very distinct epochs in the post-Vedic history of the Hindu nations, which made respectively contributions of very different nature to that body of Hindu scriptures which we are too apt to confuse under the generic name of the Shastras, and which affected in very different manners the form of the Hindu religion. The earlier is the epoch of the Brahmanas and the Upanishads, while Hinduism was a single and comparatively simple creed, or at most a philosophical abstraction ; and the later is the epoch of the Puranas and Tantras, with their crowded Pantheon, their foul imaginings, their de graded idolatry, and their innumerable sects. The former may be said to end with the rise and the latter to begin with the growing degeneracy of Buddhism. In the earlier Hinduism we find that, while caste distinctions were primarily based upon occupation, considerable license in this respect was permitted to the several castes, while the possibility of the individual rising from one caste to another was distinctly recognised. This was the case even as late as the age of Manu, by which time the caste system had assumed great strictness, and the cardinal importance of occupation had become a prominent part of the Brahminical teaching, though its hereditary nature had not yet been so emphatically insisted on.' It was in the dark ages of Hindu history, about the beginning of an sera during which Brahminism was substituted for Hinduism and the religion became a chaos of impure and degraded doctrine and sectarian teaching, that the theory of the necessarily hereditary nature of occupation seems to have taken its present form. In the earlier epoch the priest was always a Brahman ; in the later the Brahman was always a priest.
[' For instances of the possibility of change of caste it will be sufficient to refer the reader to Cunningham's History of the Sikhs, Appendix IV, to Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. I, Chap. IV, and still more to a Buddhist pamphlet called Vajra Shuchi which is translated at Vol. I, pages 296 // of Wilson's Indian Caste, and which for direct vigorous reasoning and scathing humour would not disgrace the best days of English party polemics.]
336, But if occupation was not necessarily transmitted by descent and if caste varied with change of occupation in the earlier sera of Hinduism, it is no less true that this is the case in the present day ; though under caste restrictions as they now stand the change, in an upward direction at least, is infinitely slower and more difficult than then, and is painfully effected by the family or tribe in the course of generations instead of by the individual in the course of years. The following pages will contain numerous instances of the truth of this assertion, and the whole body of tribal and caste tradition in the Panjab supports it. I have not always thought it necessary to state their traditions in discussing the various castes ; and I have seldom stopped to com ment on the facts. But the evidence, imperfect as it is, will be found to possess no inconsiderable weight ; while the very fact of the general currency of a set of traditions, groundless as they may be in individual instances, shows that the theory of society upon which they are based is at least not repugnant to the ideas and feelings and even practice of the people who believe them. Indeed, for the purposes of the present enquiry it would almost be allowable to accept traditional origin ; for though the tradition may not be true, it might have been, or it would never have arisen. Instances of fall in the social scale are naturally more often met with than instances of rise, for he who has sunk recalls with pride his ancestral origin, while he who has risen hastens to forget it.
The political and artificial basis of caste
But before proceeding to give specific instances of recent change of caste, I must adopt a somewhat extended definition of occupation, and must take a somewhat wider basis than that afforded by mere occupation, even so defined, as the foundation of caste.
In India the occupation of the great mass of what may be called the upper or yeoman classes is the same. Setting aside the priests and traders on the one hand and the artisans and menials on the other, we have left the great body of agriculturists who constitute by far the larger portion of the population. This great body of people subsists by husbandry and cattle-farm- ing, and so far their occupation is one and the same. But they are also the owners and occupiers of the land, the holders of more or less compact tribal territories ; they are overlords as well as villains ; and hence springs the cardinal distinction between the occupation of ruling and the occupation of being ruled. Where the actual calling of every-day life is the same, social standing, which is all that caste means, depends very largely upon political importance, whether present or belonging to the recent past. There is the widest distinction between the dominant and the subject tribes ; and a tribe which has acquired political independence in one part of the country, will there enjoy a position in the ranks of caste which is denied it in tracts where it occupies a subordinate position.
Again, the features of the caste system which are peculiar to Brahminical Hinduism, and which has already been alluded to, have operated to create a curiously artificial standard of social rank. There are certain rules which must be observed by all at the risk of sinking in the scale. They are, broadly speaking, that widow marriage shall not be practised ; that marriages shall be contracted only with those of equal or nearly equal standing ; that certain occupations shall be abstained from which are arbitrarily declared to be impure, such as growing or selling vegetables, handicrafts in general, and especially working or trading in leather and weaving ; that impure food shall be avoided; and that no communion shall be held with outcasts, such as scavengers, eaters of carrion or vermin^ and the like. There are other and similarly artificial considerations which affect social standing, such as the practice of secluding the women of the family, the custom of giving daughters in marriage only to classes higher than their own, and the like; but these are of less general application than those first mentioned. Many of these restrictions are exceedingly irksome. It is expensive to keep the women secluded, for others have to be paid to do their work ; it is still more expensive to purchase husbands for them from a higher grade of society, and so forth ; and so there is a constant temptation to disregard these rules, even at the cost of some loss of social position.
Thus we have, as the extended basis of caste, first occupation, and within a common occupation political prominence and social standing, the latter being partly regulated by a set of very arbitrary rules which are peculiar to Indian caste, and which are almost the only part of the system which is peculiar to it. It is neither tautology nor false logic to say that social standing is dependent upon caste and caste upon social standing, for the two depend each upon the other in different senses. The rise in the social scale which accompanies increased political importance will present ly be followed by a rise in caste ; while the fall in the grades of caste which a disregard of the arbitrary rules of the institution entails, will surely be ac companied by loss of social standing.
Instances of the mutability of caste.
The Brahmans are generally husbandmen as well as Levites, for their numbers are so great that they are obliged to supplement the income derived from their priestly office. But when a Brahman drops his sacerdotal character, ceases to receive food or alms as offerings acceptable to the gods, and becomes a cultivator pure and simple, he also ceases to be a Brahman, and has to employ other Brahmans as priests. Witness the Taga Brahmans of the Dehli division, who are Tagas, not Brah mans, because they have 'abandoned' ( tâg [tyag] déna) their priestly character. Indeed in the hills the very practice of agriculture as a calling or at least the actual following of the plough is in itself sufficient to deprive a Brahman of all but the name of his caste ; for Mr. Lyall points out that in the following quotation from Mr. Barnes ploughing should be read for agriculture or husbandry,'^ there being very few, even of the highest Brahman families, who abstain from other sorts of field work.
[It will afford a tolerable idea of the endless ramification of caste to follow out the details of even the Sarsut tribe as established in these hills. The reader acquainted with the country will know that Brahmins, though classed under a common appellation, are not all equal. There are primarily two great distinctions in every tribe claiming to be of such exalted origin as the Brahmins, — viz., those who follow and those who abstain from agriculture. This is the great touchstone of their creed. Those who have never defiled their hands with the plough, but have restricted themselves to the legitimate pursuits of the caste, are held to be pure Brahmins ; while those who have once descended to the occupation of husbandry retain indeed the name, but are no longer acknowledged by their brethren, nor held in the same reverence by the people at large.]
So again if a Brahman takes to handicrafts he is no longer a Brahman, as in the case of the Thâvis of the hills, some of whom were Brahmans in the last generation. The Dharukras of Dehli are admittedly Brahmans who have within the last few generations taken to widow marriage ; and the Chamarwa Sadhs and the whole class of the so-called Brahmans who minister to the outcast classes, are no longer Brahmans in any respect beyond the mere retention of the name. The Maha Brahman, so impure that in many villages he is not allowed to enter the gates; the Dâkaut and Gujrati,, so unfortunate that other Brahmans will not accept offerings at their hands, are all Brahmans, but are practically differentiated as distinct castes by their special occupations. Turning to the second of Manu^s four great classes, we find the Mahajan a Mahajan in the hills so long as he is a merchant_, but a Kaya[s]th as soon as he becomes a clerk ; while the Dasa Banya of the plains who has taken to the practice of widow marriage is a Banya only by name and occupation, not being admitted to communion or intermarriage by the more orthodox classes who bear the same title. The impossibility of fixing any line between Raj puts on the one hand, and Jats, Gujars, and castes of similar standing on the other, is fully discussed in the subsequent parts of this chapter, in the para graphs on the Jat in general, on the Rajputs of the eastern hills, and on the Thakar and Râthi I there point out that the only possible definition of a Rajput, in the Panjab at least, is he who, being the descendant of a family that has enjoyed political importance, has preserved his ancestral status by strict observance of the caste rules enumerated above. The extract there quoted from Mr. LyalFs report sums up so admirably the state of caste distinctions in the hills that I make no apology for repeating it. He says : —
Till lately the limits of caste do not seem to have been so immutably fixed in the hills as in the plains. The Raja was the fountain of honour, and could do much as he liked. I have heard old men quote instances within their memory in which a Raja promoted a Girth to be a Rathi, and a Thakur to be a Rajput, for service done or money given ; and at the present day the power of admitting back into caste fellowship persons put under a ban for some grave act of defilement is a source of income to the Jagirdar Rajas.
I believe that Mr. Campbell, the present Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, has asserted that there is no such thing as a distinct Rajput stock ; that in former times, before caste distinctions had become crystallized, any tribe or family whose ancestor or head rose to royal rank became in time Rajput.
This is certainly the conclusion to which many facts point with regard to the Rajputs of these hills. Two of the old royal and now essentially Rajput families of this district, »t«., Kotlehr and Bangahal, are said to be Brahmin by original stock. Mr. Barnes says that in Kangra the son of a Rajput by a low-caste woman takes place as a Rathi : in Seoraj and other places in the interior of the hills I have met families calling themselves Rajputs, and growing into general acceptance as Rajputs, in their own country at least, wliose only claim to the title was that their father or grandfather was the offspring of a Kanetni by a foreign Brahmin. On the border line in the Himalayas, between Thibet and India proper, any one can observe caste growing before his eyes ; the noble is changing into a Rajput, the priest into a Brahmin, the peasant into a Jat ; and so on down to the bottom of the scale. The same process was, I believe, more or less in force in Kangra proper down to a period not very remote from to-day,
And Kangra is of all parts of the Panjab the place in which the proudest and most ancient Rajput blood is to be found. As Captain Cunningham says in his History of the Sikhs: It may be assumed as certain that, had the conquering Mughals and Pathans been without a vivid belief and an organised priesthood, they would have adopted Vedism and become enrolled among the Kshatriya or Rajput races.In Su'sa we have instances of clans who were a few generations ago accounted Jat being now generally classed as Rajputs, having meanwhile practised greater exclusiveness in matrimonial matters, and having abandoned widow marriage ; while the reverse process is no less common. So the Chauhans of Dehli are no longer recognized as Rajputs since they have begun to marry their widows. Finally, we have the whole traditions of the Panjab tribes of the Jat and Gujar status to the effect that they are descended from Rajputs who married below them, ceased to seclude their women, or began to practise widow marriage ; and the fact one and the same tribe is often known as Rajput where it has, and as Jat where it has not risen to political importance.
But it is possible for Rajputs and Jats to fall still lower. The Sahnsars of Hushyarpur were admittedly Rajputs till only a few generations ago when they took to growing vegetables^ and now rank with Arâins. Some of the Tarkhans, Lohars, and Nais of Sirsa are known to have been Jats or Rajputs who within quite recent times have taken to the hereditary occupations of these castes ; and some of the Chauhans of Karnal, whose fathers were born Rajputs, have taken to weaving and become Shekhs. So too the landowning castes can rise. A branch of the Wattu Rajputs of the Satluj; by an affectation of peculiar sanctity, have in the course of a few generations become Bodlas, and now deny their Rajput and claim Qureshi origin ; and already the claim is commonly admitted. A clan of Ahirs in Rewari has begun to seclude their women and abandon widow marriage ; they no longer intermarry with the other Ahirs, and will presently be reckoned a separate caste ; and there is a Kharral family lately settled in Bahawalpur- who have begun to affect peculiar holiness and to marry only with each other, and their next step will certainly be to claim Arab descent. The process is going on daily around us, and it is certain that what is now taking place is only what has always taken place during the long ages of Indian history. The ease with which Saiyads are manufactured is proverbial, and some of our highest Rajput tribes are beginning in the Salt-range to claim Mughal or Arab origin. On the frontier the dependence upon occupation of what there most nearly corresponds with caste, as distinct from tribe, is notorious. A Machhi is a Machhi so long as he catches fish, and a Jat directly he lays hold of a plough. There are no Rajputs because there are no Rajas ; and those who are notoriously of pure Rajput descent are Jats because they till the land. Among the artisan and menial tribes the process is still more common, and the chapter on this section of the community abounds with instances. One Chamar takes to weaving instead of leather-working and becomes a Chamar-Julaha ; presently he will be a Julaha pure and simple : another does the same and becomes a Rangreta or a Bûnia : a Chuhra refuses to touch night-soil and becomes a Musalli or a Kutâna. Within the castes the same process is observable. The Chândar Chamar will not eat or marry with the Jatia Chamar because the latter works in the hides of impure animals ; one section of the Kumhars will hold no communion with another because the latter burn sweepings as fuel ; a third section has taken to agriculture and looks down upon both. In all these and a thousand similar instances the sec tions are for all practical purposes distinct castes, though the caste name, being based upon and expressive of the hereditary occupation, is generally retained where the main occupation is not changed. Indeed I have my doubts whether, setting aside the absolutely degrading occupations such as scavengering, the caste does not follow the occupation in the case of even each individual among these artisan and menial castes much more generally than we suppose. We know next to nothing about their organisation, and I do not pretend to make anything more than a suggestion. But it is certain that these lower castes have retained the organisation of the guild in extraordinary completeness long after the organisation of the tribe or caste has almost completely died out among the landowning classes whom they serve. And it may be, especially in towns and cities, that this organisation is meant to protect the craft in the absence of the bond of common descent, and that men belonging by birth to other castes and occupations may on adopting a new occupation be admitted to the fraternity which follows it.
The nature and evolution of the institution of caste
Thus we see that in India, as in all countries, society is arranged in strata which are based upon differences of social or political importance, or of occupation. But here the classification is hereditary rather than individual to the persons included under it, and an artificial standard is added which is peculiar to caste and which must be conformed with on pain of loss of position, while the rules which forbid social intercourse between castes of different rank render it infinitely difficult to rise in the scale. So too, the classification being- here ditary, it is next to impossible for the individual himself to rise ; it is the tribe or section of the tribe that alone can improve its position; and this it can do only after the lapse of several generations, during which time it must aban don a lower for a higher occupation, conform more strictly with the arbitrary rules, affect social exclusiveness or special sanctity, or separate itself after some similar fashion from the body of the caste to which it belongs. The whole theory of society is that occupation and caste are hereditary ; and the presumption that caste passes unchanged to the descendants is exceedingly strong. But the presumption is one which can be defeated, and has already been and is now in process of being defeated in numberless instances. As in all other countries and among all other nations, the graduations of the social scale are fixed ; but society is not solid but liquid, and portions of it are continually rising and sinking and changing their position as measured by that scale ; and the only real difference between Indian society and that of other countries in this respect is, that the liquid is much more viscous, the friction and inertia to be overcome infinitely greater, and the movement there fore far slower and more difficult in the former than in the latter. This friction and inertia are largely due to a set of artificial rules which have been grafted on to the social prejudices common to all communities by the peculiar form which caste has taken in the Brahminical teachings. But there is every sign that these rules are gradually relaxing - Sikhism did much to weaken them in the centre of the Panjab, while they can now hardly be said to exist on the purely Mahomedan frontier ; and I think that we shall see a still more rapid change under the influences which our rule has brought to bear upon the society of the Province. Our disregard for inherited distinctions have already done something, and the introduction of railways much more, to loosen the bonds of caste. It is extraordinary how incessantly, in reporting customs, my correspondents note that the custom or restriction is fast dying out. The liberty enjoyed by the people of the Western Panjab is extending to their neighbours in the east, and especially the old tribal customs are gradually fading away. There cannot be the slighest doubt that in a few generations the materials for a study of caste as an institution will be infinite ly less complete than they are even now.
Thus, if my theory be correct, we have the following steps in the process by which caste has been evolved in the Panjab — (1) the tribal divisions common to all primitive societies ; (3) the guilds based upon hereditary occupation common to the middle life of all communities ; (3) the exaltation of the priestly office to a degree unexampled in other countries ; (4) the exaltation of the Levitical blood by a special insistence upon the necessarily hereditary nature of occupation ; (5) the preservation and support of this principle by the elaboration from the theories of the Hindu creed or cosmo gony of a purely artificial set of rules, regulating marriage and intermarriage, declaring certain occupations and foods to be impure and polluting, and prescribing the conditions and degree of social intercourse permitted between the several castes. Add to these the pride of social rank and the pride of blood which are natural to man, and which alone could reconcile a nation to restrictions at once irksome from a domestic and burdensome from a material point of view ; and it is hardly to be wondered at that caste should have assumed the rigidity which distinguishes it in India.
The tribal type of caste
Thus caste in the Panjab is based pri marily upon Occupation, and given that the occupation is that most respect able of all occupations, the owning and cultivation of land, upon political position. But there are other forms which are assumed by caste, or at least by what most nearly corresponds with it in some parts of the Province, which may in general be referred to two main types. The first type is based upon community of blood ; the second is a trades-guild pure and simple. Both are strictly analogous to caste proper ; but the existence of both in their present forms appears to be due to the example of those Musalman nations who have exerted such immense influence in the Panjab, and both differ from caste proper in the absence of those artificial restrictions which are the peculiar product of Brahminism. The purest types of the ethnic or national caste are the Pathans and Biloches, both untainted by any admixture of Hindu feeling or custom. Here the fiction which unites the caste, race, nation, or whatever you may choose to call it, is that of common descent from a traditional ancestor. In the main it Is something more than a fiction, for if the common ancestor be mythical, as he probably is, there is still a very real bond of common origin, common habitat, common customs and modes of thought, and tribal association continued through several centuries, which holds these people together. But even here the stock is not even professedly pure. It will be seen from my description of the two great frontier races whom I have quoted as types, that each of them includes in its tribal organisa tion affiliated tribes of foreign origin, who sometimes but by no means always preserve the tradition of their separate descent, but are recognised to the full as being, and for all practical purposes actually are Biloch or Pathan as truly as are the tribes who have certainly sprung from the parent stock. Still more is this the case with the Mughal, Shekh, and Saiyad, who arc only strangers in the land. '^ Last year I was a weaver, this year I am a Shekh ; next year if prices rise I shall be a Saiyad. ■The process of manufacture in these cases is too notorious for it to be necessary for me to insist upon it; and so long as the social position of the new claimant is worthy of the descent he clainjs, the true Mughals, Shekhs, and Saiyads, after waiting for a generation or so till the absurdity of the story is not too obvious, accept the fiction and admit the brand new brother into their fraternity.
Though out the Western Plains, and In a somewhat lower degree through out the cis-Indus Salt-range Tract, where Islam has largely superseded Brahminism and where the prohibition against marriage with another caste is almost universally neglected, we find the distribution of the landowning classes based upon tribe rather than upon caste. The necessity for community of pre sent caste as a condition of intermarriage having disappeared, the more com prehensive classification of caste has become a mere tradition of ancestral status, and the Immediate question is, not is a man a Rajput or a Jat, but is he a Sial or a Chhâdhar, a Janjua or a Manhas. The restrictions upon inter marriage are in actual practice almost as strict as ever; but they are based upon present social rank^ without reference to the question whether that rank has vet received the impress or sanction of admission into the caste with which it would correspond. In fact the present tendency even in the case of Rajputs^ and still more in that of lower castes of Indian origins is markedly to reject their original Hindu caste, and to claim connection with the Mughal con querors of their country or the Arab founders of their faith. Thus we have no broad classification of the people under a few great castes with their internal division into tribes, such as we find in the Hindu portion of the Pan jab ; or rather this classification is of far less importance, being little more than a memory of origin, or a token of a social rank which is more precisely expressed by the tribal name.
The effect of occupation upon the tribal form of caste
So too, the lines which separate occupations one from another are relaxed. In the case of the impure occupations which render those who follow them outcasts, this is not indeed the case. The Pathan who should become a scavenger would no longer be recognised as a Pathan, though he might still claim the name; indeed, as already pointed out in the Chapter on Religion, the prejudice is carried into the very mosque, and the outcast who has adopted Islam is not recognised as a Musalman unless at the same time he abandon his degrading occupation. But the taint is not so markedly hereditary, nor is the prejudice against menial occupations or handicrafts generally so strong. A Pathan who became a weaver would still remain a Pathan, and would not be thought to be polluted 3 though, as in all countries, he would be held to have fallen in the social scale, and the better class of Pathan would not give him his daughter to wife. In fact the difference between the condition of a Pathan who took to weaving on the frontier and the Rajputh who took to weaving in the Dehli Territory, would be precisely that between caste in India and social standing in Europe. The degradation would not in the case of the former be cere monial or religious, nor would it be hereditary save in the sense that the children would be born in a lower condition of life ; but the immediate and individual loss of position would be as real as among the strictest castes of the Hindus. Thus we find on the frontier men of all castes engaging from poverty or other necessity in all occupations save those of an actually degrad ing nature. Between these two extremes of the purely Mahomedan customs of the Indus and the purely Hindu customs of the Jamna we meet with a very considerable variety of intermediate conditions. Yet the change is far less gradual than might have been supposed probable, the break from Islam to Brahminism, from tribal position and freedom of occupation to the more rigid restraints of caste, taking place with some suddenness about the meridian of Lahore, where the great rivers enter the fertile zone and the arid grazing grounds of the West give place to the arable plains of the East. The submontane zone retains its social as well as its physical characteristics much further west than do the plains which lie below it, and here the artificial restrictions of caste can hardly be said to cease till the Salt-range is crossed.
Closely allied with these tribal or ethnic communities based upon identity of recent descent, is the association which binds together small colonies of foreign immigrants under names denoting little more than their origin. Such are the Purbi, the Kashmiri, the Bangali. These people have their own dis tinctions of caste and tribe in the countries whence they came. But isolation from their fellows in a land of strangers binds them together in closer union. The Purbi is a Purbi to the people of the Panjab, and nothing more ; and in many eases this looseness of classification spreads to the people themselves, and they begin to class themselves as Purbi and forget their original divisions. Examples may be found even nearer home. The Hindu is a small class on the frontier, and he is generically classed as Kirar without regard to his caste. The men of the Bâgar are strangers in the Panjab, and they are commonly known as Bâgri irrespective of whether they are Jats or Rajputs. Many more instances of similar confusion might be given. Even community of creed, where the numbers concerned are small, constitutes a bond which cannot be distinguished from that of caste. The resident Sikhs on the Peshawar frontier are a caste for all practical purposes ; while the case of the Bishnois of Hariana who are chiefly recruited from two very different castes is still more striking.
