DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16243#0301
THE ORIGIN OK CASTE
267
of place here : the main object of this chapter is to lay stress
on precisely those factors of evolution which Mr. Nesfield
ignores ; but I may observe that a theory which includes in the
same categories the Dom and the Teli, the Banjara and the
Khatri, the Bhangi and the Kayasth must, in the race for accept-
ance, lose a good deal of ground at the start.
After examining the views propounded by Sir Denzil
Ibbetson and Mr. Nesfield, and by myself t.
■ -n, ,„ , - , L , », ■„ M. Senart's theory.
in / he Tribes and Castes of Bengal, M. Senart
passes on to formulate his own theory of the origin of taste.
In his view caste is the normal development of ancient Aryan
institutions, which assumed this form in the struggle to adapt
themselves to the conditions with which they came into contact
in India. In developing this proposition he relies greatly upon
the general parallelism that may be traced between the social
organization of the Hindus and that of the Greeks and Romans
ln the earlier stages of their national development. He points
°ut the close correspondence that exists between the three
series of groups—gens, curia, tribe at Rome ; family, fparpla, <f>vM
in Greece; and family, gotra, caste in India.* Pursuing the
subject into fuller detail, he seeks to show from the records of
classical antiquity that the leading principles which underlie
the caste system form part of a stock of usage and tradition
common to all branches of the Aryan people. In the depart-
ment of marriage, for example, the Athenian yivog and the
Roman gens present striking resemblances to the Indian gotra.
We learn from Plutarch that the Romans never married a
woman of their own kin, and among the matrons who figure in
classical literature none bears the same gentile name as her
husband. Nor was endogamy unknown. At Athens in the
time of Demosthenes membership of a fyparpla was confined to
the offspring of the families belonging to the group. In Rome,
the long struggle of the plebeians to obtain the/«s connubii with
Patrician women belongs to the same class of facts; and the
Patricians, according to M. Senart, were guarding the endog-
amous rights of their order—or should we not rather say the
hypergamous rights, for in Rome, as in Athens, the primary duty
of marrying a woman of equal rank did not exclude the possi-
bility of union with women of humbler origin, foreigners or
liberated slaves. Their children, like those of a Sudra in the
1*1(1.
of h assum?i with Senart, that the family system was the basis of caste is difficult in face
the latc appearance of words for family and of stress on family." A. A. Macdonell, A.
• Keith, Vtdic Index of Names and Subjects, 1912, I, 2S1 et sea.]
267
of place here : the main object of this chapter is to lay stress
on precisely those factors of evolution which Mr. Nesfield
ignores ; but I may observe that a theory which includes in the
same categories the Dom and the Teli, the Banjara and the
Khatri, the Bhangi and the Kayasth must, in the race for accept-
ance, lose a good deal of ground at the start.
After examining the views propounded by Sir Denzil
Ibbetson and Mr. Nesfield, and by myself t.
■ -n, ,„ , - , L , », ■„ M. Senart's theory.
in / he Tribes and Castes of Bengal, M. Senart
passes on to formulate his own theory of the origin of taste.
In his view caste is the normal development of ancient Aryan
institutions, which assumed this form in the struggle to adapt
themselves to the conditions with which they came into contact
in India. In developing this proposition he relies greatly upon
the general parallelism that may be traced between the social
organization of the Hindus and that of the Greeks and Romans
ln the earlier stages of their national development. He points
°ut the close correspondence that exists between the three
series of groups—gens, curia, tribe at Rome ; family, fparpla, <f>vM
in Greece; and family, gotra, caste in India.* Pursuing the
subject into fuller detail, he seeks to show from the records of
classical antiquity that the leading principles which underlie
the caste system form part of a stock of usage and tradition
common to all branches of the Aryan people. In the depart-
ment of marriage, for example, the Athenian yivog and the
Roman gens present striking resemblances to the Indian gotra.
We learn from Plutarch that the Romans never married a
woman of their own kin, and among the matrons who figure in
classical literature none bears the same gentile name as her
husband. Nor was endogamy unknown. At Athens in the
time of Demosthenes membership of a fyparpla was confined to
the offspring of the families belonging to the group. In Rome,
the long struggle of the plebeians to obtain the/«s connubii with
Patrician women belongs to the same class of facts; and the
Patricians, according to M. Senart, were guarding the endog-
amous rights of their order—or should we not rather say the
hypergamous rights, for in Rome, as in Athens, the primary duty
of marrying a woman of equal rank did not exclude the possi-
bility of union with women of humbler origin, foreigners or
liberated slaves. Their children, like those of a Sudra in the
1*1(1.
of h assum?i with Senart, that the family system was the basis of caste is difficult in face
the latc appearance of words for family and of stress on family." A. A. Macdonell, A.
• Keith, Vtdic Index of Names and Subjects, 1912, I, 2S1 et sea.]