Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/22

 The Religion of the Veda members of the four original castes. Such marriages are now strictly taboo. Gradually, differences of occupation, trade, and profession, and, to a consider- able extent also, difference of geography, established themselves as the basis of caste distinction, until the number of castes became legi At the present time there are nearly 2000 Brahman castes alone. According to an intelligent IIindu observer of our own day' the Sarasvata Brahmins of the Panjab alone number 469 tribes; the Kshatriyas are split up into 590; the Vaiçyas and Çüdras into even more. There is a Hindustani proverb, "eight Brahmins, nine kitchens." In the matter of food and intermarriage all castes are now completely shut off one from the other. A tailor may not, as is the custom with all other peoples, invite his neighbor, an honest shoemaker, to share his humble fare. The son of the shoemaker may not woo and wed the blooming daughter of the barber. Even a minor deviation, some new trick of trade, will at once breed a new caste. In certain parts of India fisher-folk who knit the meshes of their nets from right to left may not intermarry with them that knit from left to right. In Cuttack, the most southerly district of 6 ¹ Rai Bahadur Lala Baij Nath, B.A., of the North-western Province Judicial Service, and Fellow of the University of Allahabad, in his very interesting little book, Hinduism, Ancient and Modern (Meerut, 1889), p. 9.