Page:The history of caste in India.pdf/48

 as a romance, and people feel like writing a novel or an invective when such a case may occur.

The greatest number of castes which do not marry with each other are simply tribes converted into castes. The tribes when they were converted into castes were often fighting with each other in the early days, when the seed of caste distinction was sown. At present the various tribes and castes feel strong repulsion against one another, and this fact is a clear manifestation of our present savagery. What I say is very humiliating but it is nevertheless true. One subdivision of a caste feels strong repulsion to another subdivision, because among the latter the use of tobacco is customary; two sections of one caste do not intermarry and feel strong repulsion for each other because they use different kinds of shoes; two castes refuse to marry with each other to-day because their forefathers at one time quarreled over the boundaries of the village or over certain other questions, important or foolish. The primitive nations always have a very strong dislike for one another. "Savage nations are subdivided into an infinity of tribes which, bearing a cruel hatred toward each other, form no intermarriages, even when their language springs from the same root and only a small arm of a river, or a group of hills, separates their habitations."

The castes are not simply developed tribes. Classes are converted into castes by becoming endogamous. Sometimes a section of the society becoming a hereditary class like the Brahmins and desiring to become exclusive does not deign to marry outside the class.