Page:The history of caste in India.pdf/49

 Endogamy in this case is due to vanity and want of affection between the different layers of the society. This feeling is coupled with the desire for keeping the blood pure when the pretensions of the upper layer sufficiently increase.

Nowhere are the different orders of society more distinctly separated from each other than in the South Sea Islands. In the Mariami group it was the common belief that only the nobles were endowed with an immortal soul and a nobleman who married a girl of the people was punished with death. In. Polynesia the commoners were looked upon by the nobility as a different species of being. Hence in the higher ranks the marriage was concluded only with persons of corresponding positions; and if in Tahiti, a woman of condition chose an inferior person as a husband the children he had by her were killed.

But let us not take all the instances from barbarous times and barbarous peoples. Let us take the case of civilized nations in Europe. In Sweden in the seventeenth century marriages outside the class were punished. According to the German civil law the marriage of a man belonging to the high nobility with a woman of inferior birth is still regarded as disparaging and the woman is not entitled to the rank of her husband nor is the full right of inheritance possessed by her or her children.

Another characteristic of the caste system is hierarchy. The feeling of superiority and inferiority either is a cause of endogamy or even a result thereof. A race of people which regards itself as superior to another will not intermarry with one that is thought inferior. Con-