Page:The tribes and castes of the Central Provinces of India (IA tribescastesofce01russ).pdf/40

 divisions and bars their intermarriage; and the real unit of the system and the basis of the fabric of Indian society is this endogamous group or subcaste.

The subcastes, however, connote no real difference of status or occupation. They are little known cxccpt within the caste itself, and they consist of groups within the caste which marry among themselves, and attend the communal feasts held on the occasions of marriages, funerals and meetings of the caste panchayat or committee for the judgment of offences against the casto rules and their expiation by a penalty feast; to these feasts all male adults of the community, within a certain area, are invited. In the Central Provinces the 250 groups which have been classified as castes contain perhaps 2000 subcastes, Except in some cases other Hindus do not know a man's subcaste, though they always know his caste; among the ignorant lower castes men may often be found who do not know whether their caste contains any subcastes or whether they themselves belong to one. That is, they will cat and marry with all the members of their caste within a circle of villages, but know nothing about thc caste outside those villages, or cven whether it exists clsewhere. One subdivision of a caste may look down upon another on the ground of some difference of occupation, of origin, or of abstaining from or partaking of soine article of food, but thcsc distinctions are usually con- fined to their internal relations and seldom rccognised by outsiders. For social purposes the caste consisting of a number of these endogamous groups generally occupics the same position, determined roughly according to the respect- ability of its traditional occupation or extractioni.

No adequate definition of caste can thus be obtained from community of occupation or intermarriage; nor would it be accurate to say that every one must know his own caste and that all the different names returned at the census may be taken as distinci. In the Central Provinces about 900 caste- names were returned at the census of 1901, and these were reduced in classification to about 250 proper castes.

In some cases synonyms are commonly used. The caste of pin or betcl-vine growers and sellers is known indifferently as Barai, l'ansāri or Tamboli The great caste