Note 176 — Introductory Essay on Caste (continued 2)

Dr. Westermarck’s view that the origin of exogamy lay in the feeling against the marriage of persons who lived together, receives support from the fact that a feeling of kinship still subsists between Hindus living in the same village, even though they may belong to different castes and clans. It is commonly found that all the households of a village believe themselves in a manner related. A man will address all the men of the generation above his own as uncle, though they may be of different castes, and the children of the generation below his own as niece and nephew. When a girl is married, all the old men of the village call her husband ‘son-in-law.’ This extends even to the impure castes who cannot be touched. Yet owing to the fact that they live together they are considered by fiction to be related. The Gowāri caste do not employ Brāhmans for their weddings, but the ceremony is performed by the bhānja or sister’s son either of the girl’s father or the boy’s father. If he is not available, any one whom either the girl’s father or the boy’s father addresses as bhānja or nephew in the village, even though he may be no relation and may belong to another caste, may perform the ceremony as a substitute. Among the Oraons and other tribes prenuptial intercourse between boys and girls of the same village is regularly allowed. It is not considered right, however, that these unions should end in marriage, for which partners should be sought from other villages.176 In the Marātha country the villagers have a communal feast on the occasion of the Dasahra festival, the Kunbis or cultivators eating first and the members of the menial and labouring castes afterwards.