Note 228 — Introductory Essay on Caste (continued 2)

Members of several low castes of mixed origin will only take food with their relatives, and not with other families of the caste with whom they intermarry.228 The Chaukhutia Bhunjias will not eat food cooked by other members of the same community, and will not take it from their own daughters after the latter are married. At a feast among the Dewars uncooked food is distributed to the guests, who cook it for themselves; parents will not accept cooked food either from married sons or daughters, and each family with its children forms a separate commensal group. Thus the taking of food together is a more important and sacred tie than intermarriage. In most Hindu castes a man is not put out of caste for committing adultery with a woman of low caste, but for taking cooked food from her hands; though it is assumed that if he lives with her openly he must necessarily have accepted cooked food from her. Opium and alcoholic liquor or wine, being venerated on account of their intoxicating qualities, were sometimes regarded as substitutes for the sacrificial food and partaken of sacramentally.229