Note 14 — Chapter I

Modern development of caste. 13. As regards the castes of the present day the case is similar. Instead of castes being a clearly-defined entity, an association complete in themselves, a trade guild the doors of which are rigidly barred against the admission of strangers, they are in a constant state of flux and flow. New endogamous groups are constantly being created, the process of fission is ever in operation, and what is more important still the novus homo, like his brethren all the world over, is constantly endeavouring to force his way into a higher grade and acquire the privileges of the “twice-born.” This process is specially observable among the Gonds and other Dravidian races of the great hill country of Central India. Thus the Râj Gonds who “in appearance obstinately retain the Turanian type, in aspiration are Hindus of the Hindus, wearing the sacred cord and carrying ceremonial refinements to the highest pitch of parvenu purism. Mr. Hislop says that not content with purifying themselves, their houses, and their food, they must even sprinkle their faggots with water before using them for cooking. With all this exterior coating of the fashionable faith they seem, however, to retain an ineradicable taint of the old mountain superstitions. Some of these outwardly Brâhmanised chiefs still try to pacify the gods of their fathers for their apparent desertion of them by worshipping them in secret once every four or five years and by placing cow’s flesh to their lips, wrapped in a cloth, so as not to break too openly with the reigning Hindu divinities.”14 And Captain Forsyth writes:—“In Gondwâna numerous chiefs claim either a pure descent from Râjput houses, or more frequently admit their remote origin to have sprung from a union between some Râjput adventurer of noble blood and one of the daughters of the aborigines. Few of them are admitted to be pure Râjputs by the blue blooded chiefs of Rajasthân: but all have their bards and genealogies.”15