India, Its Life and Thought. John P. Jones
occupation! He felt that he and his were ground between the upper and nether millstones. To suggest to him that they even change the kind or style of article which they prepared upon their looms for the market would have been equally impossible. Out in the villages, where these people live, it would seem almost as absurd for the weaver to become a carpenter as for the weaver who uses only cotton thread to become a silk-weaver, or for those who weave coarse white cloths to produce the finer coloured cloths worn by the women. No; for generations their people have given themselves to the production of only one article. "It is the custom of our people" is the final word. And what has become customary is by caste enactment made obligatory. And woe be to him who defies caste. And thus the caste-prescribed trade becomes the be-all and the end-all of life.
These four—the connubial, the convivial, the contactual, and the occupational—are the constant factors of the caste existence and activity in India. But in addition to these, caste takes other functions and assumes other forms in certain localities and under certain circumstances. Definite forms of religious observance are often enjoined, certain places of pilgrimage are sanctioned, marriage forms prescribed, marriage obligations defined, divorce made possible or impossible, and the limit of marriage expenses set. There is hardly a department of life or a duty which men owe to their dead which does not enter the domain of caste legislation somewhere or other.
A strange and very interesting peculiarity of certain castes is their totemistic aspect. This characteristic has only recently been discovered. "At the bottom of the social system, as understood by the average Hindu, we find, in the Dravidian region of India, a large body of tribes and castes each of which is broken up into a number of totemistic septs. Each sept bears the name of an animal, a tree, a plant, or some material object, natural or artificial, which the members of that sept are prohibited from tilling, eating, cutting, burning, carrying, using, etc." (See Census of 1901, Vol. II, pp. 530–535.)
Mr. J. G. Frazer, in the Fortnightly Review, gives the following description of the totem: "A totem is a class of natural phenomena or material objects—most commonly a species of animals or plants—between which and himself the savage believes that a certain intimate relation exists. … This relation leads the savage to abstain from killing or eating his totem, if it happen to be a species of animal or plant. Further, the group of persons who are knit to any particular totem by this mysterious tie commonly bear the name of the totem, believe themselves to be of one blood, and strictly refuse to sanction the marriage or cohabitation of members of the group with each other. This prohibition to marry within the group is now generally called by the name Exogamy. Thus totemism has commonly been treated as a primitive system, both of religion and of society."
In absorbing the Dravidian tribes, Brahmanism appropriated the totemistic cult and incorporated it into the caste system. And many Dravidian castes which are identified with this cult have the striking peculiarity of being exogamous as contrasted with the endogamy of the Aryan section of Hindu castes.
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