freedom in the
choice of occupations afforded by the British Government, coupled with
the rapid progress of industry and the spread of education. So far it
has had no very markedly disintegrating effect on the caste system,
and the status of a caste is still mainly fixed by its traditional
occupation; but signs are not wanting of a coming change. Again,
several castes have the same traditional occupation; about forty of
the castes of the Central Provinces are classified as agriculturists,
eleven as weavers, seven as fishermen, and so on. Distinctions of
occupation therefore are not a sufficient basis for a classification
of castes. Nor can a caste be simply defined as a body of persons who
marry only among themselves, or, as it is termed, an endogamous group;
for almost every important caste is divided into a number of subcastes
which do not marry and frequently do not eat with each other. But it
is a distinctive and peculiar feature of caste as a social institution
that it splits up the people into a multitude of these 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.

5. The subcaste.

The subcastes, however, connote no real difference of status or
occupation. They are little known except 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 caste 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 eat and marry with all the members of their caste within
a circle of villages, but know nothing about the caste outside those
villages, or even whether it exists elsewhere. 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 some
article of food, but t