bsequently marry others of the divisions beneath his
own. In this manner the other castes originated. Thus the Kaivarttas
or Kewats were the offspring of a Kshatriya father and Vaishya mother,
and so on. Mixed marriages in the opposite direction, of a woman of
a higher caste with a man of a lower one, were reprobated as strongly
as possible, and the offspring of these were relegated to the lowest
position in society; thus the Chandals, or descendants of a Sudra
father and Brahman mother, were of all men the most base. It has been
recognised that this genealogy, though in substance the formation of
a number of new castes through mixed descent may have been correct,
is, as regards the details, an attempt made by a priestly law-giver
to account, on the lines of orthodox tradition, for a state of society
which had ceased to correspond to them.

9. Occupational theory of caste.

In the ethnographic description of the people of the Punjab, which
forms the Caste chapter of Sir Denzil Ibbetson's _Census Report_ of
1881, it was pointed out that occupation was the chief basis of the
division of castes, and there is no doubt that this is true. Every
separate occupation has produced a distinct caste, and the status of
the caste depends now mainly or almost entirely on its occupation. The
fact that there may be several castes practising such important
callings as agriculture or weaving does not invalidate this in any way,
and instances of the manner in which such castes have been developed
will be given subsequently. If a caste changes its occupation it may,
in the course of time, alter its status in a corresponding degree. The
important Kayasth and Gurao castes furnish instances of this. Castes,
in fact, tend to rise or fall in social position with the acquisition
of land or other forms of wealth or dignity much in the same manner
as individuals do nowadays in European countries. Hitherto in India
it has not been the individual who has undergone the process; he
inherits the social position of the caste in which he is born, and, as
a rule, retains it through life without the power of altering it. It
is the caste, as a whole, or at least one of its important sections
or subcastes, which gradually rises or falls in social position,
and the process may extend over generations or even centuries.

In the _Brief Sketch of the Caste System of the North-Western
Provinces and Oudh_, Mr. J.C. Nesfield puts forward the view that
the w