as possible, or it may be content with a varna of lower standing. We see such facts now and we have no reason to suppose that they were any different at the times of our writer.[1]
To-day a person cannot go into a higher caste, but may fall from a high station, or a person may lose his caste and may mingle in disappointment among lower castes, which are not very particular about the matter. These phenomena probably existed in the period under consideration. I have already given the quotation where a list of Kshatriya castes are spoken of having suffered in status by not consulting Brāhmana.
People belonging to the category of those who suffered in status were of different varieties. There were those who fell on account of their mixing with low castes or of neglect of sacred rites. There were also
- ↑ The conditions in the United States supply us with a parallel. There are laws in Southern and Western States preventing marriages between whites and other races. The laws define that a person who has one-eighth or more colored blood in him is a colored person and may not marry with a white person. This is a positive statute and not moral law (dharma). But facts are entirely different from those stated in the law; the mulattoes try to snuggle themselves into white society as soon as they can, and in many cases they do so successfully, before they have more than seven-eighths of white blood in them. (Some negro students in Cornell and Harvard Universities told me that they know several cases of young beautiful mulatto women Marrying white men without revealing to them their real composition). The sentiment in the white community is extremely strong against marrying with persons who have one drop of negro blood in them. Though law would permit a white man to marry a negro woman who had less than one-eighth of negro blood, a white man of respectability would not marry a woman who has any at all. The important fact is that the prevention of mixed marriage depends not on the degree of previous intermixture, but on the knowledge or ignorance of the blemish.
