institution to the forefront, yet it fails to give a complete idea
of the system.

The outstanding features of Hindu society when it was
ruled by the social philosophy of caste, unaffected by the
modern ideas of rights and duties, may be discerned to be six.

(1) Segmental Division of Society : -- This caste-society was
not a more or less homogeneous community in which, what-
ever distinctions of social status may exist, they are so much
in the background that a special inquiry has to be made in
order to realize their presence, but a society in which various
groups with distinct appellations were prominent. Castes were
groups with a well-developed life of their own, the member-
ship whereof, unlike that of voluntary associations and of
classes, was determined not by selection but by birth. The
status of a person depended not on his wealth as in the classes
of modern Europe, but on the traditional importance of the
caste in which he had the luck of being born. On the distinc-
tion between caste and class, as far only as cleavage into
well-marked groups is concerned, MacIver observes: "Whereas
in eastern civilizations the chief determinant of a class and
status was birth, in the western civilization of today wealth
is a class-determinant of equal or perhaps greater importance,
and wealth is a less rigid determinant than birth: it is more
concrete, and thus its claims are more easily challenged; itself
a matter of degree, it is less apt to create distinctions of kind,
alienable, acquirable, and transferable, it draws no such
permanent lines of cleavage as does birth." ³ To restrict myself
to the Marathi-region, a person is born either a Brahmin,
Prabhu, Maratha, Vani, Sonar, Sutar, Bhandari, Chambhar,
or a Mahar, etc. If he chances to take a vocation which is
not earmarked for a particular caste -- say the military -- he
remains a casteman all the same. A Brahmin general and a
Maratha general, though of equal status in the army, belong
to two different status-groups in their private life and there
could not be any social intercourse between them on equal
terms. But this is not the case in a class-society where status
is determined by vocation and consequent income. A class has

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