THE UNTOUCHABLES : HOW DID.... DISAPPEAR ELSEWHERE ? 285
became their kindred. [1] Mr. Seebhom gives the following rules for a non-tribesman becoming a tribesman as it was found in the Welsh village system.
(1) Residence in Cymru (Wales) according to the tradition of South Wales made the descendant of a stranger at last, a Cymru, but not until continued to the ninth generation.
(2) Intermarriage with innate Cymraeses generation after generation made the descendent of a stranger an innate Cymru in the fourth generation. In other words, the original stranger’s great grandson, whose blood was at least seven-eighths Cymric was allowed to attain the right to claim the privileges of a tribesman.
Should not such a thing have happened in India? It could have— indeed it should have. For a rule similar to that which existed in Ireland and Wales also existed in India. It is referred to by Manu. In Chapter X, verses 64-67, he says that a Shudra can be a Brahmin for seven generations (if he marries) within the Brahmin Community. The ordinary rule of Chaturvarna was that a Shudra could never become a Brahmin. A Shudra was born a Shudra and could not be made a Brahmin. But this rule of antiquity was so strong that Manu had to apply rule of Untouchability to the Shudra. It is obvious that if this rule had continued to operate in India, the Broken Men of India would have been absorbed in the village community and their separate quarters would have ceased to exist.
Why did this not happen? The answer is that the notion of Untouchability supervened and perpetuated difference between kindred and non-kindred, tribesmen and non-tribesmen in another form; namely; between Touchables and Untouchables. It is this new factor which prevented the amalgamation taking place in the way in which it took place in Ireland and Wales, with the result that the system of separate quarters has become a perpetual and a permanent feature of the Indian village.
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