ouses, the
owners of which had treated them as belonging to their own caste. [403]

It would appear also that in some cases the caste priests of different
castes have become Brahmans. Thus the Saraswat Brahmans of the Punjab
are the priests of the Khatri caste. They have the same complicated
arrangement of exogamy and hypergamy as the Khatris, and will take
food from that caste. It seems not improbable that they are really
descendants of Khatri priests who have become Brahmans. [404]

Similarly such groups as the Oswal, Srimal and Palliwal Brahmans of
Rajputana, who are priests of the subcastes of Banias of the same
name, may originally have been caste priests and become Brahmans. The
Naramdeo Brahmans, or those living on the Nerbudda River, are said to
be descendants of a Brahman father by a woman of the Naoda or Dhimar
caste; and the Golapurab Brahmans similarly of a Brahman father and
Ahir mother. In many cases, such as the island of Onkar Mandhata in
the Nerbudda in Nimar, and the Mahadeo caves at Pachmarhi, the places
of worship of the non-Aryan tribes have been adopted by Hinduism and
the old mountain or river gods transformed into Hindu deities. At
the same time it is not improbable that the tribal priests of the
old shrines have been admitted into the Brahman caste.

5. Caste subdivisions.

The Brahman caste has ten main territorial divisions, forming two
groups, the Panch-Gaur or five northern, and the Panch-Dravida or five
southern. The boundary line between the two groups is supposed to
be the Nerbudda River, which is also the boundary between Hindustan
and the Deccan. But the Gujarati Brahmans belong to the southern
group, though Gujarat is north of the Nerbudda. The five northern
divisions are:

(_a_) _Saraswat._--These belong to the Punjab and are named after
the Saraswati river of the classical period, on whose banks they are
supposed to have lived.

(_b_) _Gaur._--The home of these is the country round Delhi, but
they say that the name is from the old Gaur or Lakhnauti kingdom
of Bengal. If this is correct, it is difficult to understand how
they came from Bengal to Delhi contrary to the usual tendency of
migration. General Cunningham has suggested that Gaura was also the
name of the modern Gonda District, and it is possible that the term was
once used for a considerable tract in northern India as well as Bengal,
since it has come to be applied to all the northern Brahmans. [405]

(_c_) _Ka