are
scarcely found in the category of those entailing punishment. Murder
must sometimes be expiated by a pilgrimage to the Ganges, but other
criminal offences against the person and property are not taken
cognisance of by the caste committee unless the offender is sent
to jail. Both in its negative and positive aspects the category
of offences affords interesting deductions on the basis of the
explanation of the caste system already given. The reason why there
is scarcely any punishment for offences against ordinary morality is
that the caste organisation has never developed any responsibility
for the maintenance of social order and the protection of life and
property. It has never exercised the function of government, because
in the historical Hindu period India was divided into large military
states, while since then it has been subject to foreign domination. The
social organisation has thus maintained its pristine form, neither
influenced by the government nor affording to it any co-operation or
support. And the aims of the caste tribunal have been restricted to
preserving its own corporate existence free from injury or pollution,
which might arise mainly from two sources. If a member's body was
rendered impure either by eating impure food or by contact with a
person of impure caste it became an unfit receptacle for the sacred
food eaten at the caste feast, which bound its members together in
one body. This appears to be the object of the rules about food. And
since the blood of the clan and of the caste is communicated by descent
through the father under the patriarchal system, adultery on the part
of a married woman would bring a stranger into the group and undermine
its corporate existence and unity. Hence the severity of the punishment
for the adultery of a married woman, which is a special feature of
the patriarchal system. It has already been seen that under the rule
of female descent, as shown by Mr. Hartland in _Primitive Paternity_,
the chastity of women was as a rule scarcely regarded at all or even
conceived of. After the change to the patriarchal system a similar
laxity seems to have prevailed for some period, and it was thought
that any child born to a man in his house or on his bed was his own,
even though he might not be the father. This idea obtained among the
Arabs, as pointed out by Professor Robertson Smith in _Kinship and
Marriage in Early Arabia_, and is also found in the Hindu classics,
and to