is
given in Harleian MS. 2034 (f. 208) at the British Museum (before 1688)
with a pencil sketch which tallies very well with the above. The MS. is
by Randle Holme and forms part of the _Academy of Armoury_. Castanets
([Greek: krotala]) were used by the ancient Greeks, and also by the
Romans (Lat. _crotalum, crotala_) to accompany the dances in the
Dionysiac and Bacchanalian rites.

CASTE (through the Fr. from Span, and Port, _casta_, lineage, Lat.
_castus_, pure). There are not many forms of social organization on a
large scale to which the name "caste" has not been applied in a good or
in a bad sense. Its Portuguese origin simply suggests the idea of
family; but before the word came to be extensively used in modern
European languages, it had been for some time identified with the
Brahmanic division of Hindu society into classes. The corresponding
Hindu word is _varna_, or colour, and the words _gati, kula, gotra,
pravara_ and _karana_ are also used with different shades of meaning.
Wherever, therefore, a writer has seen something which reminds him of
any part of the extremely indeterminate notion, Indian caste, he has
used the word, without regard to any particular age, race, locality or
set of social institutions. Thus Palgrave[1] maintains that the colleges
of operatives, which inscriptions prove to have existed in Britain
during the Roman period, were practically castes, because by the
Theodosian code the son was compelled to follow the father's employment,
and marriage into a family involved adoption of the family employment.
But these _collegia opificum_ seem to be just the forerunners of the
voluntary associations for the regulation of industry and trade, the
frith-gilds, and craft-gilds of later times, in which, no doubt, sons
had great advantages as apprentices, but which admitted qualified
strangers, and for which intermarriage was a matter of social feeling.
The history of the formation of gilds shows, in fact, that they were
really protests against the authoritative regulation of life from
without and above. In the Saxon period, at any rate, there was nothing
resembling caste in the strict sense. "The ceorl who had thriven so well
as to have five hides of land rose to the rank of a thegn; his wergild
became 1200 shillings; the value of his oath and the penalty of trespass
against him increased in proportion; his descendants in the third
generation became gesithcund. Nor was the character of the thrivi