The purpose of this piece is to build an understanding of “Caste” as seen in the works of the Anthropologist Arthur Maurice Hocart (1883-1939). Through this article I’d be introducing Hocart’s thoughts on Caste from his book – “Caste: A comparative study” (French original ‘Les Castes’ published in 1938. Translated to English posthumously in 1950)

My introduction to A.M.Hocart’s work emerged from my reading of the philosopher-traditionalist Ananda Coomaraswamy who once said that Hocart was perhaps the only unprejudiced European sociologist who has written on caste. I agree with Coomaraswamy’s assessment of Hocart. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that Hocart’s book on caste is a must-read for anyone interested in the subject of “Caste”.

Lord Raglan says the following in introducing Hocart’s book explaining why Hocart’s theories have not been widely accepted (then and now). 

It is at present fashionable to rationalize all customs, and to write up the “economic man” to the exclusion of that far older and more widespread type, the religious man, who, though he tilled and built and reared a family, believed  that he could do these things successfully only so long as he played his allotted part in the ritual activities of his community. 

These lines were written quite a few decades ago (early 20th century). However, they continue to hold importance for our times today because we continue to look at man as merely an “economic man” alone. It is impossible to fully understand the idea of Caste within the contours of a purely economic man. One may end up with a very reductionist understanding if one were to examine the economic rationale alone. Hocart’s writing is a step in the direction of expanding the boundaries of the role of Caste in the lives of men across countries.

Hocart’s work continues to be discussed in sociology journals and humanities journals sporadically to this day. However, this article is an attempt to convey his thinking on this topic to a non-academic audience who may get benefitted from fine-tuning their understanding of caste-based on his work.

This article isn’t prescriptive about anything on caste for the current times. That is not the intention. The idea is to only understand caste as evidenced in the writings of Hocart as a commentary of how it existed in lived experiences of communities he observed in his times.

Elaborating on the theory that in a caste society one is predestined to take to his ancestral profession ‘all the time’, Hocart says the following quoting from his experience in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka):

Not all washermen wash, nor because you see a person washing are you safe in concluding that he is a washerman by caste. 

Not every man who drums is a drummer in Ceylon. You can often see women of good caste sitting around a good drum, and whiling away the idleness of a festive day with varying rhythms, but neither their sex nor their caste would officiate as public drummers at a temple, a wedding or a funeral. 

He goes on to say that this “latitude” or flexibility in professions was not because of European influence and that one could find such occurrences even in prior times including how lower caste men, washermen and others, not uncommonly became Kings. 

These observations are as valid for Ceylon of his times as they are for India of his times. Enough references can be provided for such variation in caste occupations throughout our recorded history.

Hocart also writes about inter-marriage rules and rules w.r.t outcastes in the Ceylon society of that time. He writes of how farmers would not intermarry with drummers nor eat with them and don’t even accept a drink of water from them. 

These are familiar stories one would also hear in India (to this day) but Hocart’s thesis is not a documentation of these practices but it is an attempt to try and understand the underlying principles behind such practices based on the lived experience of people of his times. Throughout the book, he also contrasts how a typical rationalist European gaze of his times would interpret such practices. 

Hocart writes the following on the ‘service’ aspect of Caste.

But what kind of service? To the European the drummers are just men who make a noise on a drum, to a native they are much more than that. This is clearly shown in the polite title by which our farmers referred to the drummers. They did not call them “drummers”, as I have rendered it, but “astrologers”. For them, clearly, drumming is not the essence, but only manifestation of that essence, the other manifestations being dancing and ceremonies known as bali. In Sanskrit, bali means an offering of food to various beings, in Pali an offering to subordinate deities and to demons, but in Ceylon it has connected itself more particularly with planets. If a man is afflicted by a planet, they make a statue of the planet, tie a string to one end and give the other end to the patient, then with appropriate ceremonies the astrologer-drummers rid him of his disease”

Drummers specialise in two directions, there are those who beat the demon drum, and those who beat the temple drum”.

A lot of us today in India think like the European above i.e., drummers are those who make a noise on a drum! We just don’t understand the world of such practices as a lot of us have lost the knack to look at matters outside of the material and economic realm. 

Hocart also contrasts between the practices of ‘musicians’ and ‘drummers’. He describes that musicians officiate at temples and auspicious occasions whereas drummers officiate at funerals or at temples where sacrifices and blood stained worship may be involved. 

In conclusion, he says, drummers are a kind of priests, and that is why they form a caste,  for priesthood is hereditary in all but a few advanced cults.

This idea of the primacy of priestly activities or rituals and heredity thereof in the context of caste runs throughout this book. He then explains how this conclusion explains the practices of other castes. 

To the European the barber is just a man who shaves others, the washerman a man who does the laundry. For a native these two mean much more than that. “Practically on every occasion,” says my first Tamil witness, “the barber and washerman will have to be present. They are called the children of the family”. When we analyse what he means by “occasions” we find that he has in mind festivals, such as weddings, funerals etc. Thus, at a Tamil wedding the musicians (Nattuvar) walk before the bride-groom, the washerman spreads clothes for the bridegroom (who for the time being is God Siva) to walk upon. In the rear, other washermen assisted by barbers sing or howl blessings and praises of which he (the bridegroom) is the subject. The barber carries the Tali or marriage necklace (equivalent of our wedding ring), and the cloth called kurai for the bride. What the bridegroom wears while he is being shaved becomes the pre-requisite of the washerman and the barber. At a funeral, the barber, the washerman, and the drummer are sent for, not the musicians….” 

“The barber prepares the fire for cremation and conducts the person who lights the fire three times round the pyre” . 

“He is like a priest on the cremation ground”

This description of washermen and barber castes above continues to be a lived reality in various degrees in many villages, towns and cities in India to this day. I can vouch for this from my own personal experience of attending a funeral in the family a few months ago in Telangana. The notice board in the cremation ground clearly calls out that depending on your customs you can call any of the following priests to preside over the cremation – Brahmin priest or Rajaka priest (Washerman) or Naayi Brahman priest (Barber) or Jangama priest or Saatani priest. 

Anyone with their feet on the ground would vouch for the diversity of these practices to this day. Whether it is good or bad is beside the point. That they exist is important to make note of. Hocart’s line from a hundred years ago that the “Barber is like a priest on the cremation ground” is true to this day. The exact functions performed may vary by caste and also by the extent of urbanization. 

Suffice to say that we are still some distance away from seeing a barber and a washerman as the European cited by Hocart. It may have happened already to some degree and many of us may not consider it as a loss or a degradation necessarily. Several may in fact hail it as progress. These are debates for a different day. Hocart’s writing however is focussed on the fact that there is a lot more to the roles performed by Washermen and Barber in the society of the past compared to the current society where such work is classified as a chore today by the economic man. In fact, today’s economic man may also go a step further to figure out ways and means to automate these functions with new technology.

Hocart also says that in Travancore one of the titles for a Barber is that of a Pranopakari i.e., one who helps souls. This indicates their priestly functions in the ceremonial aspects for various castes. He says that in native societies it is this that looms large in the minds of the people and not shaving when they think of a barber. Shaving is merely one item amongst his priestly functions. 

Continuing on this line of thought, Hocart also gives references to how potters in South India sometimes officiate as priests in temples of village goddesses and of the god Aiyanar (One can find a very detailed perspective on this in Baidyanath Saraswati’s excellent work on this topic – “Pottery-making Cultures and Indian Civilization”). 

Hocart (like Baidyanath Saraswati) talks about the ritual aspects of pottery and goes on to state that potter too is a kind of priest. He also talks of how potters do tasks that are not necessarily tied to pot making but those that deal with treating people with dislocated bones and all kinds of fractures, leaving the treatment of boils, wounds and tumours to the barbers. Again these aren’t necessarily unique insights from Hocart as anyone familiar with village society in some way or the other would attest to such practices across India. Hocart also explains tactfully how pot making and bone setting goes together in the context of the potter’s craft. 

Elaborating further, Hocart also says that one can cite instances of how carpenters make the temple car in return for grants of land and how Billava toddy drawers of South Canara officiate as priests at Devi shrines. He cites a few more examples from the Buddhist society of Ceylon of people from various “servant” castes involved in cooking, farming that multi-task in the context of various priestly responsibilities connected to the Temple of Tooth in Kandy (Ceylon/Sri Lanka).  

He states that one can go on piling such instances but cautions that science is really about discovering the underlying principles. He draws an analogy of trying to describe every apple that falls from a tree vs trying to understand the principle of gravity. At the end of all this Hocart concludes that in India every occupation is a priesthood. This is one of the foundational insights from Hocart on caste in this book. 

Further, he writes, 

In conclusion, castes are merely families to whom various offices in the ritual are assigned by heredity. 

That is merely the theory which the ancient texts have dinned into the deaf ears of nineteenth century scholars bred with a rationalistic, anti-priestly bias, these scholars have consistently rejected this theory as nothing but an invention of the priests in order to spread their tentacles through the social fabric. We have seen the theory, however, held quite as strongly by peasants and others quite free from the priestly traint. It is a popular view of caste.

He quotes from various texts including RigVeda, Manusmriti etc through the course of this argument. He talks of the ritual of initiation by which a  son is reborn as a member of his father’s caste. Hocart also emphasises the fact that this process of initiation is not fantastic theology but a common process not confined to India, but found all over the world. 

He also says that such origin myths aren’t confined to priestly classes alone and cites the origin story of a popular Telugu bangle maker caste “Balija”  – etymologically the word means “born of the sacrifice i.e., bali”. As per the origin story of the Balija caste – Goddess Parvati wasn’t satisfied with her appearance when she saw herself in the looking-glass and asks her father to tell her how she was to make herself more attractive. Her father then prays to Brahma who in turn orders him to perform a penance. And it is from this sacrificial fire kindled in connection with this penance that a man or purusha emerges along with a donkey laden with heaps of bangles, turmeric, palm leaf rolls for ears, black beads, sandal powder, a comb etc. 

Hocart says that such a myth is invariably rejected by many as historically worthless because it is physically impossible. He then explains how this can very well be possible and that it only appears impossible to us because we may know Physics but we don’t know the customs of the world!

This is so true for so many of us today who try to understand all this from a rationalistic point of view. It is simply not possible to account for all these origin stories with Physics as Hocart says!

Continuing from his experience in temple rituals in Ceylon, Hocart writes:

A barber or washerman could not come and drum at the temple, only a drummer can do so, and not every drummer, but only the descendants of those to whom the king assigned lands on a service tenure. 

He then correlates these lived experiences with what is found in the textual sources. He writes about the role played by heredity and postulates that the succession wasn’t decided purely based on heredity, but by heredity tempered by fitness.

He further states that no system can be rigid forever and survive. Elaborating on this, he writes as follows:

Some families die out, and their places have to be filled, others multiply unduly, and so cannot all be placed. A barber with twelve sons cannot find them all a barbership. On the other hand, the whole community cannot remain in a state of pollution because all the available washermen have been wiped out by a plague or by infertility. Then ambition and violence play havoc with constitutional theories. There are kings who have risen from the fourth caste. Energetic families seek to better their status. 

Again these aren’t inferences unique to Hocart. Several scholars before and after him have written about aspects of flexibility and mobility within the caste system as it was practised in reality over the years immaterial of what may be represented in some textual sources. 

Hocart also talks about various rules of exclusion and inclusion that operated within various caste groups. He states that the King as the head of the state has the power to curse and so degrade. The chieftains and the heads of various lineages (jatis) have the same power within their own jurisdiction. It is an extreme and permanent form of ex-communication, Hocart writes. 

He then goes on to compare his observations across social organizations in various societies from Greece, Egypt, Pacific Islands (Fiji, Samoa, Tonga), Persia etc. He notes several commonalities in the role played by caste and caste-like concepts, ritual, sacrifice, initiation, king, divinity etc. 

Hocart’s work on Caste cannot be understood without understanding the role of ritual in the lives of people. He himself writes beautifully on this in his book “Kings and Councillors – An essay in the comparative anatomy of the human society”

Ritual is not in good odour with our intellectuals. It is associated in their minds with a clerical movement for which most of them nurse an antipathy. They are therefore unwilling to believe that institutions which they approve of, and which seem to them so eminently practical and sensible as modern administration, should have developed out of the hokus-pokus which they deem ritual to be. In their eyes only economic interests can create anything as solid as the state. Yet if they would only look about them they would everywhere see communities banded together by interest in a common ritual; they would even find that ritual enthusiasm builds more solidly than economic ambitions, because ritual involves a rule of life whereas economics are a rule of gain, and so divide rather than unite.

As mentioned at the start of this article, this is not meant to be a prescription or recommendation on anything to do with caste for our times today. This is an attempt to explain caste through the eyes of one of the finest anthropologists of the 20th century who despite all the limitations of anthropological methods was able to understand the ways of life of many communities of his time. It is important for us (as moderns) to spend some time understanding these ideas of ritual, sacrificial duties, priesthood, priestly responsibilities and inheritance that are/were behind the conception of caste as a practice. What we do with this understanding is a different story altogether. This is only a call for introspection in the light of Hocart’s works.