72 Annual Address. [Feb. 



•witli the accepted order of social precedence. Mr. Risley, accordingly, 

 buses the origin of caste entirely on distinctions of race. His theory 

 is directly opposed to tliat of Mr. Nesfield, Ibbetson and others, who 

 hold that caste originsited from differences in the occupations of the 

 people. There is a third tlieoiy, the traditional one, according to which 

 caste is derived from an original fourfold divisioti of the population into 

 Brahmans, Ksatriyas, Vai9yas and Siidras. These three theories have 

 been reviewed by Mi-. E. Senart in 1896 in a little work on The Castes in 

 India. He shows that none of these theories is capable of accounting 

 for all the facts connected with caste. The essence of the latter lies 

 in restrictions with regard to connubium and commensality. Such 

 restrictions, however, are by no means confined to India, nor even to 

 Aryan races. They are kitown to have existed among Greeks, Germans, 

 Russians and other Aryan peoples ; and it is probable that they also 

 existed among the races that preceded the Aryan immigration into 

 India. It is in them that we must look for tlie key to the origin of caste 

 in India. Differences of occupation, race and religion contributed to 

 the now existing divisions of caste, but the spirit and to a large degree 

 the actual details of caste restrictions are identical with the ancient, 

 world-wide, and especially Ar^'^an, customs of restricting connubium 

 and commensality. The abatement and final removal of these restric- 

 tions among the Aryan nations of the West is due, as Mr. Senart shows, 

 to the growth of strong political and national feelings ; and it is the 

 absence of such feelings in India which probably accounts not only for 

 the continued existence, but occasional new creations of caste in this 

 country.^* 



A survey of Assam, more with reference to its early history and 

 languages, than to ethnology, was initiated by Sir Charles Lyall, K.C.S.I., 

 in 1894, under the energetic direction of Mr. E. A. Gait, who in the 

 previous year had published in the Journal of our Society an account of 

 the Koch dynasty, which formerly ruled in Western Assam and the 

 adjacent districts of Bengal. The immediate object was to make a search 

 for originals or copies of the numerous manuscript huranjis or liistories 

 which were believed to be in existence ; but incidentally copper-plate 

 inscriptions, coins, and other old records were also brought to light. 

 Several very important copper-plate grants, found in Gauhati, Nowgong, 

 and Bargaon, were made over to me by Mr Gait to be deciphered. They 

 have been published by me in our Journal, ^^ and help to clear up to some 

 extent the obscure history of Assam in the earlier middle ages. They 

 show that there were three dynasties, probably succeeding one another, 



84 See a Eeview in the Journal of the Eoyal Asiatic Society for 1897, p. 192. 

 36 See volumes LXVI and LXVII, for 1896 and 1897. 



