| || | ||Lohâr | 66·2 || | | || | ||Kol | 66·1 || | | || | ||Thâru | 65·9 || | | || | ||Dom | 65·7 || | | || | ||Khatri | 65·5 || | =============================++======================++========================++======================= “It thus appears that in Bengal the Brâhman is at one end of the scale and the cultivated Kâyasth at the other, whilst at the top of the Bihâr list the fisherman, priest, farm labourer, landlord and cowherd are in close proximity. In the North-Western Provinces the Kshatriya, the Râjput soldier and the Khatri, the Râjput trader, stand at opposite extremes; rat-catchers, carpenters, dancing women, cultivators, toddy-drawers and priests coming in between. No evidence could be more convincing, if anthropometry has any meaning. The Indian races and tribes in the valley of the Ganges from the Afghân frontier to the Bay of Bengal are so absolutely intermingled in blood, that it is impossible to discriminate between the skull characteristics of the castes or functional guilds which have grown up under later Brâhmanical usage.” CHAPTER III. THE OCCUPATIONAL FORM OF CASTE. [Caste based on occupation.] We have thus mainly on the evidence from anthropometry endeavoured to establish the fact that, as we find the existing population, the theory of the ethnological basis of caste must be to a great extent abandoned. We have then to search for some other solution of the question of the origin of our present castes. This can only be found in community of function or occupation. The most able advocate of this theory is Mr. J. C. Nesfield. [25] To use his words:—“The bond of sympathy or interest which first drew together the families or tribal fragments, of which a caste is composed, was not, as some writers have alleged, community of creed or community of kinship, but community of function. Function, and function only, as I think, was the foundation upon which the whole caste system of India was built up.”