Gradually these grand divisions became divided into sections or social groups.  Trades, professions, tribes and clans, and particularly those who worshiped the same god, naturally drifted together and were watchful of their mutual interests.  As there are as many gods in the Hindu pantheon as there are inhabitants of India, these religious associations are very numerous.  Occupation is not a sign of caste.  Every caste, and particularly the Brahmins, have members in every possible occupation.  Nearly every cook in India is a Brahmin, which is a matter of almost imperative necessity, because no man can partake of food cooked or even touched by persons of lower caste.  The Brahmins are also more numerous than any other caste.  According to the recent census they number 14,888,000, adult men only being counted.  The soldier caste numbers more than 10,000,000, the farmer caste and the leather workers have nearly as many.  Nearly 20 per cent of the population of India is included in those four castes, and there are forty or fifty sub-castes, each having more than 1,000,000 members.

There are more than 1,800 groups of Brahmins, who have become so numerous and so influential that they are found everywhere.  The number in the public service is very large, representing about 35 per cent of the entire mass of employes of the government in every capacity and station, and they have the largest proportion of educated men.  It is a popular delusion that every Brahmin is a priest, when the fact is that they are so numerous that not more than a small percentage is employed in religious functions.  But for more than 2,000 years they have maintained their superiority unchallenged.  This is not only due to their pretensions, but to their intellectual force.  They have been the priests, the writers, the rulers, the legislators of all India, because of their force of character and mental attainments, and will always preserve their supremacy through the same forces that enabled them to acquire it.

The laws of caste, as explained by Mr. Shoshee Chunder Dutt, the Hindu writer referred to above, provide: 

1.  That individuals cannot be married who do not belong to the same caste.

2.  That a man may not sit down to eat with another who is not of his own caste.

3.  That his meals must be cooked either by persons of his own caste or a Brahmin.

4.  That no man of an inferior caste is to touch his cooked rations, or the dishes in which they are served, or even to enter his cook room.

5.  That no water or other liquid contaminated by the touch of a man of inferior caste can be made use of—­rivers, tanks and other large sheets of water being, however, held to be incapable of defilement.

6.  That articles of dry food, excepting rice, wheat, etc., do not become impure by passing through the hands of a man of inferior caste so long as they remain dry, but cannot be taken if they get wet or greased.