There exists in the Punjab and Rajputana at the present day, a definite physical type, represented by the Jars and the Rajputs, which is marked by a relatively long (dolico-cephalic) head; a straight, finely cut (leptorrhine) nose; a long, symmetrically narrow face; a well-developed forehead, regular features, and a high facial angle. The stature is high and the general build of the figure is well proportioned, being relatively massive in the Jats and relatively slender in the Rajputs. Throughout the group the predominant color of the skin is a very light transparent brown, with a tendency towards darker shades in the lower social strata. . . . [On the other hand, in the Dravidian type] their low stature, black skin, long heads, broad noses, and relatively long forearm distinguish them from the rest of the population, and appear at first sight to confirm Huxley’s surmise that they may be related to the aborigines of Australia.¹

Now the word "caste" has been reserved for the Hindu situation but the beginning of a social hierarchization resembling it is always found when groups of greatly contrasted physical appearance come together. There is first a "race prejudice" ranking one of the groups higher and the other lower, and there is further a gradation between high and low of the descendants of mixed marriages or loose sexual unions. In America at present the social distance between the "high brown" and the black is about as great as between the white and the black, and in the colored population the tensions and avoidances between shades of complexion and degrees of social position are, if anything, more acute and complete than those between different classes of the white population.

The reverse situation, where migrants from a superior group penetrate an inferior culture, is illustrated by the case of the so-called bastards of Rehoboth and other settlements in Africa containing the descendants of Boer fathers and African mothers. As the Boers expanded northward they sometimes married Hottentot girls, often rich in cattle, and at present, after several generations, there is a rigid aristocracy of the fairer and wealthier families, who seek to rise even higher by marrying their daughters to Europeans. There is no intermarriage with families of the lower classes, and the men of these classes even continue to marry African women, thus perpetuating the marks of social distance.²

¹Risleyn/an/an/an/an/an/a, , 508.

² Fischer, E., Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen, 236–237.