The Lingayats are a large sect of southern India, devoted to the worship of Siva and called after the _lingam_ or phallic emblem which they wear.

They have their own priests, denying the authority of Brahmans, but the tendency now is for members of those castes which have become Lingayats to marry among themselves and retain their relative social status, thus forming a sort of inner microcosm of Hinduism.
44.

Caste occupations divinely ordained.
Occupation is the real determining factor of social status in India as in all other societies of at all advanced organisation.

But though in reality the status of occupations and of castes depends roughly on the degree to which they are lucrative and respectable, this is not ostensibly the case, but their precedence, as already seen, is held to be regulated by the degree of ceremonial purity or impurity attaching to them.

The Hindus have retained, in form at any rate, the religious constitution which is common or universal in primitive societies.