Two main divisions of the village community may be recognised in the Vaishyas or cultivators and the Sudras or impure serfs and labourers.

The exact position held by the Kshatriyas and the constitution of their class are not quite clear, but there is no doubt that the Brahmans and Kshatriyas formed the early aristocracy, ranking above the cultivators, and a few other castes have since attained to this position.

From early times, as is shown by an ordinance of Manu, men of the higher castes or classes were permitted, after taking a woman of their own class for the first wife, to have second and subsequent wives from any of the classes beneath them.

This custom appears to have been largely prevalent.

No definite rule prescribed that the children of such unions should necessarily be illegitimate, and in many cases no doubt seems to exist that, if not they themselves, their descendants at any rate ultimately became full members of the caste of the first ancestor.