Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c47.s1.2

c47.s1.2

§ 14. **Caste.** It is with the latter, however, that this review is mainly concerned, and the only object of the above remarks is to differentiate the organisation of, so to speak, the pure races of India from that of the great mass of the population. Amid the bewildering variety of the complicated civilisation of this last the one and only characteristic which can be said to be universal is the sentiment which underlies the scheme of life upon which the whole of the social edifice is based and its component parts are respectively distinguished and coordinated. This sentiment, moreover, may be said to be the very spinal cord of the main religion of the country, supplying the vitality and support which neither doctrine nor ritual are sufficiently coherent to provide. By its means, Brāhmanism has become, as has been said by a competent observer, “a way of life, “interwoven into the whole of existence and society; placing every natural habit and duty upon a religious basis so entirely that it is impossible “for a Brāhmanist to draw a distinction between sacred and profane. A “man’s religion means his customary rule of every-day life. His whole “social identity belongs to his religion”. (Lyall, Asiatic Studies.) This omnipresence of the religious sanction and the rigidity which it imparts to diversity elsewhere susceptible of diminution or effacement is not only the most prominent feature of the social organisation of India, but is also peculiar to the latter, marking it out as distinct from any other civilisation in the world. In other respects, there is little in the system which is not to be found, or which has not at some time or other existed, in other countries, even of the West, though it has there been long ago worn away by other influences. The crystallisation of certain bodies into definite orders or classes, for instance, is a common, almost a universal, trait, and amongst them the tendency to become hereditary and as exclusive or aspiring as circumstances allow may almost be called natural. A superior and conquering race, again, has been known elsewhere to settle for generations alongside of a population in every way inferior to it, compelling the latter into servile conditions and drawing upon it for wives and concubines without making any return in kind. Sacerdotalism, too, has had its day of supremacy elsewhere than in India. Restrictions in regard to the choice of a wife and upon participation in meals of a commemorative or other ritualistic significance, are, of course, common property. But in no other case has the position of a sacerdotal class been so firmly established nor has its influence so deeply permeated the whole of a vast community, as to enable it to prescribe, under the sanction of religion, a code of elaborate prescriptions on domestic and personal conduct which is accepted by all as the ideal, according to the relative conformity with which the rank of every group of the society, from top to bottom, is unalterably settled. A system of this description, which, practically unchanged in its main principles, has for many centuries regulated the lives of millions; which is absorbing every generation more and more of the tribal population of a lower type brought into contact with it, and which has not only successfully resisted, but has even been to a great extent assimilated by so dogmatic and uncompromising a rival as Islām, must obviously have its roots very deep indeed in the proclivities and traditions of the multitudes living under it.