The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.s1.1

v1.c15.s1.1

The caste-system is the outcome of a long process of social differentiation to which the initial impulse was given by the introduction of a higher civilisation into regions occupied by peoples in a lower stage of culture. The Āryan settlers, as represented by the sacrificial hymns of the Rigveda, were both intellectually and materially advanced. Their language, their religion, and their social institutions were of the Indo-European type like those of the ancient Persians of the Avesta and the Greeks of the Homeric poems; and they were skilled in the arts and in the working of metals.