A History of Sanskrit Literature c10.22

c10.22

Hand in hand with the elaboration of the sacrificial ceremonial went the growth and consolidation of the caste system, in which the Brahmans secured the social as well as the religious supremacy, and which has held India enchained for more than two thousand five hundred years. Not only do we find the four castes firmly established as the main divisions of Indian society in the *Yajurveda*, but, as one of the later books of the *Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā* shows, most of the mixed castes known in later times are already found to exist. The social as well as the religious conditions of the Indian people, therefore, now wear an aspect essentially differing from those revealed to us in the hymns of the *Rigveda*.