Public Administration in Ancient India c5.13

c5.13

The origin of the caste-system can be traced back to the early Vedic times,¹ but it was not until a much later period that it became well established. Intermarriages were not prohibited in early times, and famous Rishis sometimes married the daughters of kings. The division into classes in these times depended more upon occupation, character, and attainments than upon birth.¹ But as the Vedic Age glided imperceptibly into the Brahmanic Period, the caste-system was more fully organised, and by about the eighth or seventh century B.C. it became almost completely stereotyped. In the fourth century B.C., according to Megasthenes, “ no one is allowed to marry out of his own caste or to exchange one profession or trade for another, or to follow more than one business.”² This, however, was the caste-system in its simple form. In the course of time, anulom and pratilom marriages and an ever-increasing diversity of occupations gave rise to innumerable mixed castes, until there was developed that complex mass of social divergences with which we are at the present day familiar, and to which the term caste-system is now—not very properly—applied.