War in Ancient India c4.s6.t1.1

c4.s6.t1.1

The ancient Hindu society was a caste society. By this we mean a system of social organisation, the framework of which is without any parallel in the social institutions of the world. The whole community was divided into four distinct groups (*varṇas*) governed by different customs and rules which are still in force in India. Separate occupations were assigned to each of these groups, to be followed hereditarily, though cases of lapses were not infrequent. But occupation did not form the basis of caste, though in theory it marked one group from another. Nor was race the basis of caste, as Risley would have it.⁷ It was the natural outcome of social conditions which have been shaping themselves from primitive times. This is clear from the relation in which caste stands to the ancient family institution. It is the direct outcome of a system derived from a more or less spontaneous partition, where neither class-hierarchy nor theocracy played a significant role. Senart rightly says: ‘The system under which India has lived is not purely an economic organisation of trades nor a chaos of strange and hostile tribes and races, nor again a simple class-hierarchy, but a mingling of all these, united by the common inspiration which dominates the functioning of all the groups, and by the community of characteristic ideas and prejudices which govern their order of precedence.’⁸