[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897) › c19.1 # The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c19.1 The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c19.1 - **Language:** English ### [c19.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19.1) We have come in the course of our remarks to the lowest rungs of the social ladder. Since the days of Bernardin de St. Pierre people have always complained of the lot of the despised classes of India and thrown the responsibility for their miserable position upon the priests; people speak very often even to-day of a demon which possessed the Indian people in consequence of the caste-organisation and represent the caste as an artificial product of priestly selfishness. European travellers when they first gave us a knowledge of modern India, made the want of freedom and low position of the Parias and the rigid organisation of Indian society an object calling for expressions of pity, and ever since people became acquainted in Brahmanical literature with a one-sided representation of the social relations of ancient India, they believed, as they took the theory for the truth, to have found here the key to the origin and development of caste-life. - [Previous: c18.42](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c18.42) - [Next: c19.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19.2) - [Up: c19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19.1) · Pramāṇa