The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c19.3

c19.3

The social organisation of ancient India which appears to us very strange, nay, even monstrous, in the form in which we find it in the Brahmanical lawbooks in which it is made into an unalterable system, shows itself in reality as the necessary development of conditions imposed by ethnical and cultural distinctions. Instead of the four strictly isolated castes of the Brahmanical system and the mixed castes arising from their combination, we notice a number of essentially distinct social groups which in the majority of cases cannot properly be called "castes," in which, however, we see the first germs and beginnings of an organisation of the modern type. A caste in the sense of their own theory only the Brâhmaṇas form; other groups, like the ruling class of Khattiyas, the class of royal officers, the leading middleclass families have particular characteristics in common with the *jâti* of the Brâhmaṇas; they cannot, however, lay any claim to the designation "caste," because they lack the essential characteristics of this; the same is true of the rest of the *jâtis* which are sharply distinguished from the great mass of the people, such as the guilds of tradesmen and artisans, the lower professions, the despised and shunned races. All these *jâtis*—and in this the Indian society of that time have their own peculiar, specifically Indian stamp—are hereditary and to go out of the circle fixed by birth is impossible, according to the rules.