The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c7.8

c7.8

Nowhere does the one-sidedness of Brahmanical explanation seem so manifest as in the manner in which the Indian society is shaped in priestly literature. Heedless of all reference to facts, the Brâhmaṇas built up a theory which appeared to them to establish for ever, through eternal and Divine reasons, their rule. As the foundation for their caste-theory, they made use of certain class-distinctions which, as everywhere, existed in a wholly analogous manner among the Iranians and which existed in India even in the oldest Vedic age and were transmitted to the Vedas. Here they found as a line of demarcation which was authoritative for them and which was not too circumscribed, that suggested by the opposition between the ruling classes, the priestly classes and the common people and the still sharper separation of the entire Aryan population from the peoples who were inimical to them, namely, the dasyus, who by their dark skins were distinguished from the fair conquerors, and, so far as they were subjugated, were employed in the capacity of slaves. With these distinctions of profession and race, the authors of the lawbooks made certain rules concerning religious rites and regulating marriage and food which probably had been current from ancient times in many tribes of the people and specially, in their class, and thus developed the concept ‘caste,’ whose chief characteristic they took to be that which was the most obvious mark of the four castes, namely colour (varṇa).¹