Caste and Race in India c11.22

c11.22

Special rights for the higher classes and disabilities on the lower ones was almost a universal feature of class-society; and the Brahmanic theory of four castes with their rights and disabilities does not call for any special explanation. Only the practice of untouchability is peculiar to the Hindu system. It will have been clear from the history of this factor of caste, narrated in the third and fourth chapters, that the ideas of untouchability and unapproachability arose out of the ideas of ceremonial purity, first applied to the aboriginal Śūdras in connection with the sacrificial ritual and expanded and extended to other groups because of the theoretical impurity of certain occupations.