Caste and Race in India c11.6

c11.6

was developed in the Gangetic plain. We therefore conclude that some of the important aspects of caste originated in this region. The data of physical anthropology of the present day population of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, analysed in the fifth chapter, corroborate this view. Caste in India then must be regarded as a brahmanic child of the Indo-Aryan culture, cradled in the land of the Ganges and thence transferred to other parts of India by the Brahmin-prospectors. That the spread of the Indo-Aryan culture outside Hindustan must have been largely the work of individual Brahmins or of small batches of Brahmin preachers, is clear from the legends about Agastya, who is regarded amongst the Tamils as the pioneer of their culture. The picture of Brahmin sages, maintaining small colonies in the then forested parts of South India, preserved in the Rāmāyaṇa is another indication of the same fact. Memories preserved in the Pāli work, the Sutta Nipāta, in the story of the Brahmin sage Bāvari also point in the same direction. On the basis of this hypothesis the following genesis of the origins of the various factors of caste is clearly warranted by the data adduced in the preceding chapters.