Caste and Race in India c9.18

c9.18

It may be taken to be an historical fact that peoples calling themselves "Arya" poured into India through the north-west somewhere about 2000 B.C. It is equally clear from our discussion that an institution closely akin to caste has been very often described in Sanskrit books, which are the works of either the Aryans or the Aryan-inspired aborigines. Can we trace a close connection between the immigration of the Aryans and the rise of the institution of caste? We have seen that the Brahmins, who were the moral guides and legislators of the immigrant Aryans, tried to keep their blood free from any intermixture with the lower classes, though they had no objection to the members of their own class having progeny from females of lower classes, provided these were not admitted into the Brahmin class. Can anthropometry shed any light on this aspect of caste? It appears to us that anthropometry will furnish us with a good guide, provided certain assumptions about the physical types of the Indo-Aryans and of the aborigines of Hindustan can be plausibly made.