The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s7.9

c9.s7.9

We can watch the operation of Durkheim's principle of the "division of labour" in the processes leading to the expansion of the Vedic *viṣ* (folk). The contest between the aborigines and the Aryan immigrants had to become very intimate on account of economic necessity. The Aryans were not known anywhere in ancient times to display any great taste for manual professions.²⁴ These were relegated by the Greeks and Romans to the slaves. In India also the Aryans, established in villages as they were and practising the pastoral industry as they did, were not much moved to adopt the manual professions. These had to remain in general in the hands of the aborigines or of those classes of the population whose hybrid or questionable origin placed them in the same category. It is the arts and crafts that may be said to have contributed to a great extent to the assimilation of the new comers and the old inhabitants of the soil and therefore to have led to the impact of the materialistic, folk and democratic tendencies on the general culture.