Caste in India: The Facts and the System c4.4

c4.4

As regards the past, we must necessarily draw our information from literary tradition. We must, however, proceed with caution; for, as might be expected, it is strongly coloured by the mentality peculiar to India, and is dominated by the ideas and outlook of the Brahmanic class, whose schools elaborated it. This tradition is less concerned with the faithful record of facts than with their arrangement in systems conforming to the tendencies of a strongly biased group. It confuses, for example, class and caste—*varṇa* and *jāti*—and presents as the effect of an intangible dogma what is in reality due to spontaneous and infinitely complex developments. In this way it has tended to distort ideas relating to caste even amongst the most learned. The time has obviously arrived for applying to literary tradition the correctives to be found in the special conditions which governed its formation.