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Caste in India: The Facts and the System c5: Preface

Caste in India: The Facts and the System c5

Language
English

Preface

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THIS is merely a sketch; I shall not burden it with a long preface.

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In writing so short a study on a subject that is so vast and has given birth to so many weighty tomes, my special aim has been to discover in what light the religious and literary tradition of India appears where caste is concerned.

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It will be readily understood how much such an inquiry excites my curiosity as an Indianist, more especially if it is true, as I believe, that in the outward manifestation of this tradition are to be found all the essential characteristics of caste. The elucidation of these characteristics is of the utmost importance for the proper understanding of India’s past.

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I know how dangerous it is to discuss purely general ideas when dealing with particular facts: to do so is too ambitious in one who aims at strictly accurate conclusions; and too vague if we wish to keep strictly within the bounds of our imperfect knowledge. We lay ourselves open to the criticism both of those fortunate persons who are ready to accept, unquestioning, ready-made formulae, and of the hasty judge who will accept nothing short of an absolute decision. Obviously, it is well to proceed with caution.

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I was therefore resolved not to reprint this study without strengthening it by some brief observations on other aspects of the religious life of India, by which I hoped to produce a stronger array of convincing proofs. I have been obliged to postpone this project. In reprinting this fragment, which is of necessity somewhat isolated, I have not felt justified in discussing in full detail the picture as it presents itself to me.

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The Vedic hymns are composed in a language very much older than that of all the other books; the sacerdotal literature, ancient Brāhmaṇas and Upanishads, is in its grammar, vocabulary, and style intermediate between the idiom of the hymns and the language of epic poetry, which in its turn is differentiated by slight shades of archaism from the classic Sanskrit of the Śāstras and of the Purāṇas. So much is undisputed; and this literary chronology remains an indispensable basis for research. But does it warrant all the conclusions that have been deduced from it?

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Vedism in its twofold expression, hymns and sacerdotal literature, Buddhism and Hinduism, are taken as strictly successive evolutions, the one begetting, or at least determining, the other. Vedism is interpreted as the complete exponent

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of religious life in ancient times; Brahmanic Hinduism as the legitimate descendant of purely Vedic elements, originating, perhaps, in a reaction against Buddhism, which was probably itself nothing more than the reaction of personal initiative against the dominant Vedism. Such is the formula which, although it has by implication often been shaken, and even at times contradicted, is still generally accepted. But I fear that it gravely distorts the perspective of the past.

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Long ago I proved to my own satisfaction, by means of evidence all the more precious because dates are so rare, namely by a close analysis of the essential features of the Buddha legend, not, as I have too often been made to say, that the Buddha never existed, or that he was no more than a solar or meteorological myth, a doublet of Indra or Apollo, but that an epic legend had very early crystallized around his name. I pointed out also that this legend, which had not been created for him, but which he had inherited, was, whatever interpretation may be put upon it, mystical in its nature; that it was only transferred to him because it had formerly been associated with ancient gods or heroes, and contained certain features which could be easily applied to a new titular of human and historic origin, transfigured by the pious zeal of his followers. It follows that the divine types of Hinduism and several of its essential ideas necessarily must date back much farther than people seemed disposed to admit when my book appeared, and that the origins of Hinduism were more remote and more independent than was generally supposed. This theory has since gained ground, and I cannot help congratulating myself on having been among the first to give it shape and thus to make it known to thinking people. It finds, I think, fresh confirmation in the study of the caste system.

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Let us now consider what is, briefly, the prevailing theory, even among the best informed, of its origin. There is no allusion to caste in the Vedic hymns; it did not exist therefore at the period when these were composed. Its beginnings are shown in the literature of the Brāhmaṇas. Next in order, the epic legend, with its traces of a dim past, furnishes contemporary evidence of those successive modifications whereby the conditions prescribed by the law-books appear as the outgrowth of the four primitive castes. It is by subsequent transformations, by the relaxation of the ancient rules, that the gulf which yawns between the evidence of books and the present aspect of the system is explained. I, for my part, arrive at singularly different conclusions.

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If I see aright, the castes have never existed

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exactly as they are presented to us in the Dharma-śāstras, any more in recent times than in the period to which the hymns belong. On the other hand, there is no indubitable proof that they may not have existed from Vedic times, although no doubt in a less advanced stage of development. It is, on the contrary, a supposition which commands acceptance, if it be true that all the seeds from which the caste system has sprung amidst conditions and surroundings peculiar to India are traceable to the common patrimony of the Indo-European races. Between the periods of the hymns and the law-books the castes were able to take more definite shape, and to develop logically in accordance with certain generating principles; they were not made artificially.

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The new feature which appears between the two periods is the perfecting of the Brahmanic system, which, up to the present time, dominates in theory the whole edifice of Hinduism.

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The Brahmans base their attitude not only on existing conditions—since in their own way they observe the division of the population into numberless sections separated by the laws of custom—but also on Vedic tradition, which, in this as in other matters, they reverently regard as the root of all things. But for all that they take equal liberties with both these authorities: to matters of popular practice they superadd arbitrary rules and fantastic restrictions; they take familiar passages from the Vedas and put them in a new setting. In both directions we detect an artificial theorizing.

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Passing now from the hymns to sacerdotal prose, we find that the Brāhmaṇas and the writings around them reflect a situation *de facto* very similar to that which emerges in the Smṛiti. These are able by the use of certain terms to approximate a little more nearly to the usage of the hymns; they manifestly assume, as far as the castes are concerned, the Brahmanic system and the terminology which it has established. That they contain implicit allusions rather than explicit statements is sufficiently explained by by their nature and object, for they are derived from the esoteric literature of the Brahmans. This system, on the contrary, in the epic and the Dharmaśāstras, is addressed to the whole Brahmanized population; they are books intended for general use. From this point of view, at any rate, there is nothing to prevent our regarding the two series as contemporaneous, although meant for a different audience.

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A survey of the social organization reveals, below the Vedic layer, another stratification on which, thanks to the domination of the Brahmanic class, there has been superimposed that doctrine which is at once the instrument and the symbol of its power.

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Many elements are found blended in this stratum, whose very existence in remote antiquity is concealed from us by Vedic tradition. So far as caste is concerned, the aboriginal population played its part, and continues to do so almost under our eyes; but its action appears to us a mechanical and passive one, rather than an active or guiding one. To judge by what we ourselves can observe it would be imprudent to regard it as a very decisive and fertile factor in the general domain of religion.

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What has happened in the ordinance of the castes is no more than a fragment of the work which has reshaped the whole fabric of religious life. And here everything depends, not on the date of books, but on the significance of their evidence and on the positive value of the elements which they embody.

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Let me quote an example in order to make my meaning clear:

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The doctrine of metempsychosis is the cornerstone of Hinduism, but it is completely foreign to the hymns. When we first meet with it, partly veiled, partly explicit, in the oldest Upanishads, are we in the presence of its first gropings towards realization and development?—or are we in the presence of the partial infiltration into esoteric circles of a belief already dominant outside?

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It will be readily understood how important is the answer which we have to give to this question and to many others related to it; and it will be further understood why I lay so much stress on what I call the problem of tradition, if it is realized that literary work in India has been the almost exclusive monopoly of a privileged class; that the ideas and systems of this class, with its prejudices and its pretensions, have always influenced its attitude and its manner of presenting facts, more especially those facts which they have drawn from outside. Many initial difficulties remain to be solved before the final answer can be given.

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The Brāhmaṇas and their associated literature gravitate solely around the Veda and the Vedic sacrifice. Yet how artificial in character is everything in them which bears upon Vedic interpretation—etymologies, legends, theories! How many incongruities and misunderstandings seem to betray a time when the meaning of the hymns was already obscure, when the ideas which animated them had ceased to be living and had become a field for the exercise of mysticism! The language has in the interval been much modified. Is the epoch of the Brāhmaṇas, therefore, immediately connected, without interruption, with the epoch of the hymns? Does it carry on the tradition intact? Or has there occurred between the two some kind of break?

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Seeing further that, in spite of the close affinity

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of language and idea which unites it, this sacerdotal literature extends over a considerable space of time, it is important to know whether the texts at our disposal are based on uniformly ancient materials, and to what extent they have been reshaped or rejuvenated.

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It seems hardly possible, in view of the researches first initiated by Bergaigne, to regard the Vedic hymns in the same light as they were regarded by the preceding generation, namely, as the spontaneous and faithful reflection of the whole religious life at a given epoch. They are composed with a view to a complicated ceremonial, with singular refinements of thought and form; whatever success they have achieved, however ample the authority which has finally fallen to their share, they are essentially ritual songs of those who made the sacrifice of the Soma; they embrace no more than a sector of the religious horizon.

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The Brāhmaṇas are still more clearly the work of a relatively narrow circle. They show the strivings of a scholastic mysticism thrown on its own resources and wrestling not so much with hereditary teaching as with its own speculations. But however that may be, there is one point at least which seems to me to authorize conjectures based on firmer ground.

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Brahmanic Hinduism (as formulated in the editions which have reached us of the epics, the law-books, and, with some secondary modifications, the Purāṇas) shows us by comparison with the Veda two divine types, which are either entirely new, such as Brahma, Śiva, Kṛṣṇa, etc., or the profoundly transformed Viṣṇu, Indra, and Varuṇa; and also new governing ideas, like metempsychosis, the avatars, the great cosmic periods, the power of asceticism opposed to the power of gnosis, and so forth. I hardly think it is possible to trace this renewal merely to the elements known to us through the Śruti, even if we take into consideration the modifications to which they might have been subjected by the period when the sacerdotal literature was developing.

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It must be admitted that a long-underlying current of what I have called popular Hinduism, under the direction of the Brahmans, who organized it to some extent and imposed on it the apotheosis of the Veda and of the privileged persons for whom it was reserved, finally took the form, reputed orthodox, of Brahmanic Hinduism. It is from this current that have, I believe, emerged, with a force which compelled the adherence and active help of the Brahmans, the ideas and the gods, the legends and the cults, which constitute the foundation of the system.

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But, supposing this theory to be established, many obscurities still remain, as, for example,

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how, when, and by what processes was fusion effected? Is the current of purely Āryan origin? To what extent is it mingled with aboriginal contributions? Does it proceed from a section of the Vedic people, or was it, in the beginning, the inheritance of a different wave of immigration?

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What appears certain to me is that neither the Epic nor above all the Smṛiti should be accepted as honest and faithful witnesses of contemporary practices. The picture that they offer us is a composite one and very carefully designed; its authors, without being entirely successful in hiding the joints where the pieces have been fitted together, have fused a number of very varied elements into a theological and social order. They have certainly eliminated from it many features which did not suit their purpose; above all, they have disguised the disjointedness and discordances under a rather thin veneer of unity and harmony.

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Will light ever dawn on these mysterious processes? It would be unreasonable to expect this so long as the fundamental chronological data are so uncertain.

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At this very moment we are witnessing a strange spectacle. After the dazzling effect of the first discoveries, experts inclined more and more to reduce the age of Indian literature in all its branches; this tendency is to-day energetically combated. Is it simply a swing of the pendulum? Is it a reaction of the traditionalist spirit? At what point in such wide oscillations will the pendulum stop, when the field of uncertainty has been further narrowed down? Everything turns upon a question of date, that is to say, whether we place the Vedic hymns 3500 or 1200 B.C., the composition of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 800 or 250 B.C., and whether we admit an interval of 500 or of 2,000 or 3,000 years between the appearance of the Ṛgveda and the Mahābhārata. Personally, I am disinclined to accept the remoter dates; but this is not the place for personal impressions.

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In any case, the problem of tradition will always be an imperative one. It will always commend itself with the same urgency to those who seek to obtain a clear view of the trend of India's beliefs, speculations, and institutions which form the bases of her individuality. Among these, caste occupies a prominent place. The perspectives opened up by its study are very instructive. I should be loath to seem to exaggerate the scope of this little book, but it brings once more under discussion an order of ideas on which I have long striven to focus attention, and without which one is tempted to follow an apparently simple though incorrect line of deduction in the history of religious evolution. An occasion is now offered me to draw attention once again to these considerations, and I must be forgiven for taking advantage of it.

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I must not entirely forget that I am here addressing myself not so much to my colleagues in Indianism as to a wider circle of readers. It has always been my desire to place within the grasp of all cultured minds exact and vivid ideas, such as can only be set down by one who has studied India somewhat closely. I have had such persons in mind while completing this reprint by the addition of bibliographical references. The literature on the subject is vast ; my scanty notes do not pretend to give even so much as an outline of it. They are merely indications which will have this merit at least : that they are modest enough not to discourage those who may only wish to regard them as light reading.

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the *Goths*, the *Vandals*, the *Suevi*, the *Burgundians*, the *Alani*, the *Huns*, the *Franks*, the *Saxons*, the *Thuringians*, the *Rugians*, and the *Heruli*. The names of these tribes are familiar to the reader, but their origin, their migrations, and their settlements are involved in the deepest obscurity. The most probable opinion is that they were all of German or Scythian extraction, and that they had been driven from their native seats by the pressure of the Huns, a formidable nation of Tartars, who had crossed the Volga and the Tanais, and were advancing with rapid strides towards the frontiers of the Roman empire.

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The first of these nations that crossed the Danube was the *Goths*. They were divided into two great branches, the *Visigoths* or Western Goths, and the *Ostrogoths* or Eastern Goths. The Visigoths, under the conduct of Fritigern, implored the protection of the emperor Valens, and were permitted to settle in the province of Thrace. But the perfidy of the Roman governors, and the insolence of the Roman soldiers, soon provoked them to rebellion. They defeated the imperial armies, and Valens himself perished in the battle of Hadrianople.

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The death of Valens was followed by the accession of Theodosius, who, by his wisdom and valour, restored the discipline of the Roman legions, and compelled the Goths to accept a peace, which was rather a truce than a permanent settlement. The Goths, however, remained in the heart of the empire, and their presence was a constant source of danger and alarm. They were no longer the rude barbarians who had first crossed the Danube; they had learned the arts of war and the policy of the Romans, and they were ready to take advantage of any opportunity to assert their independence.

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The reign of Theodosius was the last period of the glory of the Roman empire. After his death, the empire was divided between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius. Arcadius reigned in the East, and Honorius in the West. The division was fatal to the interests of the state. The two brothers were weak and indolent, and they were governed by their ministers and favourites. The Goths, under the command of Alaric, took advantage of the weakness of the government, and invaded Italy. They besieged and took Rome, and the eternal city, which had for so many centuries been the mistress of the world, was plundered by the barbarians.

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The fall of Rome was a shock to the whole civilized world. It was the end of an era, and the beginning of a new and darker age. The Goths, after the death of Alaric, retired from Italy, and settled in Gaul and Spain, where they founded kingdoms which were destined to last for several centuries. The Vandals, under the command of Genseric, crossed into Africa, and established a powerful kingdom, which for a time threatened the security of the Mediterranean. The Franks, under the command of Clovis, conquered Gaul, and laid the foundations of the French monarchy. The Saxons, under the command of Hengist and Horsa, invaded Britain, and established the kingdoms of the Heptarchy.

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