Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s1: Introductory
Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s1
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Introductory
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WE are all familiar with the word ‘caste’, and although the notion it conveys may be regarded with disfavour, the word itself has come to stay. It was borrowed from the Portuguese *casta*, which signifies properly ‘breed’.
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When they entered into relations with the peoples of the Malabar coast the Portuguese were quick to observe that the Hindus were divided into a great number of exclusive hereditary groups distinguished by their special occupations. They were graded in a sort of hierarchy, the upper groups refraining with superstitious care from all intercourse with those considered more lowly. It was to these sections that the Portuguese gave the name of *castes*. Eighteen centuries earlier the first Greeks who had established anything approaching close intercourse with India were already struck by this peculiarity. Megasthenes, ambassador of Seleucus, informed his countrymen that the Hindus were split into ‘divisions’ (μέρη),¹ within which individuals were to some extent confined, being unable themselves to pass or to marry into any other section than that in which they were born, or to choose a profession different from that which had devolved on them by heredity.
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¹ The statement by Megasthenes that the number of μέρη was seven certainly rests on a merely superficial knowledge or interpretation of the facts. It is curious that precisely in the north-west of India we still find to-day that subdivision into seven clans is usual in many castes. Does the Greek evidence rest fundamentally on confusion with some such custom? It is curious that Herodotus (II, 164), depicting Egyptian society as divided into castes, also enumerates seven of them. This number varies, however, among more recent authors (cf. Mallet, *Les Premiers Établissements des Grecs en Égypte*, pp. 410-11).
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The fact, then, is obvious enough; its details and peculiar conditions are much more obscure. To every one, and to the foreigner especially, the private life of the Hindu is veiled in a kind of dignified shyness which is not at all easy to penetrate. The social organism of India, the play of its motive-forces, is, moreover, regulated infinitely more by custom, varying according to locality and baffling in its complexity, than by legal formulae laid down in authentic and easily accessible texts. The books which we are accustomed to regard as collections of laws do not represent rules rigidly enforced in the civil sphere. They are sacerdotal works, and leave undefined a number of interesting points. In many respects they express a certain theological ideal rather than actual statements adapted to meet real conditions.
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Already complicated by the conflicting nature of the various facts, the student is therefore more hindered than helped by a legal theory misleading in its precision. Its authority is placed so high that this doctrinal barrier leaves free passage for a very different practice and a great variety of unforeseen developments. Its effects have at all times appeared wavering and uncertain. It is not then to be wondered at that the public mind, misled on so delicate and unfamiliar a subject, has formed certain conclusions which are as generally accepted as they are untrue. The nature of the facts has in consequence been gravely distorted.
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The Hindu castes are generally conceived as a political system of inviolable stability, confining the individual to occupations handed down immutably from father to son. However great the personal initiative, it offers no chance of rising in the social scale. One imagined Brahmans who may only consecrate themselves to the religious life and ritual, soldiers who may only be recruited from the warrior class, chiefs who may only be drawn from the royal and military caste—all so arranged that nothing has ever disturbed, or ever can disturb, an order protected from time immemorial. It is thus, I believe, that Hindu society is commonly pictured.
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Since the last century there has been abundant speculation on this view of the organization, and the same fixed idea has persisted down to our own times. Men of intelligence, whose pursuits have brought them into constant touch with the facts, have recently, even since the modern progress of comparative law, regarded the caste institution in this light; they denounce in it the deliberate and treacherous scheming of an ambitious class; the origin of social institutions may be discovered in a gratuitous pact.¹ Is it to be wondered at? To do so would be to forget how strong is the power of preconceived ideas coined into current phraseology. Such errors prove at least the difficulty of the question, and it is all the more interesting since it deals with a unique phenomenon—a social order known only in India. Its solution is therefore well worth consideration.
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¹ I could quote numerous examples, but will content myself with referring to Sherring's article in the *Calcutta Review* of 1880 on the ‘Natural History of Caste’. It is striking how the pandit Jogendra Chandra Ghosh, in attempting to reply, remains influenced by analogous views, although rejecting them in some particulars.
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This solution has to-day assumed more importance than ever, but has also become less difficult. The relationship established between the Indo-European languages has brought the Āryan conquerors of India very near to us and aroused our curiosity about them. The affinity which has been revealed little by little between ancient peoples, not only in religious tradition but in the elements of social organization, has strengthened those bonds which were formed at first by a similarity of idiom. From this community of language and customs has there not been a tendency sometimes to draw too sweeping conclusions as to community of race? Certainly the common origin of institutions which, having dominated the past of our remote ancestors, are still evident in our own times, endows the different stages of evolution through which they have passed with a peculiar interest for us, and, if I may venture to say so, with an unusual piquancy.
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At first comparison was made between those races whose idioms showed relationship. Curiosity quickly outgrew these bounds and embraced indiscriminately all the various kinds of primitive constitutions. I will not assert that scholarship has not sometimes lost in accuracy what it has gained in breadth. Though rash, these bold voyages of discovery into the unknown have not been altogether fruitless. They have given training in observation and critical insight, which has been of the greatest use to more timid, or, if you will, more prudent, research. During this time documents were accumulating from which we have gained a more complete and precise knowledge of the prevailing conditions in India. The official publications of the vice-regal government enjoy a well-earned reputation. A number of reports based on the last census returns add to statistical data, which are themselves very valuable, accounts and actual memoirs which are no less important. We are obtaining more information at a time when we are becoming better able to profit by it.
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The able works of Nesfield and Ibbetson on the North-West Provinces and the Panjab were afterwards supplemented by the researches of Risley on the *Tribes and Castes of Bengal*. This work, carried out with all the elaboration peculiar to anthropology, finally resulted in a vast ethnographical glossary. In this the author has condensed his comprehensive views together with an infinite number of facts. The care and systematic labour with which he has assembled and checked his scattered information can be imagined. Inspired with a legitimate faith in his great task, he makes an urgent appeal to technical criticism. I do not flatter myself that I can answer that appeal here. I desire merely to make use of some of his ideas and indications.
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These are primarily concerned with actual facts, and it may perhaps be of interest to consider them from the point of view of archaeology and history, which is my own province.¹
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¹ I should like to mention here the general reports of J. Baines on the census of India in 1891. This vast production, the work of a resourceful and penetrating mind, forms a worthy conclusion to the series of documents of the same order to which I have referred in this study. As it is designed in the first place to summarize and co-ordinate statistical results, it is not of a nature to furnish me with much fresh information bearing upon either the general survey or the historical views which it is my intention to present here.