Caste in India: The Facts and the System c6.s6.39

c6.s6.39

Theory divides all Hindus into two great categories, Śūdras and Dvijas. The Dvijas, that is to say ‘twice-born’, comprise all the members of the three high castes, to which we shall return presently--all those who have received a sort of religious birth by this initiation, the essential point of which is investiture with the sacred thread. The three high castes no longer exist, if they ever have existed, in the theoretic condition; but we still meet in India a multitude of people who wear, like a bandolier, slung over the left shoulder, and hanging down to the right hip, a slender thread formed of a nine-stranded cotton-string plaited in threes. They regard this badge as the most precious of their prerogatives. It denotes, in effect, that they have been duly inducted into the religious life, and that an essential ceremony has given them access to the Veda and the sacred studies; it has endowed them with the right to participate in all the acts of worship; and in short has made them, if I may so express it, fully practising Hindus, in much the same way that baptism operates in the case of Christians.