Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s3.39

c7.s3.39

It has been questioned, and very rightly so, whether the pishtras of Iran ever constituted castes.³ It is another matter to decide whether there existed in Iran germs whence the caste might have sprung, germs from which it has sprung in India. In any case, the four *pishtras* of the Avesta represent only *classes*, and in the beginning it was not otherwise with the quadruple Hindu division. If the partition agrees in both cases, it is because it goes back to a remote date; if castes have been evolved in India alone, it is because this partition is not inherently and indissolubly bound up with the caste-system.