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Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s4: III. Character and Origin of the System. Classes and Castes

Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s4

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English

III. Character and Origin of the System. Classes and Castes

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THE four castes, as I have indicated above, are not simply co-ordinated in Hindu sources. They are resolved into two groups, the one composed of the three higher, the other comprising the fourth alone.

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The first embraces the *Āryas*, otherwise called the *dvijas*, persons to whose natural birth is added the religious rebirth conferred by initiation. The *Śūdras*, excluded from this kind of sacrament, have no part at all in learning or the sacred texts to which it serves as an indispensable introduction, no direct part whatever in sacrifices, nor in any of the ceremonies destined to sanctify the life of the higher castes in its various phases. At best they are allowed to celebrate certain inferior rites, and through that alone they are still, although only in a very humble degree, included within the common organization. Initiation is the door by which one enters into the great Aryan family ; as Manu expressly states, the Aryan himself is no better than the Śūdra until he has passed through this second birth. The division, then, is essential ; it is religious, not simply social. A dead man of the three upper castes, if carried by a Śūdra, could not enter into heaven.¹ The strongest form of condemnation for certain offences among Brahmans is to proclaim that thereby they have become Śūdras,² that is to say, *outcasts*. Manu states that for the Śūdra there is no deadly sin, *pātaka*.³ For him there are, in fact, no offences involving degradation, for he has no access to those heights from which it is possible to fall.

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¹ *Mānava Dh. Ś.*, V, 104.

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² *Baudhāyana Dh. S.*, II, 3, 6, 32.

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³ Ibid., X, 126.

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So sharp a distinction can hardly fail, at the period to which our researches take us, to correspond to a national secession. It is impossible to discern whether the population comprised under the name of Śūdras was solely composed of those aboriginal elements which the Āryans met when immigrating from the north-west into India, or whether it included a mixture of elements. The point is of secondary importance. Between Āryas and Śūdras there was certainly an original opposition of race, more or less absolute. The interbreeding inevitable between conquerors and conquered, between invaders and aborigines, has succeeded in modifying the essential differences, but not in effacing the consciousness of the past.

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It is significant of the excessive hostility and contempt with which the Śūdra was regarded that a text ¹ puts on the same level the murder of a Śūdra and the destruction of a chameleon, a peacock, or a frog. A Brahman novice has the right to take summarily and without leave from a Śūdra what he requires to pay his master’s fees.² The most terrible punishments overtake a Śūdra who, even in external relations, should fail to keep at a proper distance from a person belonging to the three Āryan castes.

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¹ Apastamba Dh. S., I, 25, 13.

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² Ibid., I, 7, 20-1.

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The literature of the Brāhmaṇas ³ establishes the antithesis between Śūdra and Ārya, Ārya embracing the three higher castes. A multitude of signs betrays between the two terms not merely inequalities of rank but the much deeper struggle of two religious traditions. The Vedic hymns reveal the struggle at its height.

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³ Indische Studien, X, pp. 4 et seq.

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The word varṇa, literally colour, is generally accepted as being in Sanskrit the name of the caste. In regard to this I shall have to make reservations. It is at any rate certain that it serves regularly to designate the four theoretic castes. This meaning is not known in the Veda. On the other hand, the word is there employed in two opposing phrases: Ārya varṇa and Dāsa varṇa, the ‘ Āryan race ’ and the ‘ enemy race ’.⁴ They have still more transparent synonyms, such as *black skin*, the *black people*. In more modern literature, the *black race* (*kṛṣṇa varṇa*) continues sometimes to be opposed to the Brahmans.¹ This antithesis is therefore the completely equivalent prototype of that which later came to be expressed by *Ārya* and *Śūdra*, *Ārya varṇa* and *Śaudra varṇa*.²

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⁴ Zimmer, Altind. Leben, pp. 113-14.

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¹ *Āpastamba Dh. S.*, I, 28, 11.

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² *Śatap. Brāhm.*, XIV, 4, 2, 26, cited *Indische Studien*, X, p. 10. *Ārya varṇa* and *Dāsa varṇa* are found in the *Śāṅkhāyana Brāhmaṇa*, cited *Indische Studien*, X, p. 4, note.

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Through whatever evolution its use may later have passed, the word *varṇa* was therefore first employed to distinguish between two different and hostile peoples; it characterized the one by the relative whiteness, the other by the blackness of its skin. If the ‘Āryan Varṇas’ signify in later literature the three castes reputed to be of Āryan stock, the expression was originally used in the singular: the ‘Āryan Varṇa’ was the collective designation of the whole light-coloured race of invaders.

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It is therefore certain that the terminology of the system rests on a past which was different. It envelops in its network and fashions to its own ends divisions which originally were connected with quite different ideas, and terms which it has diverted from their first significance. Let us bear this warning in mind.

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Whatever idea we may form of the state of things during the Vedic period, it is incontestable that the hymns distinguish three main categories among the Āryan population—priests, chiefs, and people. We find priests, under various titles, incessantly occupied with sacrificial acts and the composition of the songs that accompany them ; we follow the chiefs in combat and assemblies ; while the people are always spoken of in a plural which generally shows the ‘ clans ’ of which it is composed gathered round the chiefs in warfare.

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That sacerdotal functions were by this time strongly organized and protected against over-easy intrusions is warranted by their complicated nature alone. It is universally admitted that the royal power, or more generally the dignity of the nobles, had here, as everywhere else, a marked tendency to become established by a more or less strict heredity. But certainly only a mind strongly biased and determined in advance to find in the past the teachings of the Brahmanic system can discover in this triple classification ‘ castes ’ in the strict meaning of the word and as implied by the more modern doctrine and usage. None of the characteristics which constitute the caste is expressly mentioned.

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The three terms are sometimes found together ; they palpably comprise the entire Āryan people. One verse asserts that the Viśas (clans) bow spontaneously to the chief (rājan), who is preceded by a Brahman (*Brahman*)¹; that is to say, in technical language, before the king who has a *purohita*, or family-priest. While proving that the claims of sacerdotal power are already established, it presents the situation in its true light: the king and the priest, in the function proper to them, on the one side, and on the other the people. We are then in the presence of classes, more or less exclusive and jealous, but not of castes.

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¹ *Rig-Veda*, VIII, 35, 16-18.

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We cannot, however, fail to recognize that this triple division corresponds exactly to the three first castes of the Brahmanic theory. How are we to explain this fact?

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Of the names borne by the three castes, *Brāhmaṇa* alone is to be found in the hymns (excepting, as is proper, the hymn to Purusha, of which I have spoken above, which assumes as complete this system whose origins we are attempting to fathom). Even this is rare. The primitive form *Brahman* is frequent; in the neuter it is the accepted word used collectively for all the sacerdotal functions. Of the two names which at a later date designate the warriors, *Kshatriya*, which as an epithet expressing power is often appended to the names of certain gods, is only applied to chiefs once or twice in passages suspected of belonging to a recent period; *Rājanya* is unknown. On the other hand, the simple form *Rājan* is the common title of the nobles. The term *Kshatra* summarizes the idea of royal power. The name of the *Vaiśyas* is foreign to the hymns, while the primitive *Viś* is, in the plural, the invariable name of those ‘ clans ’ which constitute the mass of the nation. The trinity *Brahma*, *Kshatra*, and *Viś*, embracing the whole *Āryan* people, is not encountered only in the Veda. In the later literature of the *Brāhmaṇas* it is still an accepted thing.¹ It is repeated with an insistence which testifies to an ancient and respected origin in the very books which know and employ on occasion the definite terms : *Brāhmaṇa*, *Kshatriya*, *Vaiśya*.

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¹ Cf. *Indische Studien*, X, pp. 18-19, 27.

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It is clear, I think, that these terms are derived from the ancient formula, a technical and academic derivation. The social order with which they are associated is not merely the spontaneous and organic extension of the situation reflected by the Veda ; like the words in which it is embodied, it represents a carefully thought-out system, adapted to conditions either entirely new or at least very different from those whence the primitive triple division originated.

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To interpret the Vedic testimony by the Brahmanic theory of a more recent age is to reverse the true order of things.

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As people inferior to the *Āryan* tribes and as their constant adversaries the hymns only know the *Dāsa varṇa*, the enemy race, whom they call also *Dasyus*. The *Śūdras* are unknown to them. The name *Dasyus* has, on the contrary, been taken into literature and applied to the lowest strata of the population—to those who, having no regular place in the Brahmanic organization, are sometimes even to-day called *outcasts*. In the Vedic epoch there existed no stratum of population corresponding to the *Śūdras*, at once excluded from the Āryan community and attached to it by certain loose bonds in order to secure its dependence without detrimental compromise; or, if it did exist, the poets whose songs have come down to us have made no efforts to assign it a place apart, outside the mass of the *Dasyus*. This is a further proof that the system is something quite other than the normal development of the Vedic situation.

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The *Viśas* of the Veda were not limited to a caste, but included everything in the Āryan population which was not distinguished by sacerdotal functions or aristocratic rank; and consequently Brahmanic theory in creating the derivative *Vaiśya* may have given to the primitive word an application somewhat arbitrary and historically false, of which we have an indication that must on no account be forgotten. The name Arya, although it does not appear to be used thus in the hymns, is incontestably synonymous with Ārya. It is sometimes thus employed in the sacerdotal literature, but there it is in the main specially applied to the Vaiśyas.¹ It was therefore quite clearly remembered that the Vaiśyas really formed the whole class of free men, the bulk of the nation. There is a world of difference between this loose grouping and the true caste, which is necessarily more restricted. The caste was devoted to the pursuit of a definite profession and was bound together by common descent and by the discipline of its own rules and customs.

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¹ Indische Studien, X, pp. 5, 7, 16.

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I have accepted up to now the popular view that varṇa, in the Brahmanic theory, is the term which corresponds exactly to the idea of caste. The concession was merely provisional, and needs to be qualified. It was used at first to denote a contrast of colour between two rival races, and was later split up, if I may so express it, so that it might apply no longer to these two primitive varṇas, but to more numerous categories. It has not lost all trace of its origin. It does not signify caste in general and in the strict sense, but only ‘ the four castes ’. It applies only to what an epic book, the Harivaṃśa, calls in one passage the ‘ four legal castes ’. To designate the others, those secondary or mixed castes which correspond, not to the theoretic divisions, but to the true castes which actually exist, the law-books have another term, *jāti*. This term is the exact equivalent of our word ‘caste’, as it means ‘birth, race’. It is, I think, in this acceptation, not in that of ‘family’, that it should be understood wherever it is employed by Manu, Yājñavalkya, and others. It has been a mistake not to attribute sufficient importance to this distinction between the two terms, which signalizes up to a fairly late period the two elements which are combined in the Brahmanic theory.

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The conclusion is inevitable. The Veda, depository of a distant past, reflects a division of *classes*, for which the comparison with Iran and other indications besides attest a very great antiquity. As for the more modern literature, it found itself not only by reason of its origin involved in a system of castes, but also enslaved to the Vedic tradition of which it was obliged to accept unreservedly the whole heritage. Memories of the past and actualities of the present were fused in a hybrid system : the living order of the castes was made to fit in with old divisions of races and classes which were transmogrified for the purpose. These incoherences had no terror for a scholastic speculation which was more contemptuous than any other of facts and of history. Its work was, moreover, facilitated by what certainly survived of class spirit, as manifested in the minute subdivision of the castes.

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In our own times all Brahmans are still imbued with pride of class; it surmounts all the inequalities and differences which separate them in point of fact into a multitude of castes. All the more must this have been the case at a time when the Āryan people were less widely diffused, the mixture of races less far advanced, and the breaking up into groups still more restricted. Even among the warrior-aristocracy and whatever may have been its subdivision into clans, tribes, or castes, pride of class and class interests could not fail to preserve a powerful influence and to maintain a certain unity. Unquestionably this feeling of relative unity was for the priestly class, ambitious and already erudite, both peculiarly indispensable and easy to safeguard. Between classes and castes there is no positive incompatibility; the two social orders may combine and complete one another. The mistake lies in confusing their origins.

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The authority of the Brahmanic theory alone has succeeded in obscuring this profound distinction under an unfortunate illusion. It has caused credence to be given to a complete inversion of roles. Through its insidious influence we have persisted in seeking the origin of small and very active groups in categories which are no more than their collective exponents, the value of which has become nominal, and which have been superimposed, not so much by organic development as by a skilful operation, on a social order to which they are fundamentally alien.

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The question whether castes existed in the Vedic epoch has been much discussed and without a sufficiently close scrutiny of terms. The hymn to Purusha has, by common assent, been considered too recent to be admitted as evidence on this head. The above observations do not solve the problem, but they will at least result in causing partisans or opponents of the existence of castes in Vedic times to make very material modifications in their base of operations.

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It is of little importance that the word ‘varna’ in no way signifies ‘caste’ in the hymns, if it be true that this word has never strictly had this meaning, or at least that it has only acquired it by virtue of a late extension. If it be true that we are dealing with classes and not with castes, we can draw no conclusion from the fact that we see a triple division in the population whose existence we may be justified in inferring in a still remoter past. The societies in which class-hierarchy appears are too various for it to possess any inherent significance. Caste, being by nature a circumscribed and separatist organism, must necessarily have other roots.

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The real problem is to determine whether, below these great categories of priests, warrior-nobles, and freemen, and inscribed, so to speak, within these wide circles, there is in the hymns any trace of hereditary groups, united by any one of the factors—consanguinity, profession, religion, residence—which to our knowledge contribute to the constitution of the castes; of organisms, in a word, identical with or merely analogous to the caste. This is what we have to investigate; whether the search will be fruitful is quite another matter.

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No one has delved into the Veda with more expert knowledge than Ludwig, nor with a stronger predisposition to unearth in it a caste-system. He has allowed no negative conclusions, not even the most authoritative, to deter him. His search has, on the whole, been fruitless; he has indeed discovered classes, but not castes. No one can doubt but that the very intricacies of the rites and songs bound the priesthood firmly together, even in the Vedic epoch, and that its functions were often, even habitually, hereditary. Ludwig has proved no more than that a class was formed of rich chiefs, powerful by force of arms, and that this nobility in India, as elsewhere, depended essentially on birth. He has met with none of the positive limitations which caste implies, neither has he proved that those Maghavans, whom he likens to the Kshatriyas, belonged to an exclusive group.

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Ludwig in the end himself recognizes that he can only discern two distinct classes—the one of priests and the other of nobles—placed above the mass of the Āryan people, the Viśas. If he considers these indications to be sufficient grouna for affirming the existence of an order of castes, it is because he has taken the Brahmanic system as his starting-point. At least tacitly he considers this system to be the exact expression of the facts, and consequently takes any traces which in the past seem to agree with it as proof that at the time from which they date it existed in its entirety. This, to my mind, is begging the question.

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Zimmer¹ was certainly justified in taking advantage of it to support the opposite theory. It is another matter to decide whether, conversely, it is certain that no castes existed at the epoch when the most ancient hymns were composed. If we consider how small a place the working of the caste—I am not referring to the domination of the Brahmans or nobles as classes—really occupies in the whole of subsequent literature in spite of its supreme importance in practical and social life, we shall admit that the mere silence of the texts has little weight here. I believe that the caste has its origin in a normal evolution of the ancient constitution of the family—an organic evolution, but one peculiar to India, since it is determined by ethnological, economic, geographical, and psychological conditions which are essentially native. If this is true, the movement must have been produced too slowly and rests on elements of life too primitive and instinctive for a literature like that of the hymns, which was already ambitious and learned, to afford much useful proof as to these elements and their development.

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¹ Altind. Leben, p. 185.

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The system manifested in Hindu tradition did not yet exist at the time of the ancient hymns, or at least it was not recognized by their authors. So much is certain, since the principal terms of the theory were derived from themes which were not yet familiar to the hymns except in their primitive state, and since the general tenor of the theory was influenced to the point of distortion by the desire to approximate it to the tradition of the hymns. This Brahmanic system has, however, from time immemorial concealed an essentially different situation. The absence of the system is not therefore enough to prove that the *de facto* situation which inspires it only arose at a later date.

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Its complete development does not seem frankly compatible with the historical and economic conditions which emerge from the Veda; it might, nevertheless, have existed at that time, although only in an earlier phase and in process of advancing towards its final constitution.

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I greatly fear that the texts will never furnish a decisive answer. Doubt is all the more permissible in proportion as the true position of the hymns in Hindu antiquity is still imperfectly determined; for we still discern but vaguely the precise moment of historical evolution to which they correspond. They reflect an ancient epoch, but not without the admixture of a multitude of purely Hindu traits; the civilization which follows pays them the most extravagant respect, while itself building on a profoundly different religious and dogmatic, geographical, and social foundation. Who can profess to-day to determine the exact relation of these two phases?

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