Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s4.32

c7.s4.32

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.