Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s4.36

c7.s4.36

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.