Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s4.39

c7.s4.39

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.