Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s5.4

c7.s5.4

The variants in certain Brāhmaṇas³ are nothing more than clever exercises, little etymological arrangements of no weight or importance. In the majority of the speculations on the origin of human beings castes are left entirely out of account.¹ The trains of reasoning which connect their appearance either with successive ages of the world² or with the natural inclinations of mankind have neither more authority nor more stability than an adventitious fiction which reserves for each caste its own particular heaven.³