Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s2.11

c8.s2.11

These are the systems that I shall call traditionalist. They are repeated and transmitted without any great striving after novelty. However ingenious they may be in certain parts, an analysis would scarcely be profitable. Roth, ² for example, has explained the early progress of the sacerdotal caste by a presumed importance gradually acquired by the purohita or family priest of the chiefs. He supposes that the Āryan peoples, when they spread over the plains of India, split up into numerous sections, minutely subdivided, that the royal families consequently lost both power and authority and descended to the rank of mere nobility; that the Kshatriyas became the small fry of the former kings; and that it was the weakness of the latter which built up the rule of the Brahmans. All the opinions of a mind so subtle and well-informed are of value, but this theory really concerns only the history of classes, not the genesis of castes.