Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s2.16

c8.s2.16

These systems therefore state the matter badly ; they start from an arbitrary principle which they do not demonstrate, and which is obviously inadequate. This is not all. Their excessive respect for the so-called evidence of literature compels them to advance the beginnings of the system to an unduly late period, when everything indicates that the life of India was already firmly set in its final mould. Yet another improbability ! An institution so universal in Hindu society, endowed with a vitality so elastic as to appear almost indestructible, cannot fail to be attached to the very roots of national development. Were it of late growth, it would at least, if destined to attain such sovereign power, have left clearer traces of its beginnings.