Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s2.6

c8.s2.6

Sherring, for example, has devoted an immense amount of labour to the direct study of contemporary castes.¹ When he thought of co-ordinating his general views on the ‘Natural History of the Caste’,² he set out the problem in terms which fully bore out the promise of his title. It is a curious thing that a preconceived notion should have been able to sterilize so much observation and learning. Sherring has shown us nothing in caste beyond the outcome of the political cunning of ambitious priests who, building from top to bottom, fashioned to their own ends the constitution of the Hindu world.