Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s2.9

c8.s2.9

A comparison with the Jesuits and their theocratic designs generally plays a quite excessive part in these statements. We meet with it even in one of the more recent representatives of the philological school. Von Schroeder ¹ does not at first seem inclined to exaggerate the authority of the Brahmanic system: he feels that the quadruple division into priests, warriors, etc., can only correspond to a distinction of classes. Nevertheless, it is from them, and above all from the constitution peculiar to the Brahmans, that he derives the castes. Were we to believe him, the system would be linked with the victorious reaction of Brahmanism against expiring Buddhism, so that its formation would be advanced to the epoch when appeared the man in whom was personified this movement—hypothetical, in any case—that is, up to Śaṅkara, the orthodox philosopher of the eighth century!