Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s4.13

c8.s4.13

The organization is so natural to the archaic periods of human society that it is to be met with among most diverse races; if we turn to its general traits, therefore, we are left in complete uncertainty and can prove nothing. If we think solely or even chiefly of the organization of the aboriginal tribes of India, and if we admit that it has reacted with so decisive a force on the general constitution of the Hindu world that an ambitious class of priests have taken possession of it and made it a weapon of war, we shall reverse the probable current of history and attribute too great a power to the motive forces. Everything indicates that in the march of Indian civilization the determining influence belongs to the Āryan elements, the aboriginal elements having exerted no more than a modifying, partial, and secondary one.