Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s4.14

c8.s4.14

Does this mean that this comparison of the caste and the tribe is fruitless? I see in it, on the contrary, a new idea of capital importance, but only if the facts are closely examined and we are not so dazzled by convenient generalities as to lose sight of the necessary sequence of historical realities. This condition makes it unnecessary for me to enter fully into the speculations on caste which have arisen from recent researches on primitive juridical organization. Even those which have been wisely confined to the Āryan domain,¹ being too summary, have scarcely entered into the living reality of evolution. We shall occasionally profit by them, but we have had some concrete experience of the danger of over-abstract theories.