Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s6.15

c8.s6.15

The village, the *grāma*, is almost the only setting of Hindu life from the Vedic hymns down to the present time. As it appears in the hymns, it is pastoral rather than agricultural. Synonyms like *vrijana*, which cannot be separated from *vraja*, ‘pasturage’, suggest the same idea. The word ‘*gotra*’ also is never employed in the Ṛig-Veda, except in the etymological sense of ‘cowshed’. If, however, we see it later regularly denoting the eponymous clan, this use is indubitably ancient. The Ṛig-Veda makes no allusion to it at all, which merely proves once more what a dangerous delusion it is to draw positive conclusions from the silence of the hymns. This application of the word is only justified, moreover, by an intermediate stage. Very closely related to *vrijana* by its original meaning, it must have passed through an analogous evolution; it too must have been a synonym at least approximate to *grāma* or village.