Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s6.19

c8.s6.19

At this point religious considerations intervene. Scruples of purity did not permit the inhabitants of Āryan villages to follow certain professions, nor even to receive into their fellowship compatriots who followed them. Among those excluded, the same fastidiousness tended to multiply barriers by establishing a scale of impurity among various trades. Religious sentiment made these barriers the more impassable in proportion as it was more vigorously upheld, and Brahmanic supremacy worked to this end with extraordinary energy and perseverance. We may admit that the supremacy of the sacerdotal class was not established in the beginning without conflict, but its foundations were certainly laid very early. From the most remote periods of literature its claims are asserted in high-flown terms.