Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s6.20

c8.s6.20

Class-hierarchy could not create the whole caste-system, which derives from a more spontaneous partition and corresponds to a far more minute subdivision, but it played its part therein. It had set the example and custom of a subdivision, which, though more extensive, was in certain respects scarcely less rigorously maintained. Above all, it had two indirect consequences: by the domination it claimed for the Brahmans it preserved a rigidity concerning religious scruples which was reflected in the severity of the caste-rules; it served as a basis for that hierarchy which has become an integral part of the system, and facilitated its establishment by lending peculiar force to the ideas of purity which, generally speaking, determine the levels of the social scale.