Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s6.34

c8.s6.34

Both these groups, in becoming artisans, brought with them their tradition and the desire to be assimilated to the analogous organization of the superior race. The fear of defilement closed a number of professions to the Āryans; this fear spread and became general among the inferior population owing to the religious influence of the immigrants and of their priests. It could not fail to multiply amongst them sections graded according to the degrees of impurity in their occupations, a thing which is still happening to-day under our eyes. The aborigines, too numerous to sink individually to the condition of domestic slaves, and driven by circumstances into the blind alley of manual trade, were led both by their own traditions and by the influence of the Āryans to form themselves into new groups, in which the profession seemed to be the connecting link.