Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s6.38

c8.s6.38

With striking aptness this system is particularly associated with the most permanent, if not the most characteristic, of the dogmas which dominate the religious life of India—namely, metempsychosis. The immobility of the limits which the caste imposes upon life is justified and explained automatically by a doctrine which founds the terrestrial condition of each individual on the balance of his previous actions, good and bad. The fate of every man is determined by the past; in the present it must be definite and immutable. The scale of social ranks corresponds faithfully to the infinite degrees of moral good and evil.