Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s7.1

c8.s7.1

FOR a long time it was believed, on the evidence of Plato and Herodotus, that Egypt must have been governed by the caste-system. This view is abandoned to-day by the best judges, and appears to be definitely contradicted by indigenous records. The Greeks, little used to vast hereditary organisms united by privilege of rank or community of function, might, when they met with more or less distinct types, easily exaggerate their importance and extent. Up to the present India alone has revealed a universal caste-system in the sense in which we have observed and defined it. At most, only accidental traces and germs of analogous institutions are found elsewhere; they are nowhere generalized or co-ordinated into a system.