Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s7.17

c8.s7.17

Whatever external influences they may have suffered, and whatever disturbances the chances of history may have wrought, the Āryans of India have, in my opinion, drawn from their own sources the essential elements of the caste, such as they practised, conceived, and finally co-ordinated. The system under which India has lived is not a purely economic organization of trades nor a chaos of strange and hostile tribes and races, nor again a simple class-hierarchy, but a mingling of all these, united by the common inspiration which dominates the functioning of all the groups, and by the community of characteristic ideas and prejudices which govern their order of precedence. This is because the family-constitution, surviving through all evolutions, governing first the Āryans, then spreading with their influence to impose itself even on groups of independent origin, has been the pivot of a slow transformation.