Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s7.20

c8.s7.20

Even as regards the Veda, the value of the indications which it vouchsafes are anything but definite. We need to know whether it really exhausts the whole of contemporary facts, and whether it reproduces them faithfully and intact, a matter of which I do not feel that we are at all sure. The one thing certain is that these indications display, still standing out in full relief, that class-hierarchy which later was resolved into the caste-system. It is, however, indubitable that already in the Vedic period causes were at work which by their combined and continuous action were to graft a new order on the old Āryan trunk.