Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s7.6

c8.s7.6

We take the Āryans on their entry into India. They lived under the influence of the old laws common to all the branches of the race. They were divided into tribes, clans, and families; varying in size, the groups were all governed by corporate organizations whose general traits were identical and whose tie was an increasingly close consanguinity. The age of equality, pure and simple, between clan and clan, tribe and tribe, was past; military and religious prestige had begun their work. Certain groups, favoured by birth and by good fortune in war, joined to form an aristocratic class which laid claim to power. Religious rites grew in intricacy, so that special skill and technical training were necessary. A sacerdotal class was born which based its pretensions on the more or less legendary genealogies connecting its branches with illustrious sacrificers of the past. The rest of the Āryans were merged in a single category, in the midst of which the various groups operated in their own autonomy and under their own corporate laws. From the beginning religious ideas dominated the whole of life, and an already powerful priesthood now redoubled the strictness and importance of religious scruples.