Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s7.7

c8.s7.7

The Āryans advanced into their new domain. They came into collision with a dark-skinned race of inferior civilization, whom they subdued. This antagonism, together with anxiety for their own safety and contempt for the vanquished, heightened the inherent exclusiveness of the victors and strengthened all the beliefs and prejudices which protected the purity of the sections into which they were divided. The aboriginal population was relegated to a confused mass attached to its masters only by loose ties of subordination. The religious ideas introduced by the invaders penetrated this mass more or less deeply, but never enough to raise it to their level. But the invaders scattered, spreading over vast spaces where their settlements were hardly ever limited by any natural boundaries; and the original groups separated, weakened by the events of the struggle. The rigour of the genealogical principle which united them was in consequence compromised, and the fragments followed geographical or other considerations in the process of forming themselves anew.