Indian Antiquary Vol 41

SR No.: 032533
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 320
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 39 MB

Page 109

MAY, 1913.]
THE CASTES IN INDIA
105
each caste occupies, high or low on the ladder, depends on the industry which each one represents, according as it belongs to a period of advanced, or primitive culture. In this way, the natural history of human industries supplies the key for the hierarchy as well as for the formation of Hindu castes."6
Proceeding from there, Mr. Nesfield shows to us the different professions issuing from the tribe, in order to constitute themselves into partial unities, and these unities rising on the social ladder in conformity to the trades on which they live.' Sprung from the tribe the fragments of which it re-constructs according to a new principle, the caste has preserved persistent recollections of its origins. It has borrowed from the ancient type of the tribe the narrow rules of marriage and the severe prohibition of every contact with similar groups.
The caste, therefore, would be the ontcome of the regular evolution of the social life taken at its lowest level and followed in its slow progress. I do not pretend to clear up how he can reconcile this thesis with the relatively late date to which, by the way, he refers the constitution of castes. What probability is there that, one thousand years before our era, the Hindus were still barbarians, destitute of the most humble elements of civilisation P
Still less can I understand how Mr. Nesfield manages, from this point of view, to reserve to the Brahmins so decisive a part in this genesis. In fact, he asserts that "The Brahmin was the first caste in the order of time; all the others were formed after this model, gradually extending from the king or warrior to the tribes given to hunting and fishing, the condition of which is scarcely above that of savages." The exclusiveness of all the castes takes its inspiration from the Brahmins, by the contagion of example, by the necessity of self-defence. The Brahmin is the founder of the system. The Brahmin has invented, to his own profit, the rule which alone perfectly constitute the castes, the rule which prohibits to marry a woman of another caste. This is a singular contradiction to what he says later, when he derives the marriage regulation from the traditional usages of the tribe.
He is, however, no dupe of the dogmatism of Brahminic books. In his eyes, "the four castes have never had in India another existence than to-day; as a tradition that makes authority." Borrowed from the Indo-Iranian past, it has scarcely any other merit but that of connecting the variety of castes with the differences of occupation. The Vaisyas and the Sûdras, in particular, have never been anything more than some sort of rubric destined to include a mass of heterogeneous elements.10 Bat evidently, and although not being able to resist the seduction which the positivist constructions exercised upon his mind, Mr. Nesfield has really felt that his theory-for want of a corrective proved too much and would have to be applied to all countries. There is also no doubt that, notwithstanding his natural independence, he was influenced by the prestige of tradition. At any rate, the concession which he makes to it, far from being inherent in his system, disturbs its whole arrangement. The originality of his thesis lies elsewhere. If others had before him assigned one part of action, in the genesis of the castes, to professional specialisation, nobody had so deliberately reduced to it the whole evolution. He has, likewise, more than anybody else, connected its characteristic details with the reminiscences of the tribe. In taking his stand on the new ground of ethnography, he has enlarged the perspectives and prepared a wider foundation for interpretation.
Neafield, Caste System, p. 88. Nesfield, Caste System, 171-2.
10 Nesfield, l. c. § 11.
Several of the views, which he has sown incidentally, could disappear without leaving a perceptible gap. The fusion of the different elements of population was, according to him, accomplished at a very early age, the perfect unity of the whole was assured from an ancient period.
Neafleid, Caste System, s. 177-8, pp. 180-2. Nesfield, Caste System, § 469, 190.