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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MAY, 1912.
1.-The Systems of Explanation. If the Hindus have mixed up the two notions and the two terms of class and caste, their erroneous views have been followed amongst us with sad docility. I mean foremost the Indianists. Representatives of the philological school as they are, they obey an almost irresistible tendency in viewing the problein ander this traditional aspect. The Brahminical theory is, as it were, their proper atmosphere. The literary chronology is their invariable starting point.
Faithful to a principle which, it seems, works a priori, but the dangers and weakness of which in its application to India, I have already indicated, most have, in fact, admitted that the series of the literary monuments must correspond with the historical evolution and exactly reflect its phases. The Brahmanis which, in the order of time, are more closely connected with the hymns, cannot contain anything which is not the prolongation, or normal development of the data contained in them. Hence this dilemma: Either the existence of the castes is attested in the Vedas, or-in the contrary supposition-they were necessarily established in the period which separates the composition of the hymns to which they would be unknown, from the composition of the Brahmaņas which suppose their existence, to which is added this corollary, always implied, yet always active, that their origins must be justified by means of elements expressly contained in the hymns.
Nobcdy, as far as I know, or almost nobody, has freed himself of this postulate. They thought, they were bound to consider as the certain starting point the divisions which, in the opinion of all, are exhibited in the Vedas, and which, according to some, were complete and real castes, according to others, social classes. The former were all the more eager to find the castes in the hymns, as they justly felt how difficult it is to ascribe to them, according to the ordinary method too recent an origin; and the latter concluded from the silence of the hymns, that the epoch, to which they go back, did not know anything of them, and that, therefore, the genesis could begin only later. But both are agreed to consider as primitive and indissoluble the tie which connects the four varnas with the very rising of the institution of the castes.
Under this impression they are fain to believe to have done enough, when they have drawn a reasonable explanation from general considerations supported by approximate analogies. From the pretensions and the interests of the priestly class, aided by an alliance with the secular power seen also elsewhere, they have originated, through the working of a clearer design carried on with perseverance, this state of division into factions maintained by severe regulations as they appear through the prism of the law-books. The lines of such constructions are commonly somewhat indistinct; they may be seductive by their regularity, by the convenient appeal which they make to current notions. But so much clearness is not without danger.
Being masters of the analysis which derives the whole Icdo-European vocabulary from some hundreds of roots, certain explorers of the language really thought, they were touching, in those languages which have preserved most of etymological transparency, the first stammerings of buman speech. They estimated that the distance to be covered from there to the source, was not, or almost not worth considering. Among the explanations to which caste has given rise, there are some which remind one of this easy optimism. It has exerted its ravages even upon soch minds as seemed to be perfectly armed against them.
Mr, Sherring, for instance, has devoted vast labours to the direct study of the contemporary castes.' When, one day, he thought of settling his general views on the matter, of samming np his opinion on the Natural History of Caste," he get dowa the terms of the problem with a firmness which was not such as to discourage the hopes roused by the very Ititle of his work. It is strange that a preconceived system should have been able to render 80 many observations and so * Tribes and Caster in Benare..
Natural History of Castes,' in the Calcutta Review.
