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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MAY, 1912.
out draws its inspiration from interests and inclinations directly opposed to the class-spirit which ought rather ever to tighten the union? Ruled by varying principles of unification : geographical, professional, sectarian, etc., caste invariably shows itself insensible to considerations of a general nature, Class-spirit does not account for any one of those particularities, for any one of those scruples, which make the originality of caste, and which even between groups that, after all, would be traced back to one common class, raise up so many and so high barriers.
These systems, therefore, put the question wrongly; they start from an arbitrary principle which they do not prove, and which, on application, reveals an evident insufficiency. Nor is this all. Their excessive respect for the pretended testimonies of literature forces them to bring down the beginnings of the regime to too late a period, when everything indicates that the life of India was already strongly established on its final footing. A new improbability! An institution so universal in Hindu society, gifted with a vitality so supple as to appear indestructible, cannot fail to be connected with the very roots of national development. If it had sprung up late, it would, being destined to so large a sway, have left at least more definito traces of its beginnings.
One feature is common to all systems of this category, they lose sight too much of the real facts; they deprive themselves of the comparisons and ideas called forth by the life of populations which are imperfectly, or recently assimilated with dominant Hinduism.
This preoccupation, on the contrary, takes a place of honour in works which follow other directions, and which start either from sociological doctrines, or from anthropology.
II.- Profession as the Foundation of Caste. Mr. Nesfield is led by views of general ethnography; his belief in positive classifications is of a rigidity which is surprising in time ko rid of all dogmatism. Yet he has at least a perfect outspokenness in his conclusions; if one can hesitate to follow him, at least every one knows where he is going.
The communion of profession is, in his eyes, the foundation of the caste; this is the hearth round which it has taken shape. He does not admit any other origin; he deliberately excludes all infinence of race, of religion. To distinguish in India the currents of different populations, Aryan and aboriginal, is to him an illusion, pure and simple. The flood of invasion bas lost itself early in the mass ; union was brought about very fast; the process was already accomplished more than a thousand years before the Christian era. The constitution of the caste alone could throw into it a dissolvant by means of professional specification.
The castes, moreover, have been developed in his view-according to an absolute order ; it is the order which follows the march of human progress, in life, in agriculture, in industrios; the social rank assigned to each man was precisely that which the profession to which he gave himself, possessed in this series. Thus he discerns two great divisions between the trades-castes : the first corresponds to the trades which are anterior to metallurgy, it is the lowest ; the second which is higher, represents the metallurgical industries, or is contemporaneous with their flourishing. He bas spent a singular ingeniousness to establish on analogous grounds-within the interior of the gronps to which it belongs the saperiority of each caste, as fized, according to him, by Hindu usage. The castes thus rise one above the other accordingly as they are chiefly connected with hunting, fisbing, pastoral life, landed property, handicrafts, commerce, servile employments, priestly functions. To make use of his own words: “Each casto, or group of castes represents the one or the other of these progressive stages of culture, which have marked the industrial development of mankind, not only in India, but in all countries of the world. The rank wbich
. Xonfield, Caste goton, 19.
