Indian Antiquary Vol 41

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 138

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JUNE, 1912.
In becoming trades-people, both brought with them their traditions and the desire of assimilating themselves to the analogous organization of the superior race. The fear of defilement closed a number of professions to the Aryans; this fear was penetrating and became generalized in this inferior population under the religious influence of the immigrants and their priests. It could not fail to multiply amongst them small divisions, scaled after the degree of reputed impurity ascribed to their occupations; this is the very thing which happens still now before our eyes. Thus the aborigines, too numerous to fall individually, at least as a general rule, into the condition of domestic slaves, and confined by the circumstances to the manual professions, were led, both by their own tradition and by the ideas which they received from the Argan influence, to unite in new groupings of which profession appeared to be the bond.
This movement accentuated and completed the parallel movement, which, under different conditions, though under the sway of several common ideas, must, as we have seen, have arisen amongst the Aryans themselves. On neither side was community of profession, the principle of aggregation; we see how it could assume this appearance not only for us, but little by little, even in the eyes of the Hindus. It is useless to add that, when come to this point in the age of secondary formations, when the wear and tear of evolution obliterates the oldest ideas and the first motive powers, or is dulling their consciousness, a deceitful analogy could really develop it into an antonomous factor of grouping. But that was only the last terminus of a long course ; it had sprung from quite different sources.
Outside the natural action of exterior social or historical elements, we must take into account moral agents, primitive inclinations, and essential beliefs. Unhappily, springs ei so subtle a nature and of a continuous, but not well determined influence, cannot be easily set forth.
I have touched some of them by the way. The Hinda mind is very religious and very speculative; an obstinate guardian of traditions, it is singularly insensible to the joys of action and to the solicitations of material progress. It offered a ground predestined for a social organization, made of very archaic elements, which would pay obedience to an overpowerful priestly authority, and which consecrated immutability as a duty and the established hierarchy as a natural law.
This regime especially fits in a striking way with the most popular, perhaps, the most characteristic, and certainly the most permanent, of the dogmas, that rule the religious life of India, with transmigration. The immobility of the frames, within which caste con fines liie, justifies and explains itself by a doctrine, which is founding the terrestrial condition of each one upon the balance of his anterior actions, good and bad. The desting of each man is fixed by the past ; it must, in the present, be determined and immovable. The scale of social ranks faithfully corresponds to the infinite scale of moral merits and moral deficiency.
All, or almost all sects, sprung from Hinduism, have accepted metem psychosis as a certitude that admits of no discussion; all, or almost all have accepted caste without revolt. Buddhism makes, from the standpoint of religious profession, no difference between the castes. All are admitted without difficulty, and without distinction into the body of monks, all are called to salvation. Logically these premises ought to end with the suppression of castes. But it is not so. The direct polemic arises only slowly and then--for instance in a book entirely devoted to this subject, in the Vajrasáchi -- it takes the special form of an attack levelled against the privileges of the class of the Brahmins. It is a strife for influence between two rival clergies, not a systematic protestation against a regime without which even the Buddhists did not conceive the social existence.
Several ascetical sects, likewise, suppress caste practically; they admit and bring together, without reserve, all postulants in their religious order. With several this equality is symbolized at the consecration of the adepts, by the solemn destruction of the sacred chord. How could the