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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(JUNE, 1912.
narrowing down. The age of pure and simple equality between clan and clan, tribe and tribe, is gone. Military prestige and priestly prestige have commenced their work. Certain groups, raised by the splendour of warrior powers, proud of a more brilliant or better ascertained descent, enriched, more than others, by the fortune of arms, have joined together in a class of nobility which is claiming the power. The religious rites bave become complicated so as to reqnire a special ability and a technical preparation, both for the carrying out of the ceremonies and for the composition of chants ; a priestly class has arisen, wbich bases its pretensions upon, more or less, legendary genealogies, connecting its branches with illustrious sacrificers of the past. The rest of the Aryans are mixed up in a single category, within which the different groups move with autonomy, and according to their corporative laws. Religions notions rule the whole life from the beginning ; priesthood, already powerful, is here increasing the prestige and vigour of the religious scruples.
The Aryans are advancing in their new dominion. They come into collision with a dark-coloured race, inferior in culture, which they drive back. This opposition, the care for their Becurity, the contempt of the vanquished: enhance in the conquerors the inborn exclusivism, exalt all belief and all prejudices, that protect the purity of the divisions into which they are split. The autochthonous population is thrown into one confused mass, which only ties of subordination of a rather loose nature connect with their masters. The religious ideas, brought by the invadera, penetrate, more or less, into this mass, but never sufficiently to raise it to their own level. Still in spreading over vast areas, where their settlements are seldom enclosed by any natural limits, the invaders become dispersed ; shaken by the hazards of the straggle, the primitive groups are Bevered. The rigour of the genealogical principle, which united them, is thus compromised ; to forma anew, the scattered parts follow geographical proximities, or other conveniences.
Slowly the necessities of a less movable existence begin to be felt. Life becomes more sedentary in villages of pastoral and Agricultural industry; and these, at first, are founded according to relationship; for the laws of the family and of the clan preserve a sovereign authority; they continue to observe the traditional customs that are sanctioned by religion. The more fixed babits derelop the needs and the professions of a civilization, which has got ripe for more refined exigencies. The workmen of every description are, in their turn, caught in the network, be it that the community of residente brings on the community of occupation, or, that the scattered representatives of the same profession, in places sufficiently near to keep some contact, obey an imperious necesity in modelling themselves upon the only type of organization known around them.
With time two facts have asserted themselves : more or less acknowledged mixtures have taken place between the races; the Aryan notions of purity have found their way into this hybrid population and even into the purely aboriginal tribes. From this rise two orders of scruples which wultiply the sub-divisions, according to the more or less pronounced impurity, either of descent, or of professions. While the ancient principles of family life remain in force, the factors of grouping are diversified : ocenpation, religion, neighbourbood and others still, at the side of the primitive principle of consanguinity, the 10ask of whicb they more or less put on. The groups are increasing in number and intersecting. Under the double action of their own traditions and of the ideas which they borrow from the Aryan civilization, even the aboriginal tribes, as they by and by give up their isolated and savage life, accelerate the influx of new sub-divisions. Now caste exists. We see how-in its different gradations—it has slowly substituted itself for the family regime of which it is the heir.
A political power could have subordinated these organisms to the domain of a regular system. But no political constitution does dawn. Even the thought of it does not appear. Why should we wonder at this? The priestly power cannot be favourable to it; for it would be the loser by it
