Indian Antiquary Vol 41

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

Page 142

133
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(JUNE, 1912.
from their own ground the essential elements of caste, such as it has been practised, conceived and finally put into a system. If the regime, under which India bas lived, is neither a purely economical organization of trades, nor a barbarons chaos of tribes and of foreign and hostile races, nor a simple hierarchy of classes, but a mixture of all these things, united by the common inspiration that rules the working of all the groups by the common set of ideas and characteristic prejudices, which connect them, divide them, fix between them the precidences, it is explained by the fact, that the family constitutions, surviving through all evolations, ruling the Aryans first, then growing with their influence, and imposing itself even upon the groups of independent origin, has been the pivot of a slow transformation.
I am not heedless enough to forget that it has been penetrated by heterogeneous elements. Moreover, after being once completed in its essential features, it has no doubt undergone the action of analogy, like all systems, which are growing old, and in which tradition does not longer imbibe new strength from a living consciousness of the beginnings. Besides the various principles which have been severally considered as the springs of caste, even arbitrary change disguised under false pretences has done its work. Though accidental or secondary, guch alterations have not failed to throw some trouble into the physiognomy of the facts. Still I do not insist upon them. If there be need, their sources will be found in some of the details, which I have had the opportunity of setting forth by-the-bye.
Even to limit ourselves to the period of formation, how much we should like to settle dates! What I have said on the literary tradition, will explain that I have no precise dates to offer. Ancient institutions become impregoated with a new spirit only by insensible advances : movements, which, according to circumstances, go on at an unequal pace, in different regions, are not manifested in the evidences, until the preceding condition of things has become entirely uurecognizable. They are obscure, because they are slow. They do not admit of any rigorous dating. At most one might flatter himself to determine, at which moment the Brahminicul system, which rules the caste theoretically, has received its last form. Still even this pretension would be over ambitions. We may console ourselves, we should not be much moro, advanced, by that, if it is true, the system is somming up the ideal of the dominant caste rather than reflecting the real situation.
Even as far as regards the Veda, the value of the hints it affords is anything but definite It would be necessary to know whether it really exhausts the whole of contemporaneous facts, whether it presents them completely and faithfully. I do not think at all, that we may boast of any such certainty. What is sure, is that we discover in the Vedas still standing out in full relief that hierarchy of classes which was later on resolved into the regime of the castes. Still it is undoubted that, in the Vedic period already the causes had begun to act, which by their combined and continued working had to graft a new order on the old Aryan trunk.
The Aryans of India and the Aryans of the classical world start from the same premiges. How different are the consequences on one side and on the other!
At the beginning the same groups exist on both sides, governed by the same beliefs, the same customs. In Greece and in Italy, these small societies combine to an organized whole. They rise, one above the other, in a regular system. Every group preserves its full autonomy in its sphere of action ; but the higher federation which constitutes the city, comprises the common interests and regulates the common action. The chaos takes shape under the bands of the Greeks. The disjointed organisms are melted into a larger unity. In proportion as it is getting formed, the new idea which is its hidden soul, the political idea appears in outline. As the caste, the "city" has sprang from the common primitive constitution, cast in the mould of the same religious rules, of the same traditions, but inspired by new necessities, it puts forth a new principle of organization. It shows itself capable of growing, of doing without the barriers which have supported, but also confined its first steps. Later on, it will, whilst transforming itself, supply a frame wide enough for giving room to the deepest revolutions in ethics and in power.