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MAY, 1917)
CASTES IN INDIA
theories of other ethnologists, had it not been for the fact that Mr. Nesfield's is a typical one.
Without stopping to criticize those theories that explain the caste system as a natural phenomenon occurring in obedience to the law of disintegration, as explained by Herbert Spencer in his formula of evolution, or as natural as "the structural differentiation within an organism"—to employ the phraseology of orthodox apologists-,or as an early attempt to test the laws of eugenics--as all belonging to the same class of fallacy which regards the casto system as inevitable, or as being consciously imposed in anticipation of these laws on a helpless and humble population, I will now lay before you my own view on the subject.
We shall be well advised to recall at the outset that the Hindu society, in common with other societies, was composed of classes and the earliest known are the (1) Brahmans or the priestly class : (2) the Kshatriya, or the military class : (3) the Vaisya, or the merchant class: and (4) the Sudra, or the artisan and menial class. Particular attention has to be paid to the fact that this was essentially a class system, in which individuals, when qualified, could change their class, and therefore classes did change their personnel. At some time in the history of the Hindus, the priestly class socially detached itself from the rest of the body of people and through a closed-door poiicy became a caste by itself. The other classes being subject to the law of social division of labour underwent differentiation, some into large, others into very minute groups. The Vaisya and Sudra classes were the original inchoate plasm, which formed the sources of the numerous castes of to-day. As the military occupation does not very easily lend itself to very minute sub-division, the Kshatriya class could have differentiated into soldiers and administrators.
This sub-division of a society is quite natural. But the unnatural thing about these sub-divisions is that they have lost the open door character of the class system and have become self-enclosed units called castes. The question is, were they compelled to close their doors and become endogamous, or did they close them of their own accord ? I gubmit that there is a double line of answer: Some closed the door: others found it closed against them. The one is a psychological interpretation and the other is mechanistic, but they are complementary and both are necessary to explain the phenomena of casteformation in its entirety.
I will first take up the psychological interpretation. The question we have to answer in this connection is: Why did these sub-divisions or classes, if you please, industrial, religious or otherwise, become self-enclosed or endogamous ? My answer is because the Brahmans were 80. Endogamy, or the closed-door system, was a fashion in the Hindu Society, and as it had originated from the Brahman caste it was whole-heartedly imitated by all the non-Brahman sub-divisions or classes, who, in their turn, became endogamous castes. It is "the infection of imitation" that caught all these sub-divisions on their onward march of differentiation and has turned them into castes. The propensity to imitate is a deepseated one in the human mind and need not be deemed an inadequate explanation for the formation of the various castes in India. It is so deep-seated that Walter Bagehot argues that "we must not think of .. imitation as voluntary, or even consciouş. On the contrary it has its seat mainly in very obscure parts of the mind, whose potions, so far from being consciously produced, are hardly felt to exist ; so far from being conceived beforehand, are not even felt at the time. The main seat of the imitative part of our nature is our belief, and the causes predisposing us to believe this or disinclining us to believe that are among the obscurest parts of our nature. But as to the imitative natur
