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DEC., 1920 )
ON HISTORY OF THE INDIAN CASTE-SYSTEM.
231
Jätaka and also from inscriptions; at the present day there is a caste of the Mali.55 This transition from one stage of development to another becomes specially clear, if it be observed that what in one place is a guild, corresponds in another to a caste.56 So I think there can be no doubt left- and here I find myself fully in agreement with Fick,59 who has anticipated me in arriving at this conclusion, viz. that the guilds which the Pali literature shows us to have been in such a flourishing condition, are the predecessors, in a very essential part, of the present day castes; and in As much as we see before us the previous stage of the modern castes in the Buddhist literature, therefore we are again convinced that there is no justification for transferring these modern castes themselves back to the period of the texts referred to.
Though in the course of these observations I have allowed myself to be induced, by the original materials discussed, to cast an occasional glimpse at the origin of modern castee, at least from a particular point of view, yet it will not be possible for me here to attempt a comprehensive treatment of the problem in question, which would evidently have to be approached from a good many different directions.58 It would require a thorough investigation of sources, practically immeasurable in their dimensions, to enable us to bridge over the wide gulf between antiquity and modern times, so far as it is possible for it to be bridged over.
Senart attributes the blame of the errors which he thinks he has discovered in the traditional conception of ancient Indian caste, to the credulity of the philological school who have been carried away, without question or opposition, by the Brahmanical theory, and it has tended to shroud an unprejudiced vision of the real state of things. I am the last person to pronounce the picture of antiquity which has been built up by the philologists working in their studies from the ancient texts alone, to be the best and the only possible picture that research may succeed in drawing. But it would be a matter of immense regret, if amongst those interested in Indian research, certain narrowned and one-sided views of the philologists should be made too much of, and so discredit the philological method in general certainly this is not the intention of Senart ; but the danger that his book will actually be utilized for this purpose, cannot be overlooked. The philological method, when rightly understood, imposed upon those who follow it no blind credulity with regard to the sources; nor does it in any way prevent them from observing the living present and thus sharpening their insight for a better comprehension of these sources and of those past times for which these sources furnish evidence. What the philological method is expected really to prevent, is the far too rash, far too unrestrained projection of the picture of the present day into the past, and the overlooking, or the disregard, of all that by which the texte prove, without leaving any room for doubt, the existence of forms of ancient institutions differing from the picture before our eyes. In the investigations of Senart are there not points where one could wish that the distinguished sobolar had more closely maintained his connection with the "bcole philologique ?" who believes castos and guilds to be separated from each other by considerably wider gulf than I do, looks upon the guild -- a contrasted with the casto comprehending and over-ruling the entire social boing-8"confined in its action to the boonomio functions, the needs or the interest of which have created It (p. 196). If any importance be attached to the analogy with the guilds of the Middle Ages of western sountries which Senart himself has appealed to, then it will be seen that this analogy, far from making that Imitation to the purely economio interesta appear probablo, rather gooo, most popitivaly, against Fach conclusion.
Nosfield, Brief View of the Caste System, $33. Ibid. 168. Attention may be drawn to the fact that (nooording to L. von Schroeder, Indiens Litteratur und Kultur, 436) that Sonnerat did confound the custos directly with the guilde.
& Pp. 179, 183, 214 .
# Boside the custos of the broni character, evidently the "othnio outer " (ok, 208) might as the same time be subjectnd to specially oxhaustivo ta vestigation.
