Indian Antiquary Vol 59

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 213

OCTOBER, 1920 ]
ORIGIN OF THE CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA
195
ORIGIN OF THE CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA.
BY THE LATE 8. CHARLES HILL.
(Continued from page 84.) From the earliest times and under all these systems a different kind of effort had been made to fight the ills of Society. This took the form of secret societies or fraternities, in which carefully selected individuals, entering as neophytes, pledged themselves to absolute secrecy and obedience and, under a strict system of training, passed through successive grades of promotion. Under the despotic orders of their superiors and sheltered by secrecy, without claiming any open share in the control of the State, these Secret Societies undertook to remedy all injustice and tyranny. But no course of training, however wise and severe, could, in the period of a single life, so mould the character of a man as to fit him for absolute and irresponsible power, and these Societies, after a time, instead of being a protection to the people became objects of terror and were abolished as such, except in a few cases where their aims were under a' merely nominal secrecy, limited to purely harmless or philanthropic purposes.
From such enquiries it appeared that all previous political systems had been based upon the idea that stability could be obtained by & union of force and wisdom in the ruler. On the part of the ruled nothing was looked for beyond submission. The difficulty was to keep the force and wisdom permanent in the ruling body, and to do this had proved to be impracticable. It had also been proved that even careful selection combined with careful training was insufficient to form the perfect ruler. To ensure stability it was necessary to find something which, socially, would be more permanent and binding than either force or wisdom and even than force and wisdom combined. Where was this to be looked for? Was it in some Superman or in Man recreated ? The supposed Supermen of earlier civilizations had all proved to be only men after all. The only avenue of hope lay in the possibility of recreating Man, or, rather, of recreating Mankind.
(XII) Human beings not originally of one but of four types. Recovery of these types. It had, of course, been noticed that, however unstable and perverse men might be, their lives were always, more or less consistently, governed by one of several predominant motives, such As bodily comfort or pleasure, the love of material gain, the love of honour or the benevolent desire to help their fellows; in other words, there were at least four types of human character. Furthermore, whether the occupation which a man followed were the inspiration or the consequence of his predominant motive, it appeared that certain occupations were usually accompanied more especially by one only of the motives just mentioned ; thus in the peasant and artisan the ruling motive was the love of security and comfort combined with the habit of manual labour, in the trader thrift and the amassing of wealth regardless of personal hardship, in the soldier honour and the love of glory, in the priest benevolence and the love of wisdom and contemplation. Each of these was beneficial to the community and each of these allowed a full exercise of human faculties. Men were unhappy either because this exercise was restricted in some way or other or because, through their own fickleness, they were often uncertain as to what they wanted or ignorant how to obtain it. Further, it had been noticed that, though such qualities as it was hoped would distinguish the ruling class from the ruled could not be permanently retained in that class, still, where marriage had been carefully restricted, these qualities were more steady and persistent than where marriage between the classes was allowed to be promiscuous, and also it had been noticed that, whore.com munities or occupations had kept themselves pure from external contact, particular qualities had developed and persisted. All this suggested the former existence of primeval types of men of different qualities, now only imperfectly reprosented by the predominant motives just mentioned. If then the discontent and unhappiness of individuals could be rightly ascribed to their being actuated by discordant and conflicting motives, it was evident that