Sambodhi 1989 Vol 16

Author(s): Ramesh S Betai, Yajneshwar S Shastri
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 21

'class' division between 'twice-bora' and the opposite Shudra. It is in Religion and Society that Radhakrishnan offers a liberal interpretation and advocates change in psychological attitude, approach and treatment of 'Untouchables' in Hindu Society.
In 'Religion and Society' he writes, 'Caste divisions are based on individual temperament which is not immutable'. In the beginning there was only one caste. We were all Brahmins or all Shudras 2 A Smriti text says that one is born a Shudra and through purification he becomes a Brahmin. The caste groups are more trade guilds in charge of the cultural, political, economic and industrial sections of the community. Hinduism has drawn to its fold the Aryan, the Dravidian and the Mongoloid races which had drifted into the Ganges valley from the East, the Parthian, Scythian and Hun invaders from beyond the Himalayas. In Mahabharata, Indra tells the emperor Mandhatru to bring all foreign people like the Yavanas under the Aryan influence. In the period of the Rigveda we have the distribution between Aryan and Dasa and there were no rigid divisions among the Aryans themselves. In the times of Brahmanas the four classes became separated into rigid groups dependent on birth. The Smritis trace the innumerable castes to intermixture of the four Varnas by means of Anuloma and Pratiloma marriages. The four orders supersede the original racial differences. It is a classification based on social facts and psychology. In the Mahabharata we are told that the Yavanas (Greeks), the Kiratas, the Daradas (Dards), the Chinas (the Chinese), the Sakas (Scythians), the pahlavas (Parthians), the Savaras (Pre-Dravadian tribes) and several other Non-Hindu peoples belonged to one or the other of the four classes. These foreign tribes were absorbed into Hindu society. The sort of social adjustment by which foreigners followed the general traditional and common law of the society, the foreigners admitted into the Hindufold from very early times. So long they were treated as Hindus. The great Empire-builders, the Nandas, the Mauryas and the Guptas were, according to the Orthodox view, low-born. The Gupta emperor's married Licchavis who were regarded as Mlecchas. Latterly some Hindus have married European and American women. Race and Society
Though strong racial differences opertated, inter marriages had not been unsatisfactory. Owing to the inflow of many races in India with the marriages of a men and women of such divergent races brought certain kind of unity and homogeneity among them. When marriages between heferogeneous race-persons took place then standards of binding, norms of promise and mutual progress became loose. However, the castes