Chapter I

The Origin of Caste.

There are few questions within the whole sphere of Indian sociology which present more difficulty than those connected with the origin of caste. If the native of the country has any idea whatever on the subject, it is sufficient for him to refer to a mass of texts which are, it is hardly necessary to say, of little or no scientific value. They merely record the views of various priestly schools from whom there is strong reason to believe that the system, as we now observe it, originated. It is on lines quite different from these that any real enquiry into the subject must proceed. It may be well here to give at starting the religious form which the tradition has assumed.

4. We do, of course, in the Veda meet with various trades and handicrafts which had even in this early age become differentiated. Thus in the ninth book of the Rig Veda we have the famous passage which has been thus translated:—

“How various are the views which different men inspire!

How various are the ends which men of different craft desire!

The leech a patient seeks; the smith looks out for something cracked.

The priest seeks devotees from whom he may his fee extract.

With feathers, metal and the like, and sticks decayed and old,

The workman manufactures wares to coin the rich man’s gold.

A poet I, my sire a leech, and corn my mother grinds:

7. And the same writer goes on to say:—

“Manu represents, indeed, all the castes of Hindu society, and their number is considerable, as the result of mixed marriages between the four original castes. According to him the four primitive castes by intermarrying in every possible way gave rise to sixteen mixed castes, which by continuing their inter-marriages produced the long list of the mixed castes. It is extremely doubtful, however, whether Manu meant to say that at all times the offspring of a mixed marriage had to enter a lower caste. He could not possibly maintain that the sons of a Brâhman father and a Vaisya mother would always be a physician or Vaidya, this being the name given by Manu to the offspring of these two castes. At present the offspring of a Sûdra father and a Brâhman mother would find no admission in any respectable caste. Their marriage would not be considered marriage at all. The only rational explanation of Manu’s words seems to be that originally the Vaidyas or physicians sprang from the union of a Brâhman father and a Vaisya mother, though this, too, is of course nothing but a fanciful theory. If we look more carefully we shall find that most of these mixed castes are in reality the professions, trades and guilds of a half-civilised society. They did not wait for mixed marriages before they came into existence. Professions, trades and handicrafts had grown up without any reference to caste in the ethnological or political sense of the word. Some of their names were derived from towns and countries where certain professions were held in particular estimation. Servants who waited on ladies were called Vaidehas, because they came from Videha, the Athens of India, just as the French call the “porteur d’eau” a “Savoyard.” To maintain that every member of the caste of the Vaidehas, in fact, every lady’s maid, had to be begotten through the marriage of a Vaisya and a Brâhmani, is simply absurd. In other cases the names of Manu’s castes were derived from their occupations. The caste of musicians, for instance, were called Venas from vîna, the lyre. Now, it was evidently Manu’s object to bring these professional corporations in connection with the old system of castes, assigning to each, according to its higher or lower position, a more or less pure descent from the original castes. The Vaidyas, for instance, or the physicians, evidently a respectable corporation, were represented as the offspring of a Brâhman father and a Vaisya mother, while the guild of the fishermen, or Nishâdas, were put down as the descendants of a Brâhman father and a Sûdra mother. Manu could hardly mean to say that every son of a Vaisya father and Kshatriya mother was obliged to become a commercial traveller, or to enter the caste of the Magadhas. How could that caste have been supplied after the extinction in many places of the Kshatriya and Vaisya castes? But having to assign to the Magadhas a certain social position, Manu recognised them as the descendants of the second and third castes, in the same way as the Herald’s office would settle the number of quarters of an earl or a baron.”

Caste subsequent to Manu. 9. It was caste in or about the stage of its development exhibited in the “Institutes” of Manu which Megasthenes, first of all the barbarians, observed in his embassy to the court of Sandrocottus or Chandragupta (306–298 B.C.). He found seven, not four, castes—the philosophers, husbandmen, shepherds, artizans, soldiers, inspectors and counsellors of the king. The philosophers were the Brâhmans, and the traveller indicates the prescribed stages of the Brâhmanical life. He distinguishes the Brachmanes from the Sarmanai, the latter of whom are supposed to represent the Buddhist Sramanas or monks, while the inspectors were the Buddhist supervisors of morals, afterwards referred to in the sixth edict of Asoka.

10. This hasty survey of the historical development of caste sufficiently disposes of the popular theory that caste is a permanent institution, transmitted unchanged from the dawn of Hindu history and myth.

17. Among the Râjputs, again, this process of assimilation of lower races has been undoubtedly encouraged by the prevalence of female infanticide which renders it impossible for the poorer members of the race to obtain legitimately born brides. This has naturally led to cohabitation with women of inferior castes and the creation of definite classes of illegitimate Râjputs, such as the Gaurua of the Central and the degraded Chauhâns of the Upper Ganges-Jumna Duâb. A recent report on the outbreak of dacoity in the Agra and Rohilkhand Divisions shows that many of the perpetrators of these outrages were half-bred Râjputs, whose mothers were drawn from criminal or nomadic tribes like the Nat, Beriya, Sânsiya and the like, and the association of Râjput youths with women of this class has brought them into the companionship of their gypsy male relatives and driven them into a life of crime.

18. It is needless to say that the records of our courts swarm with examples of the association of men of the Râjput class with women of the lower races, and in this stratum of village society there is not even a pretence of moral continence. The effect of this state of things is obvious and requires no further illustration.

The occupational origin of the Vaisyas. 19. The same remarks largely apply to the so-called modern representatives of the Vaisya class, the aggregate of tribes now grouped under the general name of Banya. Some of these, such as the Agarwâlas and Oswâls, are in appearance perhaps among the best bred races of Northern India. Others are obviously occupational groups recruited from the lower races which have grouped themselves under the generic title of Banya or Mahâjan. The Bohra asserts Brâhmanical origin. Others again in name and function are in all probability connected with various classes of artizans—the Kasarwâni and Kasaundhan with the Kasera, the Lohiya with the Lohâr, and the same inference may perhaps be drawn from the grades of Dasa and Bîsa, “the tens” and “the twenties,” which appear among the Agarwâlas, and can hardly indicate anything but a gradation in purity of descent.

Anthropometry the only safe basis of enquiry. 21. The only safe criterion of the relation of these races to the so-called “twice-born” tribes can be gained from the evidence of anthropometry, which must be left for another chapter.

Summary of theories of origin of caste. 22. Meanwhile to sum up the results of these remarks—

(a) The Vedas, as we possess them, give no clear indication of any form of caste, except that of the occupational or trade guild type.

(b) The first trace of modern caste is found in the “Institutes” of Manu: but here the rules of food, connubium and intercourse between the various castes are very different from what we find at present.

(c) Caste so far from being eternal and changeless is constantly subject to modification, and this has been the case through the whole range of Hindu myth and history.

(d) Caste is not an institution peculiar to Indian soil; but in its occupational form at least is widely prevalent elsewhere.

(e) Caste is in its nature rather a matter of sociology than of religion.

(f) The primitive so-called division of the people into Brâhmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas and Sûdras does not agree with existing facts, and these terms do not now denote definite ethnological groups.

(g) The only trustworthy basis for the ethnological survey of Upper India must be based on anthropometry.

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