History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0132/01329.txt

Text File | 1992-10-11 | 13KB | 235 lines

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$Title{Formation Of The Castes In India
By Gustave Le Bon}
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$Author{Le Bon, Gustave;Hunter, W. W.}
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$Subject{caste
india
castes
system
first
brahmans
priests
classes
still
themselves}
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Title:       Formation Of The Castes In India
Author:      Le Bon, Gustave;Hunter, W. W.
Translation: Starkweather, Chauncey C.

By Gustave Le Bon

B.C. 1200

Introduction

     The institution of caste was not peculiar to India.  In Rome there was a
long struggle over the connubium.  Among the Greeks the right of commensality,
or eating together, was restricted.  In fact, the phenomena of caste are
world-wide in their extent.  In India the priests and nobles contended for the
first place.  India had progressed along the line of ethnic evolution from a
loose confederacy of tribes into several nations, ruled by kings and priests,
and the iron fetters of caste were becoming more rigidly welded.  At first the
father of the family was the priest.  Then the chiefs and sages took the
office of spiritual guide, and conducted the sacrifices. As writing was
unknown, the liturgies were learned by heart, and handed down in families.
The exclusive knowledge of the ancient hymns became hereditary, as it were.
The ministrants increased in number, and thus sprang up the powerful priestly
caste.

     Then the warrior class arose and grew strong in numbers and power,
becoming differentiated from the agriculturists, and forming the military
caste.  The husbandmen drifted into another caste, and the three orders were
rigidly separated by a cessation of intermarriage.

     At the bottom came the Sudras, or slave bands, the servile dregs of the
population.  In course of time, from various influences, the third class
became almost eliminated in many provinces.  From the cradle to the grave
these cruel barriers still intervene between the strata of the people,
relentless as fate and insurmountable as death.

     In ancient times the power of kings [in India] was only nominal.  In the
Aryan village, forming a little republic, the chief, bearing the name of
rajah, was secure in his fortress, exercising full sway.  Such was the
political system prevailing in India through all the ages, and which has
always been respected by the conquerors, whoever they might be.  So, for so
many centuries back we see arise the first elements of an organization which
still endures.

     We find here also the beginnings of that system of castes, which, at
first indistinct and floating, when the classes sought only to be
distinguished from each other, was to become so rigid, when it was constituted
under the influence of ethnological reasons, as to dig fathomless abysses
between the races.

     In the Vedas may be traced the progression of the distance between the
priests and the warriors, at first slight, and then increasing more and more.
The division of functions did not stop there.  While the sacrificing priest
was consecrating himself more exclusively day by day to the accomplishment of
the sacred rites and to the composition of hymns; while the warrior passed his
days in adventurous expeditions or daring feats, what would have become of the
land and what would it have produced if others had not applied themselves
without ceasing, to cultivate it?  A third class became distinct, the
agriculturists.

     In one of the last hymns of Rig Veda these three classes appear,
absolutely separated and already designated by the three words Brahmans,
Kchatryas, Vaisyas.

     The fourth class, that of the Sudras, was to arise later and to include
the mass of conquered peoples when the latter joined the circle of Aryan
civilization.  The classes, hitherto mingling, now became rigidly separated
castes.

     The most important of these divisions, and that which was first formed,
was the one between the priests and the warriors.  The Brahmans,
intermediaries between men and the gods, soon became more and more exacting,
and finally considered themselves as entirely superior beings and were
accepted as such.

     The distinction between the warriors and the agriculturists also soon
became marked, arising doubtless rather from a difference in fortune than in
functions.

     The war chief, who returned laden with booty, covered himself with rings
of gold, rich vestments, and gleaming arms.  He became "rajah," that is to say
"shining," for such was the meaning of the word at the Vedic epoch.

     Still no absolute barrier between the classes had arisen.  They mingled
to offer sacrifices, and sometimes ate in common.  Heredity of office and
profession began to be established.  The sacred songs were handed down in
families, as were also the functions of the sacrificers.  And here among the
Vedic Aryans are seen in process of elaboration the germs of the institution
which later gained so much power in India and which dominates it still with
apparent immutability.

     The system of castes has been the corner-stone of all the institutions of
India for two thousand years.  Such is its importance, and so generally is it
misunderstood, that it will be well briefly to explain its origins, sources,
and consequences.  A system, the result of which is to permit a handful of
Europeans to hold sway over two hundred and fifty millions of men deserves the
attention of the observer.

     The system of castes has existed for more than twenty centuries in India.
It doubtless had its origin in the recognition of the inevitable laws of
heredity.  When the white-skinned conquerors, whom we call Aryans, penetrated
India, they found, in addition to other invaders of Turanian origin, black,
half-savage populations whom they subjugated.  The conquerors were
half-pastoral, half-stationary tribes, under chiefs whose authority was
counterbalanced by the all-powerful influence of the priests whose duty it was
to secure the protection of the gods.  Their occupations were divided into
classes, that of Brahmans or priests, Kchatryas or warriors, and Vaisyas,
laborers or artisans.  The last class was perhaps formed by the invaders
anterior to the Aryans, whom we have just mentioned.

     These divisions corresponded, as is evident, to our three ancient castes,
the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate.  Beneath these classes was the
aboriginal population, the Sudras, forming three quarters of the whole
population.

     Experience soon revealed the inconveniences which might rise from the
mixture of the superior race with the inferior ones, and all the proscriptions
of religion tended thereafter to prevent it.  "Every country which gives birth
to men of mixed races," said the ancient law-giver of the Hindus, the sage
Manu, "is soon destroyed together with those who inhabit it." The decree is
harsh, but it is impossible not to recognize its truth. Every superior race
which has mingled with another too inferior has speedily been degraded or
absorbed by it.  The Spaniards in America, the Portuguese in India, are proofs
of the sad results produced by such mixtures.  The descendants of the brave
Portuguese adventurers, who in other days conquered part of India, fill to-day
the employments of servants, and the name of their race has become a term of
contempt.

     Imbued with the importance of this anthropological truth, the Code of
Manu, which has been the law of India for so many centuries, and which, like
all codes, is the result of long anterior experiences, neglects nothing to
preserve the purity of blood.

     It pronounces severe penalties against all intermingling of the superior
castes between themselves, and especially with the caste of the Sudras. There
are no frightful threats which it does not employ to keep the latter apart.

     But in the course of the centuries nature triumphed over these formidable
prohibitions.  Woman always has her charms, no matter how inferior she may be
in caste.  In spite of Manu, crossings of caste were numerous, and one need
not travel India throughout to perceive that, to-day, the populations of all
the races are mixed to a large extent.  The number of individuals white enough
to prove that their blood is quite pure is very restricted.  The word caste,
taken in its primitive sense, is no longer a synonym of color, as it used to
be in Sanscrit, and, if caste had had only formerly prevailing ethnological
reasons to invoke, it would have had no reason for continuing.  In fact, the
primitive divisions of caste have long since disappeared.  They were replaced
by new divisions, the origin of which is other than the difference of races,
except in the case of the Brahmans, who still form the less mixed portion of
the population.

     Among the causes which have perpetuated the system of castes, the law of
heredity has furthermore continued to play a fundamental part.  Aptness is
inevitably hereditary among the Hindus, and, also inevitably, the son follows
the profession of the father.  The principle of heredity of the professions
being universally admitted, there has resulted the formation of castes as
numerous as the professions themselves, and to-day in India castes are
numbered by the thousand.  Each new profession has for an immediate
consequence the formation of a new caste.  The European who comes to India to
live soon perceives to what an extent the castes have multiplied in observing
the number of different persons whom he is obliged to hire to wait on him. To
the two preceding causes of the formations of castes, the ethnological cause,
now very weak, and the professional, which is still very strong, are added
political office, and the heterogeneity of religious beliefs.

     The castes springing from political office might, strictly speaking, be
placed in the category of professional castes, but those produced by diversity
of religious beliefs should be attached to none of the preceding causes.  In
theory, that is, only judged by the reading of books, all India would be
divided into two or three great religions only.  But practically these
religions are very numerous.  New gods, considered as simple incarnations of
ancient ones, are born and die every day, and their votaries soon form a new
caste as rigid in its exclusions as the others.

     Two fundamental signs mark the conformity of castes, and separate from
all the others the persons belonging to them.  The first is that the
individuals of the same caste cannot eat except among themselves.  The second
is that they can only marry among themselves.

     These two proscriptions are quite fundamental, and the first not less
than the second.  You may meet by the hundreds in India Brahmans who are
employed by the government in the post-office and railway service, or even
Brahmans who are beggars.  But the humble functionary or wretched mendicant
would rather die than sit at table with the viceroy of India.

     The quality of Brahmans is hereditary, like a title of nobility in
Europe.  It is not a synonym of priest, as is generally believed, because it
is from this caste that priests are recruited.  This caste was formerly so
exalted that the rank of royalty was not sufficient to enable one to aspire to
the hand of a Brahman's daughter.

     The Hindu would rather die than violate the laws of his caste.  Nothing
is more terrible than for him to lose it.  Such loss may be compared to
excommunication in the middle ages, or to a condemnation for an infamous crime
in modern Europe.  To lose his caste is to lose everything at one blow,
parents, relations, and fortune.  Every one turns his back upon the culprit
and refuses to have any dealings with him.  He must enter the casteless
category, which is employed only for the most abject functions.

     As to the social and political consequences of such a system, the only
social bond among the Hindus is caste.  Outside of caste the world does not
exist for him.  He is separated from persons of another caste by an abyss much
deeper than that which separates Europeans of the most different
nationalities.  The latter may intermarry, but persons of different castes
cannot.  The result is that every village possesses as many groups as there
are castes represented.

     With such a system union against a master is impossible.  This system of
caste explains the phenomenon of two hundred and fifty millions of men
obeying, without a murmur, sixty or seventy thousand strangers ^1 whom they
detest.  The only fatherland of the Hindu is his caste.  He has never had
another.  His country is not a fatherland to him, and he has never dreamed of
its unity.

[Footnote 1: English.]