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[24] 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 24: English.]
W.W. HUNTER
At a very early period we catch sight of a nobler race from the
northwest, forcing its way in among the primitive peoples of India. This
race belonged to the splendid Aryan or Indo-Germanic stock from which
the Brahman, the Rajput, and the Englishman alike descend. Its earliest
home seems to have been in Western Asia. From that common camping-ground
certain branches of the race started for the east, others for the
farther west. One of the western offshoots built Athens and Sparta, and
became the Greek nation; another went on to Italy, and reared the city
on the Seven Hills, which grew into Imperial Rome. A distant colony of
the same race excavated the silver ores of prehistoric Spain; and when
we first catch a sight of ancient England, we see an Aryan settlement
fishing in wattle canoes, and working the tin mines of Cornwall.
Meanwhile other branches of the Aryan stock had gone forth from the
primitive Asiatic home to the east. Powerful bands found their way
through the passes of the Himalayas into the Punjab, and spread
themselves, chiefly as Brahmans and Rajputs, over India.
The Aryan offshoots, alike to the east and to the west, asserted their
superiority over the earlier peoples whom they found in possession of
the soil. The history of ancient Europe is the story of the Aryan
settlements around the shores of the Mediterranean; and that wide term,
modern civilization, merely means the civilization of the western
branches of the same race. The history of India consists in like manner
of the history of the eastern offshoots of the Aryan stock who settled
in that land.
We know little regarding these noble Aryan tribes in their early
camping-ground in Western Asia. From words preserved in the languages of
their long-separated descendants in Europe and India, scholars infer
that they roamed over the grassy steppes with their cattle, making long
halts to raise crops of grain. They had tamed most of the domestic
animals; were acquainted with iron; understood the arts of weaving and
sewing; wore clothes, and ate cooked food. They lived the hardy life of
the comparatively temperate zone; and the feeling of cold seems to be
one of the earliest common remembrances of the eastern and the western
branches of the race.
The forefathers of the Greek and the Roman, of the English and the
Hindu, dwelt together in Western Asia, spoke the same tongue, worshipped
the same gods. The languages of Europe and India, although at first
sight they seem wide apart, are merely different growths from the
original Aryan speech. This is especially true of the common words of
family life. The names for _father, mother, brother, sister_, and
_widow_ are the same in most of the Aryan languages, whether spoken on
the banks of the Ganges, of the Tiber, or of the Thames. Thus the word
_daughter_, which occurs in nearly all of them, has been derived from
the Aryan root _dugh_, which in Sanscrit has the form of _duh_, to milk;
and perhaps preserves the memory of the time when the daughter was the
little milkmaid in the primitive Aryan household.
The ancient religions of Europe and India had a common origin. They were
to some extent made up of the sacred stories or myths which our joint
ancestors had learned while dwelling together in Asia. Several of the
Vedic gods were also the gods of Greece and Rome; and to this day the
Divinity is adored by names derived from the same old Aryan word
(_deva_, the Shining One), by Brahmans in Calcutta, by the Protestant
clergy of England, and by Roman Catholic priests in Peru.
The Vedic hymns exhibit the Indian branch of the Aryans on their march
to the southeast, and in their new homes. The earliest songs disclose
the race still to the north of the Khaibar pass, in Kabul; the later
ones bring them as far as the Ganges. Their victorious advance eastward
through the intermediate tract can be traced in the Vedic writings
almost step by step. The steady supply of water among the five rivers of
the Punjab led the Aryans to settle down from their old state of
wandering half-pastoral tribes into regular communities of husbandmen.
The Vedic poets praised the rivers which enabled them to make this great
change--perhaps the most important step in the progress of a race. "May
the Indus," they sang, "the far-famed giver of wealth, hear us;
[fertilizing our] broad fields with water." The Himalayas, through whose
southwestern passes they had reached India, and at whose southern base
they long dwelt, made a lasting impression on their memory. The Vedic
singer praised "Him whose greatness the snowy ranges, and the sea, and
the aerial river declare." The Aryan race in India never forgot its
northern home. There dwelt its gods and holy singers; and there
eloquence descended from heaven among men; while high amid the Himalayan
mountains lay the paradise of deities and heroes, where the kind and the
brave forever repose.
The Rig-Veda forms the great literary memorial of the early Aryan
settlements in the Punjab. The age of this venerable hymnal is unknown.
Orthodox Hindus believe, without evidence, that it existed "from before
all time," or at least from 3001 years B.C. European scholars have
inferred from astronomical data that its composition was going on about
1400 B.C. But the evidence might have been calculated backward, and
inserted later in the Veda. We only know that the Vedic religion had
been at work long before the rise of Buddhism in the sixth century B.C.
The Rig-Veda is a very old collection of 1017 short poems, chiefly
addressed to the gods, and containing 10,580 verses. Its hymns show us
the Aryans on the banks of the Indus, divided into various tribes,
sometimes at war with each other, sometimes united against the
"black-skinned" aborigines. Caste, in its later sense, is unknown. Each
father of a family is the priest of his own household. The chieftain
acts as father and priest to the tribe; but at the greater festivals he
chooses some one specially learned in holy offerings to conduct the
sacrifice in the name of the people. The king himself seems to have been
elected; and his title of Vis-pat, literally "Lord of the Settlers,"
survives in the old Persian Vis-paiti, and as the Lithuanian Wiez-patis
in east-central Europe at this day. Women enjoyed a high position; and
some of the most beautiful hymns were composed by ladies and queens.
Marriage was held sacred. Husband and wife were both "rulers of the
house" (_dampati_); and drew near to the gods together in prayer. The
burning of widows on their husbands' funeral pile was unknown; and the
verses in the Veda which the Brahmans afterwards distorted into a
sanction for the practice, have the very opposite meaning. "Rise,
woman," says the Vedic text to the mourner; "come to the world of life.
Come to us, Thou hast fulfilled thy duties as a wife to thy husband."
The Aryan tribes in the Veda have blacksmiths, coppersmiths, and
goldsmiths among them, besides carpenters, barbers, and other artisans.
They fight from chariots, and freely use the horse, although not yet the
elephant, in war. They have settled down as husbandmen, till their
fields with the plough, and live in villages or towns. But they also
cling to their old wandering life, with their herds and "cattle-pens."
Cattle, indeed, still form their chief wealth--the coin in which payment
of fines is made--reminding us of the Latin word for money, _pecunia_,
from _pecus_, a herd. One of the Vedic words for war literally means "a
desire for cows." Unlike the modern Hindus, the Aryans of the Veda ate
beef; used a fermented liquor or beer, made from the _soma_ plant; and
offered the same strong meat and drink to their gods. Thus the stout
Aryans spread eastward through Northern India, pushed on from behind by
later arrivals of their own stock, and driving before them, or reducing
to bondage, the earlier "black-skinned" races. They marched in whole
communities from one river valley to another; each house-father a
warrior, husbandman, and priest; with his wife, and his little ones, and
his cattle.
These free-hearted tribes had a great trust in themselves and their
gods. Like other conquering races, they believed that both themselves
and their deities were altogether superior to the people of the land,
and to their poor, rude objects of worship. Indeed, this noble
self-confidence is a great aid to the success of a nation. Their
divinities--_devas_, literally "the shining ones," from the Sanscrit
root _div_, "to shine"--were the great powers of nature. They adored the
Father-heaven,--_Dyaush-pitar_ in Sanscrit, the _Dies piter_ or
_Jupiter_ of Rome, the _Zeus_ of Greece; and the Encompassing
Sky--_Varuna_ in Sanscrit, _Uranus_ in Latin, _Ouranos_ in Greek.
_Indra_, or the Aqueous Vapor, that brings the precious rain on which
plenty or famine still depends each autumn, received the largest number
of hymns. By degrees, as the settlers realized more and more keenly the
importance of the periodical rains to their new life as husbandmen, he
became the chief of the Vedic gods. "The gods do not reach unto thee, O
Indra, nor men; thou overcomest all creatures in strength." Agni, the
God of Fire (Latin _ignis_), ranks perhaps next to Indra in the number
of hymns addressed to him. He is "the Youngest of the Gods," "the Lord
and Giver of Wealth." The Maruts are the Storm Gods, "who make the rock
to tremble, who tear in pieces the forest." Ushas, "the High-born Dawn"
(Greek _Eos_), "shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living
being to go forth to his work." The Asvins, the "Horsemen" or fleet
outriders of the dawn, are the first rays of sunrise, "Lords of Lustre."
The Solar Orb himself (Surya), the Wind (Vayu), the Sunshine or Friendly
Day (Mitra), the intoxicating fermented juice of the Sacrificial Plant
(Soma), and many other deities are invoked in the Veda--in all, about
thirty-three gods, "who are eleven in heaven, eleven on earth, and
eleven dwelling in glory in mid-air."
The Aryan settler lived on excellent terms with his bright gods. He
asked for protection, with an assured conviction that it would be
granted. At the same time, he was deeply stirred by the glory and
mystery of the earth and the heavens. Indeed, the majesty of nature so
filled his mind, that when he praises any one of his Shining Gods, he
can think of none other for the time being, and adores him as the
supreme ruler. Verses may be quoted declaring each of the greater
deities to be the One Supreme: "Neither gods nor men reach unto thee, O
Indra!" Another hymn speaks of Soma as "king of heaven and earth, the
conqueror of all." To Varuna also it is said, "Thou art lord of all, of
heaven and earth; thou art king of all those who are gods, and of all
those who are men." The more spiritual of the Vedic singers, therefore,
may be said to have worshipped One God, though not One alone.
"In the beginning there arose the Golden Child. He was the one born lord
of all that is. He established the earth and this sky. Who is the God to
whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
"He who gives life, he who gives strength; whose command all the Bright
Gods revere; whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death. Who is
the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
"He who, through his power, is the one king of the breathing and
awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast. Who is the God to
whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
"He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm; he through whom
the heaven was established, nay, the highest heaven; he who measured out
the light and the air. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
sacrifice?
"He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds; he who alone is
God above all gods. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
sacrifice?"
While the aboriginal races buried their dead in the earth or under rude
stone monuments, the Aryan--alike in India, in Greece, and in
Italy--made use of the funeral-pile. Several exquisite Sanscrit hymns
bid farewell to the dead:--"Depart thou, depart thou by the ancient
paths to the place whither our fathers have departed. Meet with the
Ancient Ones; meet with the Lord of Death. Throwing off thine
imperfections, go to thy home. Become united with a body; clothe thyself
in a shining form." "Let him depart to those for whom flow the rivers of
nectar. Let him depart to those who, through meditation, have obtained
the victory; who, by fixing their thoughts on the unseen, have gone to
heaven. Let him depart to the mighty in battle, to the heroes who have
laid down their lives for others, to those who have bestowed their goods
on the poor." The doctrine of transmigration was at first unknown. The
circle round the funeral-pile sang with a firm assurance that their
friend went direct to a state of blessedness and reunion with the loved
ones who had gone before. "Do thou conduct us to heaven," says a hymn of
the later Atharva-Veda; "let us be with our wives and children." "In
heaven, where our friends dwell in bliss--having left behind the
infirmities of the body, free from lameness, free from crookedness of
limb--there let us behold our parents and our children." "May the
water-shedding Spirits bear thee upward, cooling thee with their swift
motion through the air, and sprinkling thee with dew." "Bear him, carry
him; let him, with all his faculties complete, go to the world of the
righteous. Crossing the dark valley which spreadeth boundless around
him, let the unborn soul ascend to heaven. Wash the feet of him who is
stained with sin; let him go upward with cleansed feet. Crossing the
gloom, gazing with wonder in many directions, let the unborn soul go up
to heaven."
By degrees the old collection of hymns, or the Rig-Veda, no longer
sufficed. Three other collections or service-books were therefore added,
making the Four Vedas. The word Veda is from the same root as the Latin
_vid-ere_, to see: the early Greek _feid-enai_, infinitive of _oida_, I
know: and the English _wisdom_, or I _wit_. The Brahmans taught that the
Veda was divinely inspired, and that it was literally "the _wisdom_ of
God." There was, first, the Rig-Veda, or the hymns in their simplest
form. Second, the Sama-Veda, made up of hymns of the Rig-Veda to be used
at the Soma sacrifice. Third, the Yajur-Veda, consisting not only of
Rig-Vedic hymns, but also of prose sentences, to be used at the great
sacrifices; and divided into two editions, the Black and White Yajur.
The fourth, or Atharva-Veda, was compiled from the least ancient hymns
at the end of the Rig-Veda, very old religious spells, and later
sources. Some of its spells have a similarity to the ancient German and
Lithuanian charms, and appear to have come down from the most primitive
times, before the Indian and European branches of the Aryan race struck
out from their common home.
To each of the four Vedas were attached prose works, called Brahmanas,
in order to explain the sacrifices and the duties of the priests. Like
the Four Vedas, the Brahmanas were held to be the very word of God. The
Vedas and the Brahmanas form the revealed Scriptures of the Hindus--the
_sruti_, literally "Things _heard_ from God." The Vedas supplied their
divinely-inspired psalms, and the Brahmanas their divinely-inspired
theology or body of doctrine. To them were afterward added the Sutras,
literally "_Strings_ of pithy sentences" regarding laws and ceremonies.
Still later the Upanishads were composed, treating of God and the soul;
the Aranyakas, or "Tracts for the forest recluse;" and, after a very
long interval, the Puranas, or "Traditions from of old." All these
ranked, however, not as divinely-inspired knowledge, or things "heard
from God" (_sruti_), like the Vedas and Brahmanas, but only as sacred
traditions--_smriti_, literally "The things _remembered_."
Meanwhile the Four Castes had been formed. In the old Aryan colonies
among the Five Rivers of the Punjab, each house-father was a husbandman,
warrior, and priest. But by degrees certain gifted families, who
composed the Vedic hymns or learned them off by heart, were always
chosen by the king to perform the great sacrifices. In this way probably
the priestly caste sprang up. As the Aryans conquered more territory,
fortunate soldiers received a larger share of the lands than others, and
cultivated it not with their own hands, but by means of the vanquished
non-Aryan tribes. In this way the Four Castes arose. First, the priests
or Brahmans. Second, the warriors or fighting companions of the king,
called Rajputs or Kchatryas, literally "of the _royal_ stock." Third,
the Aryan agricultural settlers, who kept the old name of Vaisyas, from
the root _vis_, which in the primitive Vedic period had included the
whole Aryan people. Fourth, the Sudras, or conquered non-Aryan tribes,
who became serfs. The three first castes were of Aryan descent, and were
honored by the name of the Twice-born Castes. They could all be present
at the sacrifices, and they worshipped the same Bright Gods. The Sudras
were "the slave-bands of black descent" of the Veda. They were
distinguished from their "Twice-born" Aryan conquerors as being only
"Once-born," and by many contemptuous epithets. They were not allowed to
be present at the great national sacrifices, or at the feasts which
followed them. They could never rise out of their servile condition; and
to them was assigned the severest toil in the fields, and all the hard
and dirty work of the village community.
The Brahmans or priests claimed the highest rank. But they seemed to
have had a long struggle with the Kchatryas, or warrior caste, before
they won their proud position at the head of the Indian people. They
afterward secured themselves in that position by teaching that it had
been given to them by God. At the beginning of the world, they said, the
Brahman proceeded from the mouth of the Creator, the Kchatryas or Rajput
from his arms, the Vaisya from his thighs or belly, and the Sudra from
his feet. This legend is true so far that the Brahmans were really the
brain power of the Indian people, the Kchatryas its armed hands, the
Vaisyas the food-growers, and the Sudras the down-trodden serfs. When
the Brahmans had established their power, they made a wise use of it.
From the ancient Vedic times they recognized that if they were to
exercise spiritual supremacy, they must renounce earthly pomp. In
arrogating the priestly function, they gave up all claim to the royal
office. They were divinely appointed to be the guides of nations and the
counsellors of kings, but they could not be kings themselves. As the
duty of the Sudra was to serve, of the Vaisya to till the ground and
follow middle-class trades or crafts; so the business of the Kchatryas
was to fight the public enemy, and of the Brahman to propitiate the
national gods.