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Unit 6: Caste System in India

Ghurye (1961: 169) also believes in the role of Brahmins in the origin of caste and supports the Notes
Brahmanical theory. He maintains that the various factors that characterize caste-society were the
result, in the first instance, of the attempts on the part of the upholders of the Brahmanic civilization
to exclude the aborigines and the Sudras from religious and social communion with themselves.
When the Aryans entered India, they had three well-defined classes. But when this fourth class of the
Sudras was formulated, the Brahmanic literature contemplated it as in contradistinction to the other
three classes. Thus, the Vedic opposition between the Arya and the Dasa was replaced by the Brahmanic
classification of the dvijati and the ekajati (the Sudra), suggesting the transmutation of the Brahmanic
and later periods. As an important constituent of the Brahmanic culture in connection with the
sacrificial ritual, the Aryan notions of ceremonial purity took on an exaggerated aspect. How fastidious
the Brahmanic ideal of ceremonial purity had come to be by the time of the Sutras is best illustrated
by the meticulous rules laid down in them for purification and for general conduct. Brahmins, partly
out of their honest desire to preserve the purity of Vedic ritual, partly being the victims of their own
ideas of ceremonial purity, and partly also owning to their consciousness of superiority over the
aborigines, first enacted rules for the guidance of their own members (Ghurye, 1961: 174). The social
pattern set for themselves by the most respected class in the society could not fail to be imitated by
groups that would claim respectability. Thus, it must have been that the original restrictions on
marriage and regulations about the acceptance of food, which contemplated only four classes in
society, came to be the characteristics of each and every well-marked group. (Ghurye, 1961: 172),
therefore, concludes that caste in India is a Brahmanic child of the Indo-Aryan culture, cradled in the
land of the Ganga and the Yamuni and thence transferred to other parts of the country.
Hutton (1961: 17), however, feels that it is difficult to accept the Brahmanical theory of the origin of
caste. He mainly gives two arguments against it: (i) if this theory is accepted, it would mean that caste
must have originated at a date when Brahmins must have got the political power and he thinks that
caste did not originate at so late a date; and (ii) so deeply rooted a social institution like caste could
hardly have been imposed by an administrative measure. But both arguments are illogical. Brahmins
claimed high Status and special prerogatives not when they got the political power in the end of the
second century B.C. but when they wrote the Brahmanas somewhere in the fifth century B.C. The
opportunity of writing the Brahmanas in the period when Kshatriyas who were the rulers of the
country and who had refused to accept the superiority of the Brahmins over them, was provided by
the wars among Kshatriya rulers. Thus, since the Brahmanas was written in early period, Hutton is
not correct in assuming that caste will have originated at a late date, if Brahmanical theory is accepted.
His other argument is also not correct because Brahmins imposed their superiority over others not
through administrative means but by arousing the religious sentiments of the people. However, we
do agree that the origin of the caste system cannot be explained only in terms of a single factor like
the role played by the Brahmins, as Abbe Dubois has done. Racial, religious, economic and other
factors must also have been responsible in creating this system. We will, therefore, try to understand
the role of these other factors also.

Racial Theory
The most ardent exponent of this theory was Herbert Risley, though he has been supported by scholars
like Ghurye, Majumdar, Westermarck, and others. According to this theory, the clash of cultures and
the contact of races crystallized castes in India (Risley, 1915: 56; Ghurye, 1961: 119-135). In the history
of the world, whenever one people has subdued another, the conquerors have not only taken women
as concubines or wives from the conquered group but have also refused to give their own daughters
in marriage to them. When these two are of the same race, or at any rate of the same colour, complete
amalgamation between them soon takes place. But if they belong to two different races and colours,
the course of evolution runs on different lines. A class of half-breeds is then formed as the result of
irregular unions between women of the higher and men of the lower groups who marry only among
themselves and are to all intents and purposes a caste.
In India also, the migrant Aryans had their own ideas of ceremonial purity. They considered the
original inhabitants as inferior to them. Besides, the Aryans were essentially patrilineal in nature
while the local population whom they conquered were matrilineal. They, therefore, married with the

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