The metaphysical speculation of ancient Hindus is based on the assumption that this physical world, which is subject to change, is not really real (maya). The only reality that is ultimately real is Brahman, which cannot be explained except in negative language, such as na-iti, na-iti (it is not this, it is not that). According to Hindu orthodoxy, Brahman in its essential nature is described as Sat (existence), Chit (consciousness) and Ananda (bliss). In theistic terms, Brahman becomes a personal god, the supreme Lord (Ishvara). In the eschatological dimensions, Brahman becomes Nirvana (eternal bills). Brahman has no predictes; it merely exists. Man can neither attain it nor worship it; he can only be it. in order to realize his selfhood (atman) one has to transcend the world of ignorance (avidya) and illusino (maya). In this sence, Hindus do not practise asceticism; they know that life itself is asceticism. The Hindus are, therefore, per-se to deny and shun the world and become wandering ascetics in order to experience spiritual transformation.
IT is difficult to determine and describe the history of the origin of the vast social and religious system which has grown up among the people of India since the third century B.C Before 2000 B.C., India’s predominant group was the curly-haired ancestors of the still numerous black-skinned Dravidians of the southern half of India. These people were, however, not aboriginal; in their midst were primitive tribes of older, and lower culture, some of whom yet survive in the jungles of South and Central India. Sometime about the middle of second millennium B.C., there came pouring over the passes of the Hindu Kush mountains in the north-west of India (now in Pakistan) a people of Indo-European stock, who called themselves “Aryans”. The Indo-Aryans settled first on the upper branches of the Indus river (now in Pakistan). In the van of Aryan advance, the struggle with the black-skinned Dravidians was continuous, and as successive waves of invaders piled up from the rear, there were inter-tribal clashes, which were to be immortalised later in the great Hindu epics, the “Ramayana” and the “Mahabharatha”. By this time the whole region of the “Seven Rivers” (the upper branches of the Indus, in West Pakistan) was occupied and they (the Aryans) were pressing down the Ganges Valley, enslaving or driving before them, eastward and southward, the black-skinned Dravidians. The advance did not halt until the whole of the north and Central India, to the delta of Ganges, was in the power and under the active rule of conquering invaders. The land had gradually changed hands. The Aryans occupied the upper strata of a still fluid social order; below were the drak-skinned non-Aryans, in the process of being submerged. And now, there were definitely coming into being four distinct social groups the Brahmins or priests, the Kshatriyas or nobles, the Vaishyas or Aryan common people (peasants, Artisans and traders), and last the ensalved shudras or non-Aryan blacks.
Caste divisions have been supported by appeal to myths and legends. Westerners like other outsiders, however, are repelled by the idea that by birth one is Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra or outcaste. But Hindus like Radhakrishna remind them that India through the caste system solved peaceably the problem which others solved by slavery and death: “When european races conquered others, they took care to effface their human dignity and annihilate their self-respect”. While he is correct in shaming western peoples for raiding other people’s lands and killing war captives, for making slaves of them, for raping their women (and otherwise mating with them by taking advantage of their poverty and helplessness) and for putting them on reservations, the caste system ought not to escape its share of reproach. Dr. B.R Ambedkar, President of the Scheduled Caste Foundation once wrote out of his experience, “To the untouchables, Hinduism is a veritable chamber of horror”. Consequently in October 1956, Dr. Ambedkar on the occasion of the 2500th anniversary of the Buddha’s birth led 3,00,000 untouchables out of Hinduism into Buddhism. The untouchables took the three-fold vow of Buddhism in a cermony conducted at Nagpur by the oldest Buddhist priest in India. The effort was, however, a failure, for these “Buddhist” later became a jaiti (sub-class based on occupational differences) within Hinduism due to the pressure subtly exerted by the government and the caste Hindus.