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The Theories Of Ibbotson And Newfield |
The following are the excerpts and brief summary from the book ‘CASTE, CLASS AND RACE – A Study in Social Dynamics.’ By Oliver Cromwell Cox, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology, Lincoln University.
PROFESSOR PITRIM SROKIN’S CONVICTION ABOUT THE CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA.
The factors of race, selection, and heredity were known long ago… In the Sacred Books of India, we find the theory that the different castes were created out of different parts of the body of Brahma, and that they are innately different; consequently, any mixture of blood, or cross-marriage, or even any contract of the members of different races is the greatest crime, and the social status of every individual is entirely determined by the “blood” of his parents… Enguencs was well known and widely practiced in ancient societies. “Twice-born men (of the higher castes) who, in their folly wed wives of low caste, soon degrade their families and their children to the state of Sudras”.
Seeking social origins is a particularly unproductive type of endeavor. The following ancient Hindu text seems to suit the occasion: “The origin of seers, rivers, great families, women, and sin is not to be found out”. With respect to the origin of castes, the difficulty probably lies in the fact that the caste system did not originate. A social order does not originate; it evolves. Hence, that which we might discover as the origin is mostly likely not the social organization which we are seeking to describe. At any rate, with this in mind we shall go as far back as history permits us.
If we were to ask ourselves what in Hindu society differentiates it from other advanced societies, we cannot help concluding that it is principally the dominance of priests. If, then, we are able to follow the circumstances which led to the ascendancy of priests, we might be able to achieve some insight into the development of the types of society which they influenced and helped to fashion. The presence of the Dravidians, a people distinguishable physically and culturally from the Aryans, must certainly have been a factor determining the kind of society which evolved in India. We should assume that they contributed to the system at every stage of its development.
The pure-blood theorists have discovered the origin of caste in Aryan racial antipathy, which is supposed to be an inherent attribute of Aryans. The caste system, as we know it today, however, is admittedly not based upon Aryo-Dravidian racial antagonism. It is a social system of an entirely different nature. Hence, it is the origin of the latter system and not of the postulated race-caste system, which we are interested in determining. Those who adduce the racial theory of caste always assume that there were at first two castes, the Aryans and the Dravidians, conquerors and conquered, white and black. Their discussion of the relationship between these two peoples is always deductive and inferential, based upon the type of race relations with which we are now familiar among whites and peoples of color. However, these writers have never succeeded in making a convincing transition from such a pattern of race relationship to the caste system which we know in India. They either skip the difficulty or gloss it over with new theories about occupations and religion. Observe, for instance, the following conclusion of Dr. Ghurye:
The three first castes were first enjoyed not to marry a Sudra female before any other restriction of an endogamous nature was tried to be promulgated…. The various factors that characterized 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.
The three first castes were, so far as certain statements in the literature are concerned, Aryans. It would be consistent with modern thinking to pit them against the Sudras of questionable race and the Dravidians. But in order to do this Dr. Ghurye had to go to the extent of implying that the Brahmans, the Kshatriyas, and the Vaisyas were developed castes intermarrying among themselves but endogamous only with respect to others! This, of course, is not only opposed to the logic of the caste system but is also without a scintilla of historical support. Clearly it is absurd to say that the three first castes were endogamous among themselves.
There are many stories and variations of stories of creation in the literature of the Hindus, but the one which occurs most frequently and which is mot generally accepted is the famous Purusha Myth of the rig-Veda. In Book X, hymn 90, verses 11-12, an account is given of the creation of the four castes from the body of the great god Purusha; it is the earliest of all accounts. We cite it here at the risk of some repetition:
The Brahman was his mouth,
Of both his arms was the Rajanya made;
His thighs became the Vaisya,
From his feet the Sudra was produced.
The Rice-Vedic description is as limited as that; without elaboration or further explanations it stands in stark finality, one of the most powerful bits of philosophy in Hindu culture. This story of creation is valuable, not so much as an accurate description of the origin of caste, but rather as an indication of the fact that, even at so early a period (about 1000 B.C)., the most thoughtful men had been so far removed from the true social basis of castes or of social estates that it had become possible for them to accept a mythical explanation. The myth may be also indicative of the crescive nature, of the caste system. Since the Hindus do not have a historical theory of caste, we shall pass on to some of the modern explanations.
There are, as we have noticed, many modern theories of the origin of caste, but they may all be classified broadly into two categories: (a) those having a cultural explanation, and (b) those having a racial explanation. The number of writers accepting the latter type of explanation is probably many hundreds. All, however, have some variation of the idea that the early Aryans were determined to keep their white blood pure and that caste was their most effective method. Fewer theorists rely on a cultural hypothesis, but among them there is greater diversity of opinion. We shall consider the racial approach first.
PURE-BLOOD THEORIES:
We shall have to quote fairly lengthy passages, for a paraphraising of the authors may do violence to their thoughts. The early social life of the Hindus is obscure because there is very little historical record of it; hence, attempts to ferret out social situations usually involve deductive reasoning.
It is generally recognized that Sir Herbert Risley has been the most insistent advocate of the racial theory of caste. He did considerable anthropometrical research among the Hindus, using his racial hypothesis as a guide. However, the reliability of his data and the validity of his conclusions have been questioned by latter observes. There remains, then, only his hypothesis supported by deductive reasoning. Risely puts his theory in the form of a law of race contact. It runs roughly as follows: White men in contact with people of color will take women from the colored group but will not give their own women. When the whites have bred enough white women, “they will close their ranks” and form a superior caste. The mixed bloods will then close their ranks, forming additional castes with degrees of superiority based upon lightness of color.
This hypothesis covers considerable ground, hence we shall postpone consideration of it. In fact, what Risley has really achieved is an explanation of caste in terms of race relations and, having done so, he called race relations caste. Nripendra Kumar Dutt, writing more recently on the origin of caste, presents a variation of Risley, but his approach is somewhat more historical. Let us consider this:
That the color question was at the root of the Varna system is apparent from the meaning of the word Varna (complexion) and from the great emphasis with which the Vedic Indians distinguished themselves from the non-Aryans in respect to color. The class which retained the utmost purity of color by avoiding intermixture naturally gained precedence in the social scale. The Brahmans were white, the Kshatriyas red, the Vaisyas because of large absorption of black blood – were yellowish like the mulattoes of America, and the Sudras black, as is described in the Mahabharata.
In the first stage the Indo-Aryans were divided into three orders or varnas. They had no scruple in marrying indiscriminately among themselves, while racial hatred made them avoid contact with the non-Aryan Sudras. The memory of this age is preserved in the Mahabharata, Anushasana Parva, where it is stated that “The son of a Brahman by wives of the three varnas is a Brahman. Only four varnas are known to exist; a fifth does not exist.” In other words, the son invariably belonged to the order of his father, whatever might be the rank of his mother. Such a statement is not subscribed to by any of the Dharmasastras. As, however, the Vaisyas come into greater association with the Sudras and became more polluted with non-Aryan blood then the two other classes, aversion came to be felt towards the union in marriage with a Vaisya girl.
This state of caste development is represented in a sloka of the same Anushasana Parva which states that: “of the four wives of four orders of a Brahman, in the two higher he himself (i.e., a Brahman) is born, in the two lower less pure sons are born who belong to their mother’s varna.”. This state of things evidently continued till about the time of Manu, who also does not assign a separate caste to the son of a Brahman father and a Kshatriya mother. With the hardening of caste rules in the course of time, even this freedom was restricted. In the later Dharmasastras we find that none could become a Brahman who was not born of Brahman parentage on both sides. When the marriage with a sudra women was so much abhorred and blamed, we can easily conceive of the horror and detestation which a Brahman in his racial pride would feel at the sight of a Brahman woman marrying a Sudra. No words are too strong to condemn such a marriage, and as deterrent it is enacted that the issue of such a union should occupy the humblest position in society. Thus we see that the development of inter-caste marriage restrictions was principally due to the racial difference between white conquerors and the black, and the desire of the former to preserve their purity of blood.
Dutt’s hypothesis contains just about the whole gamut of spurious reasoning on this problem; therefore, it is particularly appropriate as a model for discussion. We shall first mention broadly some of the points which come into question and then discuss their significance in other sections of this chapter.
Probably the most common explanation of the origin of caste is based upon beliefs that the word “varna” means color; hence, caste must have originated in the Aryan’s passion for protecting their light Asiatic color from intermixture with the dark color of the Dravidians. However, as we shall attempt to indicate below, the early literature of the Hindus does not show this to be the case.
It becomes necessary for Dutt to rely upon even such remote metaphorical descriptions of the castes as white, red, yellow, and black. There is understandably some silence about explaining why the blood of the princes had already become “red” and only that of the priests had remained white --- and this in spite of the fact that the Brahmans and the Kshatriyas intermarried freely. In fact, professor Hopkins has shown that in the Vedic period the Kshatriyas were the ruling caste in India. If we take these disconnected references to color as implying superiority, then “red” must have been superior to white. As we shall see below, the term “Varna” has other meanings besides color. The analogy with the mulattoes in America is rather astonishing but characteristic of these theories.
One assumption which seems fatal to these theories is that there were two color castes before there were castes within any one color group. Not only is this position un-revealed in the data, but also reliance upon it has led to such confused statements as: “The class which retained the utmost purity of color by avoiding intermixture naturally gained precedence in the social scale.” Why “naturally”? What does our writer mean by “class”? If it means caste, then castes were formed before they began to avoid color mixture.
Let it be said that we have no record of the racial composition of the Sudras. The term “Sudra” is not synonymous with “Dravidian”. Neither do we have any authority for the statement: “Indo-Aryans had no scruple in marrying indiscriminately among themselves.” The period is not known when a Vaisya man could freely marry a Brahman women or even a Kshatriya woman. Only in the legendary narratives do kings wed the daughters of priests, but it is a platitude of the Mahabharata that no woman could marry into the caste beneath hers. Hopkins quotes the epic story of a Brahman woman and a king. Says the king: “Thou canst have no connubial connection with me, for thou shouldst not make a caste mixture”.
Then, too, in spite of the assumed “horror” of mixture with the darker race, Brahman men were privileged to have wives from all three castes below them, Kshatriyas from the two lower ones, and vaisyas from the Sudras. Therefore, Brahmans may be said to have been the most flagrant mixers of blood in India. If color were indeed the determining factor, is it possible to say that if a person happened to be white he ipso facto became a Brahman, if black, a sudra, so that one might look upon a man and classify him unquestionably? The historical data do not sustain this possibility.
The usual way of making the evidently impossible transition from the racial origin of caste to the non-racial caste system as we know it is to employ some such phrase as “With the hardening of caste rules in the course of time”. Yet why should caste rules “harden”? We should expect them to have been relaxed, for as the population became increasingly mixed __ so much so that today Brahmans are not infrequently darker in complexion than lower-caste persons – the raison d’eter of caste should have vanished. Should we say tat the memory that at one time Aryans protected themselves from intermixture by preventing their women from marrying darker person is sufficient to perpetuate the caste system with increasing rigidity? It would be indeed difficult to accept such a proposition.
Moreover, if it is true that the Vaisya became so mixed that they were classed with the Sudras, how is it that they were able to maintain the “purity” of their caste as against the Sudras? Could it be that these people were so homogeneously “yellow” that they were able to maintain themselves intact, and this considerating the fact that Vaisya men married sudra women? Finally, if color were really the test of caste, how was it possible to make the cross between a Sudra man and a Brahman woman the most despised of all castes? The status of the off-spring of Vaisya men and Brahman women was considered to be lower than that of Sudras. Certainly both these crosses must have resulted in off spring very much lighter in complexion than that of the lower-caste men. Is it possible that a system as permanent and as rigid as the caste order of India could be built upon skin color – distinguished not by color as such but by the parentage of the color groups? We might have caste of very light people occupying a position much below that of black sudras merely because they originated from higher caste mothers and lower-caste fathers. The pure-blood theories leave these questions unanswered.
The writers who used modern ideas of race relations for the purpose of explaining the origin of caste make an uncritical transfer of modern thought to an age which did not known it. The early Indo-aryans could no more have thought in modern terms of race prejudice than they could have invented the airplane. The social factors necessary for thinking in modern terms of race relations were not available. It took some two thousand years more to develop these ideas in Western society, and whatever there is of them in India today has been acquired by recent diffusion.
THE POSITION OF ARYANS OF WHITE PEOPLE
The Aryans could not have known the world position of white people. Says Manu: “All those tribes in this world, which are excluded from the community of those born from the mouth, the arms, the thighs, and the feet of Brahma are called Dasyus.” Like most primitive peoples, their world was limited to the known environment. Evidently the Dasyus were the Dravidians and aborigines who had not yet entered the caste system. Yet it is astonishing how many writers interprect these references to the Dasyus as indicating a bipartite race-caste system. The fact that the early authorities usually mention four castes already developed among the Aryans seems to have slipped them altogether.
Even if it were possible for the Aryans to know the world condition of light-complexioned peoples, there would have been no particular cause for pride in indentifying themselves with, say, the ancestors of the haughty Teutons of today. At that time the Dravidians evidently had a higher culture than that of the Aryans. The error made by the over enthusiastic comparative philogists of the nineteenth century in identifying the Aryans family of languages with an Aryan race bears no little part of the responsibility for confusion in the study of caste. In referring to this general tendency to identify culture and race, Marcellin Boule writes:
It must be fully understood that race, representing the continuity of a physical type, stands for an essentially natural grouping, which can have nothing and in general has nothing in common with the people, the nationality, the language, or the customs corresponding to groupings that are purely artificial, in no way anthropological, and due entirely to history, whose actual products they are. Thus there is no Breton race, but there is a Breton people; no French race, but a French nation; no Aryan race, but Aryan languages; no Latin race, but Latin civilization.
The Indo-Aryans have left no account of their pre-migration homeland, and it has not yet been determined. Some writers, however, have stated that the Indo-Aryans were the first white people who were faced with the problem of keeping their blood free from admixture with that of darker people. But this seems to be a pyramiding of assumptions. In the first place, we do not know when the Aryans entered India; hence it may be futile to embark upon a discussion, the validity of which can depend only on definite knowledge of the date of Aryan immigration.
With respect to the question of identifying race relations in other parts of the world with the origin of caste, we may observe an interesting cycle in thinking. The theorists usually begin by comparing the origin of caste with the modern white-black pattern of race relationships. An identification of the phenomena having been made, they proceed to establish their racial theory of caste; then they return forth with to identify present-day race relationship with caste. In the meantime, they remain oblivious of the ongoing caste system as we know it in India. Therefore, their origin of caste, and not that of caste in action, becomes the standard. In other words, they must assume race relations today to be caste relations only as they conceive of the latter in their origination.
The word “varna” is practically all that the pure-blood theorists have in support of their position. Observe with what assurance H.D. Griswold reaches his conclusion: “The difference in color was one of the causes that lay at the foundation of caste, for the very name of caste is varna, ‘Color’. As a matter of fact, however, Bohtlingk and Rothstate in their Sanskrit – Wortebuch that the word “varna” means appearance, exterior, color, kind, species, caste; and Manu has used “varna” synonymously with ‘jati’, which means birth-the form of existence determined by birth, position, rank, family descent, kind, Species.
But dictionary definitions are rather limited; hence we shall have to examine the application of the color concept in the literature. The following is the celebrated passage in the Mahabharata, so much relied upon by some students of caste. We quote it at length:
Bhrigu replied: “The Lord … also formed … men, Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras, as well as other classes of beings. The colour of the Brahman was white; that of the Kshatriyas red; that of the Vaisyas yellow; and that of the Sudras black”. Bharadvaja here rejoins; “If the caste of the four classes is distinguished by their color, then a confusion of all the castes is observable”. … Bhrigu replies: “There is no difference of castes. This world having been first created by Brahma entirely Brahmanic, became separated into castes in consequence of works. Those Brahmans who were fond of sensual pleasure, fiery, irascible, prone to violence, who had forsaken their duty, and were red-limbed, fell into the condition of Kshatriyas. Those Brahmans who derived their livelihood from kien, who were yellow, who subsisted by agriculture, and who neglected to practice their duties, entered into the state of Vaisyas. Those Brahmans who were addicted to mischief and falsehood, who were covetous, who lived by all kinds of work, who were black and had falled from purity, sank into the condition of sudras. Being separated from each other by these works, the Brahmans became divided into different castes. Duty and the rites of sacrifice have not always been forbidden to any of them”.
It is from this passage that authority has been derived for many conclusions about racial antagonism among the early Indo-Aryans. Pratapa C. Roy, translator of the Mahabharata, says, “The commentator explains that the words expressive of the hue of color really mean attributes. What is intended to be said is that the Brahmans had the attribute of goodness; the second order the attribute of passion; while the lowest order got the remaining attribute, viz., darkness”
Consider, on the other hand, the meaning which G.S Ghurye reads into the same passage: “The colour connotation of the word was so strong that later on when the classes came to be regularly described as varnas four different colours were assigned to the four classes, by which their members were supposed to be distinguished”. The author, of course, does not show by historical data that varna really symbolized racial antipathy between Aryan and Dravidian; reference to this fourfold color schemes is his sole reliance.
We are not even certain which skin color, if any, was always preferable among the early Aryo-Dravidians. As Dr. Mees points out:
The white complexion was not always the most popular and the most admired one. Shri-Krishna, the greatest Hindu Divine Incarnation and human hero, was always being called the “dark-cloud-faced one” or the “dusky-one” or the “dark-blue-one,” and Rama, the divine hero, usually being represented as dark or blue or green. These two were the ideal of all that was most beautiful in a man. In the Bhagavata the beauty of suka, the “glorious son of Vyasa,” the described at length. He is said to be of dark complexion.
Mees continues to observe that “as regards physical beauty, the Indo-Aryans and the cultured Dravidians were equally handsome. Nor was the literature always consistent in the figurative use of color as applied to human beings. Professor Weber quotes a passage from the Kathaka Brahmana which reverses somewhat the color scheme of the Mahabharata: “Since the Vaisya offers an oblation of White (rice) to the Adityas, he is born as it were white; and as a Varuna oblation is of black (rice) the Rajanya is as it were dusky”. The case for color as a dominant factor in the development of caste, then, does not seem to be supported by the use of the word “varna” in the literature. We shall now consider two well-known cultural theories of caste.
THE THEORIES OF IBBOTSON AND NEWFIELD
The most carefully developed cultural theory of caste is that of John C. Nesfield. It has been called the occupational theory, in a very limited sense, by most authorities who wish to differ with it. Nesfield insists that nor racial theory of caste can stand, because before the system became organized the population had already became inseprably mixed;
The restrictions of marriage which are now imposed by rules of caste did not being to exist until at least a thousand years after the Aryans had come into the country, and by this time the Aryan blood had been absorbed beyond recovery into the indigenous. It was not till the time of Manu, that is, about 200 B.C or later, that the caste rules in regard to marriages were coming into force. Even ten, as his own writings show, they were not universally accepted by Brahmans themselves; for he waxes very worth with certain Brahmans of his own day who persisted in the habit of taking Sudra or low-caste women as their first wives… It is clear, then, that prior to his time, that is, ever since the Aryan invader had set foot on Indian soil, which must have been more than a thousand years before his code was complied, a Brahman or professional priest (for Brahman caste did not then exist), could marry any woman that he liked.
Besides emphasis upon the point that the population had become amalgamated quite early, nesfield asserts that even today “a Bengali Brahman looks like other Bengalis, a Hindustani like other Hindustanis, a Mahratti like other Mahrattis, and so on, which proves that the Brahmans of any given nationality are not of different blood from the rest of their fellow-countrymen.
Briefly, the theory runs as follows: The priesthood was not at first an exclusively monopoly of Brahmans; sacrifices were performed and invocations composed by the military chiefs. But when the hymns were collected into liturigies and the sacrifices became more complicated specialization became a necessity. The importance of the sacrifice to the well-being of society gave the priesthood a position of great honor; the tendency was for the priesthood to become hereditary, like royality. “When the Brahman had thus set the example of forming himself into an exclusive and highly privileged caste, the other classes in the community were compelled to take what precaution they could for securing privileges as were within their reach; and they did this, not merely in self-defense, but in imitation of a class of men whom they had been accustomed for centuries to regard with deepest veneration. If Brahmans had been a centuries to regard with deepest veneration. If Brahmans had been a celibate order, like the Roman Catholic priesthood in western Europe… the example which Brahmans gave of setting up caste barriers against outsiders, might have had no effect upon the general structure of society.
This, then, is Nesfield’s account of the beginnings of caste in India. The author concludes by saying: “The main contention urged in this paper remains unshaken, that the Indian race is practically one in blood, character, traditions and sympathies, and that caste is not a question of blood but of function. The latter statement is broad indeed; it shares no little part of the responsibility for other students discarding the whole theory. Moreover, his explanation might have been much more acceptable had he not marbled into it an almost distinct theory based upon Herbert spencer’s “stages of civilization”. Reliance is put upon a universal evolutionary theory of culture, of which the four stages are the hunting, the pastoral, the agriculture, and the industrial stage. Thus he asserts:
Each group of castes represents one or other of those progressive stages of culture which have marked the industrial development of mankind not only in India, but in every other country in the world, wherein some advance has been made from primeval savagery to the arts and industries of civilized life. The rank of any caste as higher or low depends upon whether the industry represented by the caste belongs to an advanced or backward stage of culture; and thus the natural history of human industries affords the chief due to the gradations as well as the formation of Indian castes. Such in rough outline is the theory of caste advocated in these pages.
It should be easily evident that this is too nice a formulation to be accepted without question. It has resulted in some confusion of an explanation of the caste system which otherwise seems to have considerable merit. We shall refer again to Nesfield.
