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The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol 1
Contents:
The Formation of the Castes in India
B.C. 1200
Introduction to Two Turn of the 20th Century Views: One by Gustave Le Bon and the other by W. W. Hunter
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.
Contents:
Chicago: "The Formation of the Castes in India," The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol 1 in The Great Events by Famous Historians. Lincoln Memorial University Edition, ed. Rossiter Johnson (Harrogate, TN: The National Alunmi, 1926), Original Sources, accessed November 23, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=HHRVD8Z9AZ5HT3G.
MLA: . "The Formation of the Castes in India." The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol 1, in The Great Events by Famous Historians. Lincoln Memorial University Edition, edited by Rossiter Johnson, Harrogate, TN, The National Alunmi, 1926, Original Sources. 23 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=HHRVD8Z9AZ5HT3G.
Harvard: , 'The Formation of the Castes in India' in The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol 1. cited in 1926, The Great Events by Famous Historians. Lincoln Memorial University Edition, ed. , The National Alunmi, Harrogate, TN. Original Sources, retrieved 23 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=HHRVD8Z9AZ5HT3G.
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