XIV.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 561 



process is going on in the Indian peninsula. Are the racial con- 

 ditions of the two regions such as to warrant this conclusion ? 

 Surely not, so long as nearly 300 million natives are held in 

 political subjection and administered by 200 or 300 thousand 

 Europeans from a base 6000 or 7000 miles away. Ethnology is, 

 like a two-edged sword, an extremely dangerous weapon to be 

 introduced into the discussion of social questions, until the whole 

 field is thoroughly surveyed and the broad results clearly coordi- 

 nated. 



Here we derive little help from the consideration of caste, 

 whatever view be taken of the origin of this institu- 

 tion. The rather obvious theory that it was intro- castesf 

 duced by the handful of Aryan conquerors to 

 prevent the submergence of the race in the great ocean of black 

 or dark aborigines, is now rejected by Mr Nesfield 1 and others, 

 who hold that its origin is occupational, a question rather of social 

 pursuits becoming hereditary in family groups, rather than of race 

 distinctions sanctioned by religion. They point out that the 

 commentator's interpretation of the Pancha Ksitaya, " Five 

 Classes," as Brdhmans (priests), Kshatriyas (fighters), Vaisya 

 (traders), Sudra (peasants and craftsmen of all kinds) and Nishdda 

 (savages or outcasts) is recent, and conveys only the current senti- 

 ment of the age. It never had any substantial base, and even 

 in the comparatively late Institutes of Maim " the rules of 

 food, connubium and intercourse between the various castes are 

 very different from what we find at present"; also that, far from 

 being eternal and changeless, caste has been subject to endless 

 modifications throughout the whole range of Hindu myth and 

 history. Nor is it an institution peculiar to India, while even 

 here the stereotyped four or five divisions neither accord with 

 existing facts, nor correspond to so many distinct ethnical groups. 



All this is perfectly true, and it is also true that for generations 

 the recognised castes, say, social pursuits, have been in a state of 

 constant flux, incessantly undergoing processes of segmentation, 

 so that their number is at present past counting. Nevertheless, 

 the system may have been, and probably was, first inspired by 



1 Quoted by Crooke, I. p. xx. sq. 

 K. 36 



