PHILOSOPHY AND MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANCIENT INDIA. 223 
present day. Briefly, the principal of those castes or 
tribes are thus enumerated: 1, Brahmins, the emblems of 
wisdom, or priests, who, like the Levites among the Jews, 
alone officiate in their sacred capacity; 2, the Khshatryas, 
the emblem of strength, or military caste; 3, the Vaisyias, 
or epitome of nourishment, who, for the most part, follow 
commercial pursuits; 4, the Sudras, the emblem of subjec- 
tion, who perform the more menial kinds of work.* ‘There 
is no such an occurrence as that of an individual born in one 
caste rising to or being admitted into another, but once to 
fallis to be utterly exorcised in person and descendants.f 
On the other hand, proselytes are not admitted into any of 
the families or castes enumerated. 
With reference more particuiarly to the first class named, 
or the Brahmins, it is observed that the order of priesthood 
produced no obstruction to population; marriage in that 
class was not only permitted, but ordained, nor could a 
Brahmin “retire to the woods,” in other words become a 
“jogee,” that is, monk or mendicant, until he had given 
children to the community. 
Exclusive of the occupations in early ages assigned to the 
sacerdotal class, numbers belonging to it are now to be met 
with in the army and engaged in commerce. ‘This they are 
permitted to do under special “ dispensation,”§ “in times of 
distress to seek a subsistence by the duties of the inferior 
classes, when it cannot be procured by their own.” Under 
this provision comes the entire period from the first Arab 
entry into India, A.D. 664, to the present day—a period 
which, by Hindoo casuists, is considered to be “a time of 
distress” in which individuals are held to be justified in 
seeking subsistence or fortune by occupations from which 
they were originally excluded. 
The aboriginal or pre-Aryan peoples by whom India of 
those distant times was chiefly inhabited appear to have 
left no written records. Their only works which have come 
Aryan Sndras. Anulom marriage was when a man of a higher caste 
married a woman of a lower one, and Pratilom marriage, the reverse. 
The offspring of the latter form were looked down upon and reckoned as 
outside the society of the three higher classes.” 
* Craufurd, vol. ii, p. 336. 
+ Mr. Chandra Sekhar Sur says : “ Promotion took place for high attain- 
ments and piety; for instance, Vishwamitra Rishi, though born of 
Kshatrya parents, was made a Brahmin on account of his vast know- 
ledge.” 
t Craufurd, vol. i, p. 35. 
§ Namely in the Laws of Manu.—See as above, vol. ili, p. 338. 
