The Philosophy of History. Friedrich von Schlegel

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of Brahmins, if they are of the sacerdotal race (although there are not and never were priestesses among the Indians as among the other heathen nations of antiquity); or in the privileges of nobility, if they belong to the caste of the Cshatriyas. These privileges which belong and are secured to women, and this participation in the rights and advantages of their respective classes, must tend much undoubtedly to mitigate the injurious effects of polygamy. The latter custom has ever prevailed, and still prevails, in India; though not to the same degree of licentiousness, nor with the same unlimited and despotic controul, as in Mahometan countries; but a plurality of wives is there permitted only under certain conditions, and with certain legal restrictions; consequently in that milder form, under which it existed of old in the warm climes of Asia, and according to the patriarchal simplicity of the yet thinly peopled world. The much higher social rank, and better moral condition of the female sex in India, are apparent from those portraits of Indian life which are drawn in their beautiful works of poetry, whether of a primitive or a later date; and from that deep feeling of tenderness, that affectionate regard and reverence, with which the character of woman and her domestic relations are invariably represented. These few examples suffice to show the moral effects of the Indian division of castes; and while they serve to defend this institution against a sweeping sentence of condemnation, or the indiscriminate censure of too partial prejudice, they place the subject in its true and proper light, and present alike the advantages and defects of the system.

      From its connexion with the general plan of my work, I am desirous of entering more deeply into the internal principle of this singular division and rigid separation of the social ranks, and into the historical origin of this strange constitution of human society. When the Greeks, who accompanied or followed Alexander into India, numbered seven instead of four castes in that country, they did not judge inaccurately the outward condition of things; but they paid not sufficient attention to the Indian notions of castes; and their very enumeration of those castes proves they had mistaken some points of detail. In this enumeration they assign the first rank to the Brachmans, or wise men; and by the artisans, they no doubt understood the trading and manufacturing class of the Vaisyas. The councillors and intendants of kings and princes do not constitute a distinct caste, but are mere officers and functionaries; who, if they be lawyers, belong to, and must be taken from, the caste of Brahmins; though the other two upper castes are not always rigidly excluded from these functions. The class again that tends the breeding of cattle, and lives by the chase, forms not a distinct caste, but merely follows a peculiar kind of employment. And when the Greeks make two castes of the agriculturists and the warriors, they only mean to draw a distinction between the labourers and the masters, or the real proprietors of the soil. Even the name of Cshatriyas signifies landed proprietor; and, as in the old Germanic constitution, the arriere-ban was composed of landed proprietors, and the very possession of the soil imposed on the nobility the obligation of military service; so, in the Indian constitution, the two ideas of property in land, and military service, are indissolubly connected. Some modern enquirers have attached very great importance to the undoubtedly wide and remarkable separation of the fourth or menial caste of Sudras from the three upper castes. They have thought they perceived, also, a very great difference in the bodily structure and general physiognomy of this fourth caste from those of the others; and have thence concluded that the caste of Sudras is descended from a totally different race, some primitive and barbarous people whom a more civilized nation, to whom the three upper castes must have belonged, have conquered and subdued, and degraded to that menial condition, the lowest grade in the social scale—a grade to which the iron arm of law eternally binds them down. This hypothesis is in itself not very improbable; and it may be proved from history that the like has really occurred in several Asiatic, and even European, countries. In the back-ground of old, mighty and civilized nations we can almost always trace the primeval inhabitants of the country, who, dispossessed of their territory, have been either reduced to servitude by their conquerors, or have gradually been incorporated with them. These primitive inhabitants, when compared with their later and more civilized conquerors, appear indeed in general rude and barbarous; though we find among them a certain number of ancient customs and arts, which by no means tend to confirm the notion of an original and universal savage state of nature. It is possible that the same circumstances have occurred in India; though this is by no means a necessary inference, for humanity, in its progress, follows not one uniform course, but pursues various and widely different paths; and, hitherto at least, no adequate historical proof has, in my opinion, been adduced for the reality of such an occurrence in India. It has also been conjectured that the caste of warriors, or the princes and hereditary nobility, possessed originally greater power and influence; and that it is only by degrees the race of Brahmins has attained to that great preponderance which it displays in later times, and which it even still possesses. We find, indeed, in the old epic, mythological, and historical poems of the Indians, many passages which describe a contest between these two classes, and which represent the deified heroes of India victoriously defending the wise and pious Brahmins from the attacks of the fierce and presumptuous Cshatriyas. This account, however, is susceptible of another interpretation, and should not be taken exclusively in this political sense. That in the brilliant period of their ancient and national dynasties and governments, the princes and warlike nobility possessed greater weight and importance than at present, is quite in the nature of things, and appears indeed to have been undoubtedly the case. From many indications in the old Indian traditions and histories, it would appear that the caste of Cshatriyas, was partially at least, of foreign extraction; while those traditionary accounts constantly represent the caste of Brahmins as the highest class, and nobler part, nay, the corner-stone of the whole community.

      The origin of an hereditary caste of warriors, when considered in itself, may be easily accounted for, and it is no wise contrary to the nature of things that, even in a state of society where legal rights are yet undefined, the son, especially the eldest, should govern and administer the territory or property which his deceased father possessed, and even in those cases where it was necessary, should take possession, administer, and defend this property by open force and the aid of his dependents.

      But afterwards, when the social relations became more clearly fixed by law, and an union on a larger scale was formed by a general league, as the duties of military service were annexed to the soil, so the right to the soil was again determined by, and depended on, military service; now, in that primitive period of history, such a political union might have been formed by a common subordination to a higher power, or by a confederacy between several potentates; and this has really been the origin of an hereditary landed nobility in many countries.

      The hereditary continuance or transmission of arts and trades, whereby the son pursues the occupation of the father, and learns and applies what the latter has discovered, has nothing singular in itself, and appears indeed to contain its own explanation. But it is not easy, or at least equally so, to account for the exclusive distribution and the exact and rigid separation of castes, particularly by any religious motives and principles, which are, however, indubitably connected with this institution. Still less can we understand the existence of a great hereditary class of priests, eternally divided from the rest of the community, such as existed both in India and Egypt. To comprehend this strange phenomenon, we must endeavour to discover its origin, and trace it back, as far as is possible, to the primitive ages of the world.—If, for the sake of brevity, I have used the expression, "a class of hereditary priests," I ought to add, in order to explain my meaning more clearly, that the word priests must not be taken in that limited sense which antiquity attached to it; that the Brahmins are not merely confined to the functions of prayer, but are strictly and eminently theologians, since they alone are permitted to read and interpret the Vedas, while the other castes can read only with their sanction such passages of those sacred writings as are adapted to their circumstances, and the fourth caste are entirely prohibited from hearing any portion of them. The Brahmins are also the lawyers and physicians of India, and hence the Greeks did not designate them erroneously when they termed them the caste of philosophers.

      We have already had occasion to observe that the Mosaic narrative—that first monument of all history, (which a very intellectual German writer has called the primitive document of the human race, and which it indeed is even in a mere historical sense, and СКАЧАТЬ