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Evolution of Civil Society and Caste System in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

A. N. Bose
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In some passages of the Ṛgveda, the Upaniṣads, the Mahābhārata and the Pali canon there are references to a casteless millennium of equality, plenty and piety which was supposed to have existed in some remote unrecorded antiquity. It was the golden age of kṛta or satyayuga when there was only one caste of deva (gods) or Brāhmaṇa, when people called no goods their own nor women their chattels, when crops were produced without toil and all were pious and happy. The legendary Uttarakurus of the far north were a model of this Arcadian society of godly men who lived in their natural virtue, rich in physical and moral wealth without any disabilities of sex and distinctions of property and, consequently, who received the blessings of God in the form of timely rain and juicy harvest (Mbh. VI. 6. 13; Dīghanikāya, xxxii. 7).

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , April 1958 , pp. 97 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1958

References

page 97 note 1 See Sources, p. 121.Google Scholar

page 97 note 2 See Glossary of Sanskrit Words, p. 120.Google Scholar

page 109 note 1 Studies in Indian Social Polity.

page 112 note 1 E.g., D. A. Suleykin: Basic questions of the Periodisation of Ancient Indian History.

page 115 note 1 A Vision of India's History.

page 115 note 2 Before Tagore, Swami Vivekananda pointed out this difference in a letter dated 3.3.1894 written from Chicago.