Art. XIX.—On Certain Features of Social Differentiation in India

Extract

The question of caste, with a branch of which I am to deal, is, I need hardly observe, the most important of all social subjects connected with India. As the most prominent feature in the organization of the community, it enters into every ramification of the administration, and these, as we all know, are many. As admittedly the mainstay of the religious belief of the majority of the population, it has received a place in the sacred lore of the priesthood such has been given to no similar institution in any other known system; and on this consideration, therefore, it has been discussed for the last century and more with all the scholarship and power of laborious investigation that are associated with the great names that adorn the roll of the Asiatic Society.