VERY TERY often a question is asked, "What is the relation of caste system to Hindu religion?" A question like this is easy enough to ask, but very difficult to answer.
The difficulty is not due to the incomprehensibility of the phenomena themselves but to the false ideas which exist as a result of the present currency of a wrong system of thought. The study of social science in Europe is new, and new as it is, it has received a very one-sided development. The students of social sciences had not a good knowledge of civilizations other than occidental. Moreover, their ideas have been fettered by the limitations of their own languages, and this fact prevented them from studying their own civilization in a manner sufficiently objective. In order to answer the above question properly it would be necessary to correct radical misconceptions and to modify terminologies and classifications. An accidental reader is to be carried into a presentation of entirely different social phenomena, which are to be explained to him in a language not very well suited to interpret them.
In order to answer the above question, it is necessary to lay down principles of the scientific study of religions, yet crudely developed. I am also compelled to make a digression in logic and method in order to justify my departure from existing usage and my propagations of new terms and distinctions. More than this. In order to explain the formation and structure of Hinduism I had to introduce some theories regarding the march of civilization, social organization and organization of thought. In doing so, I had to accept the burden of giving proofs for the theory. Such a multiplicity of inquiries would necessarily cause some irregularity in the presentation of thought.
I think no historian before me has been so unfortunate in his choice of the subject. The development of Hindu society is a subject which has very few parallels as far as instruction is concerned, but a history of it offers by no means the most pleasant reading. The subject is made much more repulsive by imagination, and the name of the subject itself is such as would induce an average reader to fly from the book. In a History of Caste, the writer ha no opportunity of dwelling on personalities. He has no series of campaigns to describe and no interesting stories to tell. In writing this history for a period extending over several millenniums, a large number of questions of scientific interest are to be discussed, and the inquirer has often to lay down the subject in hand and to master a number of sciences and to treat purely scientific questions which may have bearing on the History of Caste, leaving all other things aside.
But the difficulties do not end here. Generally, the task of investigation and that of narration is considerably divided. A historian is not asked to take part in discussions connected with various anthropological sciences. Most of the historians do not need to go deep in various controversies; but the practical aim which the writer has in view prevents him from shunning the part either of the investigator or of the narrator.
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