and made life doubly sweet by securing external peace with national efficiency and social happiness-a condition of affairs nowhere else so fully realized.

This classification-this principle of social organization-was the Varnáshrama. Mankind were divided into two classes, (1) the Aryas and (2) the Dasyus, or the civilized and the savage. The Aryas were subdivided into :

1. Brahmanas, who devoted themselves to learning and acquiring wisdom and following the liberal arts and sciences.

2. Kshatriyas, who devoted themselves to the theory and practice of war, and to whom the executive Government of the people was entrusted.

3. Vaishyas, who devoted themselves to trade and the professions.

4. Sudras (men of low capacities), who served and helped the other three classes.

This classification is a necessary one in all civilized countries in some form or other. It was the glory of ancient Aryavarta that this classification existed there in its perfect form and was based on scientific principles on the principle of heredity (which has not yet been fully appreciated by European thinkers), the conservation of energy, economy of labour, facility of development, and specialization of faculties. Literary men, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, clergymen, traders, and servants are to be found in England, France, America, and in every other civilized country of modern times, as they were in Ancient India. The only difference

is that in one case the division was perfect and the working of its marvellous mechanism regular, while in the other the classification is imperfect and its working irregular and haphazard.

The Varnáshrama was not the same as the caste system of the present day-a travesty of its ancient original. No one was a Brahman by blood nor a Sudra by birth, but everyone was such as his merits fitted him to be. "The people," says Col. Olcott, "were not, as now, irrevocably walled in by castes, but they were free to rise to the highest social dignities or sink to the lowest positions, according to the inherent qualities they might possess.

The son of a Brahman sometimes became a Kshatriya, sometimes a Vaishya, and sometimes a Sudra. At the same time, a Sudra as certainly became a Brahman or a Kshatriya. Shanker Dig Vijya says:जन्मना जायते शूद्र : संस्काराद दिन उच्यते

वेद पाठ। भवेद्दिप्रः ब्रह्म जानाति ब्राह्मणः ॥

"By birth all are Sudra, by actions men become Duija (twice-born). By reading the Vedas one becomes Vipra and becomes Brahman by gaining a knowledge of God."

A passage in the Vanparva of the Mahabharata runs thus: "He in whom the qualities of truth, munificence, forgiveness, gentleness, abstinence from cruel deeds, contemplation, benevolence are observed, is called a Brahman in the Smriti. A man is not a Sudra by being a Sudra nor a Brahman by being a Brahman." The Mahabharata (Santiparva) says:

a fam̃aìsfæ aufai aâ argfaż aną i

ब्रह्मणा पर्व सृष्टं हि कर्मभिर्वर्णतां गतम् ॥

แ There are no distinctions of caste. Thus, a world which, as created by Brahma, was at first entirely Brahmanic has become divided into classes, in consequence of men's actions."

In his paper on "Sanskrit as a Living Langunge in India," read before the International Congress of Orientalists at Berlin, on the 14th September 1881, Mr. Shyamji Krishnavarma said :-"We read in the Aitareya Brahmana (ii. 3. 19), for example, that Kavasha Ailusha, who was a Sudra and son of a low woman, was greatly respected for his literary attainments, and admitted into the class of Rishis. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of his life is that he, Sudra as he was, distinguished himself as the Rishi of some of the hymns of the Rig-Veda (Rig., X. 30-34). It is distinctly stated in the Chândogyopanishad that Jâbâla, who is otherwise called Satya-Kâma, had no gotra, or family name whatever (Chân-Upa, IV. 4); all that we know about his parentage is that he was the son of a woman named Jabâlâ, and that he is called after his mother. Though born of unknown parents, Jâbâla is said to have been the founder of a school of the YajurVeda. Even in the Apastamba-Sûtra (ii. 5-10) and the Manusmriti (x. 65), we find that a Sûdra can become a Brahman and a Brâhman can become a Sûdra, according to their good or bad deeds, Pânini mentions the name of a celebrated grammarian called Câkravarmana in the sixth chapter of his Ashtâdhyâyi (p. vi. 1. 130); now Câkravarmana was a Kshatriya by birth, since he has the prescribed Kshatriya termination at the end of his name, which is a patronymic of Câkravarmana,"

Who were Visvamitra and Valmiki but Sudras. Even so late as the time of the Greek invasion of India, the caste system had not become petrified into its present state. The Greeks describe four castes. Magesthenes says that a Hindu of any caste may become a Sophist (Brahman.) Arrian counts seven classes: Sophists, agriculturists, herdsmen, handicrafts and artizens, warriors, inspectors and councillors. (See Strabo, Lib XV.)

Colonel Tod says: "In the early ages of these Solar and Lunar dynasties, the priestly office was not hereditary in families; it was a profession, and the genealogies exhibit frequent instances of branches of these races terminating their martial career in the commencement of a religious sect or "gotra" and of their decendants reassuming their warlike occupations."1

There was no hereditary caste. The people enjoyed the advantages of hereditary genius without the serious drawbacks of a rigid system of caste based on birth.

"The one great object which the promoters of the hereditary system seem to have had in view was to secure to each class a high degree of efficiency in its own sphere." "Hereditary genius" is now a subject of serious enquiry amongst the enlightened men of Europe and America, and the evolution theory as applied to sociology, when fully worked out, will fully show the

1 Manusmriti, II. 158 says:-"As liberality to a fool is fruitless, so is a Brahman useless if he read not the Holy Texts; or again, he is no better than an elephant made of wood or an antelope made of leather."

merits of the system. In fact the India of the time of Manu will appear to have reached a stage of civilization of which the brilliant "modern European civilization" only gives us glimpses.

Even the system in its present form has not been an unmitigated evil. It has been the great conservative principle of the constitution of Hindu society, though originally it was a conservative as well as a progressive one. It is this principle of the Hindu social constitution which has enabled the nation to sustain, without being shatiered to pieces, the tremendous shocks given by the numerous political convulsions and religious upheavals that have occurred during the last thousand years. "The system of caste," says Sir Henry Cotton, " far from being the source of all troubles which can be traced in Hindu society, has rendered most important service in the past, and still continues to sustain order and solidarity."

As regards its importance from a European point of view, Mr. Sidney Low in his recent book, A Vision of India, says :-"There is no doubt that it is the main cause of the fundamental stability and contentment by which Indian society has been braced for centuries against the shocks of politics and the cataclysms of Nature. It provides every man with his place, his career, his occupation, his circle of friends. It makes him, at the outset, a member of a corporate body; it protects him through life from the canker of social jealousy and unfulfilled aspirations; it ensures him companionship and a sense of community with others in like case with himself. The caste organization is to the Hindu his club, his trade-union, his benefit society, his philanthropic society. There are no work-houses