SOCIAL FORMS AND FORCES. IT Origin of castes. Nor T has been usual to ascribe the social system of the Hindus to the deliberate artifices of a priesthood. But the germs of caste are in the instinctive, not in the self-conscious age of man. can we now accept Niebuhr's sweeping statement that 'castes are in all cases the consequence of foreign conquests." Neither theory meets the all-important question Of what social needs and aspirations is a system so general in the early history of nations the natural expression? The religious instincts are as old as the social. The savage makes a fetich of the wooden sticks out The priestly of which he churns his fire; and the medicine- caste. man listens with awe to the din of his own rattle or drum. The sorcerer makes an image of a diseased person out of earth or grass, and, confounding his own processes with the life of the individual represented, ascribes to this work of his own hands a magical power over the disease. This is the rude beginning of religious mysticism; and it is but a more refined form of the same "superstition," when the crucifix is believed to possess a divine efficacy in removing the crosses of life and the anguish of death from the human being in whose likeness it is made. But in neither case does the word "superstition" express the whole truth. To the primitive tribes nature is not merely hunting-ground and pasture, but mysterious living Presence of invisible powers. Endless motion and endless rest, brooding stillness, inexplicable sounds, stir strange yearning and awe in these children of the open eye and ear. Who shall solve these mysteries, and draw the secret runes of life and death out of the night and the day? He whose organization is most sensitive to the contact of these subtle forces shall be holy and dear to men. The natural seer is the first recognized ruler. The grateful people will live to honor, die to appease him. They will stand afar off, while he talks with gods and spirits for their sake. Moses shall go in among the clouds and lightnings for us. Vaśishtha shall pray for us to Indra, the storm-ruler, to annihilate our foes. This interpreter of Nature fulfils all ideal functions, except that of military chief or king. He is magician, astrologer, physician, philosopher, poet, moral leader. And he is eminently sincere. It is his faith and feeling that make him what he is, and give him his power over the people. He is meeting their deepest needs as well as his own; being more plainly impressible than others by those powers which all confess. As yet there is no priestcraft here. And as nature is felt but as a chaos of undistinguished powers, so society has reached nothing like a hierarchy of classes. A division of labor is in fact just beginning in this instinctive respect for the inspired, or possessed person. Such is the Aryan purohita; such the Hebrew nábi or roëh.1 Both are properly natural seers. The name purohita, meaning one who has charge, 1 1 Sam. ix. 9; Judges xvii. shows how 2 Lassen, I. 795. closely the sentiment we have described allied itself with the performance of religious rites. As social relations are developed, this class become not only psalmists and singers, but teachers and counsellors of the king.1 They direct his policy, simply because they are his wisest men. "That king withstands his enemies," says the Rig Veda, "who honors a purohita ; and the people bow before him of their own accord."2 The seer teaches his wisdom to his children, who follow in his honored paths. They come to have esoteric mysteries; but it is simply because their religious disciplines as well as natural susceptibilities have put them in possession of physical or psychological knowledge which the multitude can receive only in parables. mans. By and by the seers become an organization. These hereditary disciplines draw them into closer The Brahcombination for such purposes as grow naturally out of their public functions; and we have Levites, Magi, Brahmans. The Hindu purohitas, thus transformed, are bound into charanas and parishads, schools and associations for definite objects, such as the guardianship of formulas and rites, or the study of Vedic hymns. They are divided into forty-nine gotras, or families, who trace their descent from the "seven holy rishis," and the mythical or other saints who figure in their traditions; and these gotras are governed by strict religious and social regulations. Gradually the text becomes more precious than the soul which created it; and at last its guardian is holier even than itself. The freedom and ardor of the Veda hymn are supplanted by formulas of doctrine, the oracles of Nature 1 2 Sam. xxiv. 11. See Roth, in Zeitschr. d. D. M. G., I. 80. by ritual law. A corporate authority grows up, by force of intellectual supremacy and in the name of religion, which favorable circumstances develop into the Brahman caste. The heroic life of the Greek cantons in the older Aryan spirit forbade this distinct separation of a religious class from the rest of the community.' But the contemplative Hindus, passive, fatalistic, yearning in the lassitude of tropical life for self-surrender to ideal powers, gave full sweep to the caste tendency, and became its typical representatives. Such, substantially, is the history of priesthood in The priest all times. It begins in the natural gravitation hood. of power to the wisest and friendliest men. In the Middle Ages, a Martin, an Ambrose, or a Gregory, standing for the weak and oppressed in the name of God, made iron knees and fierce unshorn heads bow down, and do penance for every act of injustice. But where the prophet stood in the morning of a religion, by and by stands the priest, its functionary, inheriting his honors, but not his spirit. It is the destiny of every organized religion. In the Eastern races the degeneration was not arrested by science or political liberty. But, on the other hand, it escaped that sort of ecclesiastical jesuitism which follows the deliberate refusal to recognize what these teachers bring. For the impulses of nature wrought through the religion, not against it: a real faith, both in priests and people, made devotees and martyrs after its own kind. The other castes likewise begin in certain rude 1 The priest and king were there one and the same person; and, both in Hellenic and Roman civilization, the political element gradually absorbed the religious into its own current, shaping it to practical and general uses. |