ABSTRACT
The racial prejudices of the Aryans and the Dravidians must have found the caste system a great blessing because it allowed different racial and cultural elements to be put into different slots of castes and sub-castes and yet managed to create some kind of a functioning unity. The varna-caste confusion meant that the device of keeping people separate did not function perfectly, and intermarriages were all the time taking place, giving rise to the inevitable mixing of cultures and races. The freezing of the caste system was to the author's mind a sign of decadence that was overtaking Hindu culture. The British occupation of India prolonged the period of decay, but by the time the British arrived in India the Hindus generally had fallen to such oblivion of the positive contents of their own tradition that the British orientalists had to take it upon themselves to tell the Hindus about their own tradition.
