ABSTRACT
IN trying to reduce the caste-system into a rode of rigid rules, the Sutrakaras of the period met with an initial difficulty. They firmly believed that there were originally but four castes anlong men, viz., Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras j-but they actually found around them various other castes, formed by tribes of non-Aryans, who had gradually entered into the Hindu fold, and formed low Hindu castes. Whence these new castes? What was their origin? Believing that all mankind was originally divided only into four castes, the Sutrakaras tried to evolve the new castes from the four parent castes. The strange fiction was then conceived that the new castes were formed by inter-marriages among -the' parent castes! \Ve may imagine a dogmatic Greek priest of the fifth century declaring that the 11 uns were descended' from a Roman patrician who married a Parthian maiden; or we may conceive a monk of the thirteenth century declaring that the Moguls were
.descended from a German baron who married a Chinese maiden.' Such wild tneories would be accepted in an ignorant age, but. would be forgotten with the progress of knowledge. " But in India, where popular knowledge has become gradually restricted, such theories have been scrupulously adhered to by all later writers, and obtain 'credence in India to the present day!
