equal) "and of Brahma, nor were the members of
either section held ineligible for the offices of the priesthood." And, in
the note below, the reader will find additional evidence which will show
him that caste in Ceylon, just as it originally was in India, can and does
exist merely as a division of ranks, and that it need not at all be
necessarily connected with any idolatrous rites or worship.[41]

Having thus shown how caste did not originate, it may, perhaps, not be
altogether superfluous if I hazard a few remarks as to the way in which it
did probably originate.

The common idea of caste is that it is simply a combination of troublesome
and fanciful restrictions, imposed upon the various peoples of India by
those of the upper classes who desired to keep themselves above the
jostling of the crowd. But this institution (if that be a correct term for
it) arose naturally and regularly out of the circumstances of the times,
and where these circumstances no longer exist, it will as naturally
disappear; and that the last must happen we have seen from, the fact that
altered circumstances have already caused the commencement of its removal
amongst the people of the towns. But the general circumstances which gave
birth to caste require a few words of explanation, and the following
solution seems not an unnatural one.

We know, as a certain fact, that peoples to whom we have given the names
of Dravidians and Aryans entered India from the north and north-west;
that they increased and multiplied, overspread the whole of India, and
reduced the aborigines to serfdom. We also know that these tribes from the
north, who were, comparatively speaking, fair, very naturally regarded the
black, ugly, carrion-eating aborigines with disgust. Hence, naturally,
must have arisen the opinions as regards Pariahs which all the superior
castes hold to this day. Even to have food touched by people of such
abominable habits must have been repulsive, and therefore the separation
into men of caste and men of no caste, or, in other words, into browns and
blacks (for the word for caste means colour), followed as a matter of
course. Caste, then, seems naturally to have arisen from the idea that to
associate in any way with people of bad habits and grovelling ideas is an
intolerable degradation. The superior races, therefore must have
considered it a matter of importance to retreat as far as possible from
the habits of the aborigines; and when we take i