Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/62

 tribes who were considered outside the four Varnas. But these people differed from the Shūdras by imperceptible gradations as they do now.

More than this, the people in India for a long time did not have a conception of a society restricted to their own land. To a man living in the middle regions (the western part of the United Provinces), the barbarians in Deccan were no more near than the barbarians in Punjab, Afghanistan, Persia or Siam. The princes in the north intermarried with the princes in the south as well as with the princes belonging to the territory outside the present confines of India. The outlandish customs of the barbarians in Bactria, Persia, Kandahar and Punjab were abhorrent to the sacred people of the middle regions, but so were to them the customs of Bengal and Deccan. The dharma writers of the early days required the Aryas who lived in Madhyadesha to make atonement for migration into Deccan, Bengal, and Punjab, as the Hindus of to-day require it of those who go to Europe. Every man from one province going to another was a foreigner in that country, and incurred the taint of foreign emigration; it did not matter at all whether that province was located in Deccan, Bengal, Siam, Java, China, Tibet, Punjab or Persia.

In order to understand the lack of this Indian consciousness it is necessary to learn how a consciousness of a unity comes to a group of people. If all the people in a certain group have a tradition of common descent, then no other unifying element is necessary. But such conception generally exists in the case of very small groups of peoples. The different castes and tribes in India are examples of unities of this kind.

Besides the conception of unity of this kind there are other