Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/453

 Colour Synnbolism. 145

colours {varnaih). Hence in the world men have become

divided into castes." ^ Caste {varna) literally means " colour," but evidently not in the sense favoured by modern rationalists. The usual caste colours in India are : (i) Brahmans, white ; (2) Kshattriyas, red ; (3) Vaisyas, yellow ; (4) Sudras, black.^ There were also sex colours. In one of the world's con- tinents, according to ancient Hindu belief, " the men are of the colour of gold and women fair as celestial nymphs " ; in another the men are " black " and the women " of the colour of blue lotuses." ^ Among the Navajo Indians of North America the colour for men is white and for women yellow.* The Chinese grave clothes for men were dark blue and for women " generally red " ^ The Chinese Ymig (male principle) is white and the Yin (female principle) is black. In Japan red is the male colour and white the female, as is shown by the symbolic use of these colours in the selection of flowers at wedding ceremonies.® The Egyptian habit of painting men red and women yellow or white may, like the pre-Dynastic habit of burying the men with their feet towards the Red North and the women with their feet towards the White South, have had originally a

1 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. i. p. 131. Brahmans were "twice-born men" and therefore "white"; Sudras through cupidity became ignorant and therefore black, being in " a condition of darkness," ibid. pp. 140-1, notes 250-1.

2 Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. i. p. 140 and note 248, in which it is stated that in the Kdthaka Brdhmana (xi. 6) " a white colour is ascribed to the Vaisya and a dark hue to the Rajanya." The passage referred to indicates that caste (colour) had no relation to skin colours and is as follows : " Since the Vaisya offers an oblation of white (rice) to the Adityas, he is born as it were white ; and as the Varuna oblation is of black (rice) the Rajanya is as it were dusky." The Rajanya were the nobles of royal blood in the Kshattriya caste.

3 Muir, op. cit. p. 491.

. ■* Customs of the World, p. 965.


 * De Groot, The Religious System of China, vol. i. p. 63.

" Japanese Flower Arrangements."
 * Trans. Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xvii. article, by J. Conder on