Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/315

 serfdom. Moreover, the agricultural settlers, Vaisyas, who in the early Vedic period had included all Aryans, came to be distinguished alike from the warriors and the serfs; and so there came to be four castes, three of Aryan descent, known as the "Twice-born," and one non-Aryan.

How far this social classification was the work of the Bráhmans, or priestly caste, during or after their struggle for supremacy with the Kshattriyas, it is clearly impossible now to decide with precision—especially since the very idea of caste in modern India has been rendered exceedingly complex by countless varieties of castes due, not to these facts of ancient Indian history, nor to direct Bráhmanic creation, but merely to the hereditary character of trades and occupations. But, since the Bráhmans have ever been the makers of Indian literature, the problem of the "natural" versus the artificial development of caste need not here be discussed. Whatever different causes, however, have contributed to create the Indian caste-system—ancient clan life, the village community, differences of race and occupation, priestly law-books and ritual—it is plain that the influence of a social fact and idea which must so profoundly affect the conception of individuality cannot be overlooked in any view of Indian literature however brief. But before we trace some Bráhmanic influences on Indian literature we shall turn aside for a moment to compare the beginnings of literature in China with the Vedic hymns.

§ 78. The ancient collection of Chinese odes known as the Shih King offers the most striking contrasts in form and spirit, in social and individual characteristics, to these ancient hymns of India. China, like India, was destined to give birth to a literature which, reflecting human life on a vast scale and deeply imbued with sentiments of Nature, was to expand its horizon beyond national