Page:The history of caste in India.pdf/107

 tribes have fallen to the condition of Shūdra by neglect of sacred rites and by disobedience to Brāhmanas. Of this kind he gives as examples the Paundrakas (the Pods), the Udras (the people of Orissa), the Dravidas (the people of Southern India), the Kambojas (Kabulis), the Yavanas (Bactrian Greeks), the Shakas (Scythians), the Pāradas, the Pahlavas (Persians), the Chīnas (Chinese), the Kirātas (Kirantis), the Daradas (Dards, a frontier tribe), and the Khasas (x, 43, 44).

It is much more difficult to understand a writer than to brush aside his passage as stupid and nonsensical, and cheap. criticism has unnecessarily handled our author very roughly. To an historian of caste no other passage in the entire Sanskrit literature is so full of interest and meaning as the above. This passage explains why Hindu society could not assimilate the Mohammedans, when they had areadyalready [sic] assimilated foreign peoples like Scythians and white Huns. It also explains why the Hindus intermarried with the Greeks of yore whom they called "Yavanas," but do not intermarry with the Englishmen now.

No other passage explains the attitude of the disciples of Brāhmanas toward other peoples on earth at a period when Buddhism was but a heresy, Christianity had not made its appearance in India, and the religion of Mohammed was yet to be born. These two verses may well be made the starting point when we wish to estimate the effect of the personal religions on the Hindu social system. It also supplies us with the key to the process of conversion to a religion which requires no baptism and attempts no conversion; it supplements the evidence