The Philosophy of History, Vol. 1 of 2

by Friedrich von Schlegel

But, according to the plan we have proposed to ourselves, in the history of all ancient, and especially of the primitive Asiatic nations, the matter of greatest moment must be to trace their intellectual progress, their scientific labours, and predominant opinions; all those views of divine and human things, that have a mighty influence on life; and finally the peculiar religious feelings and principles of each of those ancient nations. In the second part of this work, when we shall have to speak of the progress of mankind in modern times, we may perhaps change our point of view, and find it of more importance to trace the mutual relations between the external state of society and the internal development of intellect. But in that remote antiquity, which is contiguous to the primitive ages, the points of greatest moment, as we have already observed, are the intellectual character, the modes of thinking, and the religion of those nations. On the other hand, their civil legislation, and even their political constitutions, however important, interesting and instructive the closer investigation of those subjects may be in other respects, can occupy in this history but a secondary place; and it will suffice for our purpose to point out some leading points of legislation that serve as the foundation and principle of the moral and intellectual character of those nations. In India this leading point is the institution of castes, the most remarkable feature in all Indian life, and which in its essential traits existed in Egypt. This singular phenomenon of Indian life has even some points of connexion with a capital article of their creed, the doctrine of the transmigration of souls—a doctrine which will be later the subject of our enquiries, and which we shall endeavour to place in a nearer and clearer light. In shewing the influence of the institution of castes on the state of manners in India, I may observe, in the first place, that in this division of the social ranks there is no distinct class of slaves (as was indeed long ago remarked by the Greeks); that is to say, no such class of bought slaves—no men, the property and merchandise of their fellow-men—as existed in ancient Greece and Rome, as exist even at this day among Mahometan nations; and, as in the case of the Negroes, are still to be found in the colonial possessions of the Christian and European states. The labouring class of the Sudras is undoubtedly not admitted to the high privileges of the first classes, and is in a state of great dependance upon these; but this very caste of Sudras has its hereditary and clearly defined rights. It is only by a crime that a man in India can lose his caste, and the rights annexed to it. These rights are acquired by birth; except in the instance of the offspring of unlawful marriages between persons of different castes. The fate of these hapless wretches is indeed hard,—harder, almost, than that of real slaves among other nations. Ejected, excommunicated as it were, loaded with malediction, they are regarded as the outcasts of society, yea almost, of humanity itself. This terrible exclusion, however, from the rights of citizenship occurs only in certain clearly specified cases. There are even some cases of exception explicitly laid down, where a marriage with a person of different caste is permitted; or where at least the only consequence to the children of such marriage is a degradation to an inferior class of society. But the general rule is that a lawful marriage can be contracted only with a woman of the same caste. Women participate in all the rights of their caste; in the high prerogatives of Brahmins, if they are of the sacerdotal race (although there are not and never were priestesses among the Indians as among the other heathen nations of antiquity); or in the privileges of nobility, if they belong to the caste of the Cshatriyas. These privileges which belong and are secured to women, and this participation in the rights and advantages of their respective classes, must tend much undoubtedly to mitigate the injurious effects of polygamy. The latter custom has ever prevailed, and still prevails, in India; though not to the same degree of licentiousness, nor with the same unlimited and despotic controul, as in Mahometan countries; but a plurality of wives is there permitted only under certain conditions, and with certain legal restrictions; consequently in that milder form, under which it existed of old in the warm climes of Asia, and according to the patriarchal simplicity of the yet thinly peopled world. The much higher social rank, and better moral condition of the female sex in India, are apparent from those portraits of Indian life which are drawn in their beautiful works of poetry, whether of a primitive or a later date; and from that deep feeling of tenderness, that affectionate regard and reverence, with which the character of woman and her domestic relations are invariably represented. These few examples suffice to show the moral effects of the Indian division of castes; and while they serve to defend this institution against a sweeping sentence of condemnation, or the indiscriminate censure of too partial prejudice, they place the subject in its true and proper light, and present alike the advantages and defects of the system.

From its connexion with the general plan of my work, I am desirous of entering more deeply into the internal principle of this singular division and rigid separation of the social ranks, and into the historical origin of this strange constitution of human society. When the Greeks, who accompanied or followed Alexander into India, numbered seven instead of four castes in that country, they did not judge inaccurately the outward condition of things; but they paid not sufficient attention to the Indian notions of castes; and their very enumeration of those castes proves they had mistaken some points of detail. In this enumeration they assign the first rank to the Brachmans, or wise men; and by the artisans, they no doubt understood the trading and manufacturing class of the Vaisyas. The councillors and intendants of kings and princes do not constitute a distinct caste, but are mere officers and functionaries; who, if they be lawyers, belong to, and must be taken from, the caste of Brahmins; though the other two upper castes are not always rigidly excluded from these functions. The class again that tends the breeding of cattle, and lives by the chase, forms not a distinct caste, but merely follows a peculiar kind of employment. And when the Greeks make two castes of the agriculturists and the warriors, they only mean to draw a distinction between the labourers and the masters, or the real proprietors of the soil. Even the name of Cshatriyas signifies landed proprietor; and, as in the old Germanic constitution, the arriere-ban was composed of landed proprietors, and the very possession of the soil imposed on the nobility the obligation of military service; so, in the Indian constitution, the two ideas of property in land, and military service, are indissolubly connected. Some modern enquirers have attached very great importance to the undoubtedly wide and remarkable separation of the fourth or menial caste of Sudras from the three upper castes. They have thought they perceived, also, a very great difference in the bodily structure and general physiognomy of this fourth caste from those of the others; and have thence concluded that the caste of Sudras is descended from a totally different race, some primitive and barbarous people whom a more civilized nation, to whom the three upper castes must have belonged, have conquered and subdued, and degraded to that menial condition, the lowest grade in the social scale,—a grade to which the iron arm of law eternally binds them down. This hypothesis is in itself not very improbable; and it may be proved from history that the like has really occurred in several Asiatic, and even European, countries. In the back-ground of old, mighty and civilized nations we can almost always trace the primeval inhabitants of the country, who, dispossessed of their territory, have been either reduced to servitude by their conquerors, or have gradually been incorporated with them. These primitive inhabitants, when compared with their later and more civilized conquerors, appear indeed in general rude and barbarous; though we find among them a certain number of ancient customs and arts, which by no means tend to confirm the notion of an original and universal savage state of nature. It is possible that the same circumstances have occurred in India; though this is by no means a necessary inference, for humanity, in its progress, follows not one uniform course, but pursues various and widely different paths; and, hitherto at least, no adequate historical proof has, in my opinion, been adduced for the reality of such an occurrence in India. It has also been conjectured that the caste of warriors, or the princes and hereditary nobility, possessed originally greater power and influence; and that it is only by degrees the race of Brahmins has attained to that great preponderance which it displays in later times, and which it even still possesses. We find, indeed, in the old epic, mythological, and historical poems of the Indians, many passages which describe a contest between these two classes, and which represent the deified heroes of India victoriously defending the wise and pious Brahmins from the attacks of the fierce and presumptuous Cshatriyas. This account, however, is susceptible of another interpretation, and should not be taken exclusively in this political sense. That in the brilliant period of their ancient and national dynasties and governments, the princes and warlike nobility possessed greater weight and importance than at present, is quite in the nature of things, and appears indeed to have been undoubtedly the case. From many indications in the old Indian traditions and histories, it would appear that the caste of Cshatriyas, was partially at least, of foreign extraction; while those traditionary accounts constantly represent the caste of Brahmins as the highest class, and nobler part, nay, the corner-stone of the whole community.

The origin of an hereditary caste of warriors, when considered in itself, may be easily accounted for, and it is no wise contrary to the nature of things that, even in a state of society where legal rights are yet undefined, the son, especially the eldest, should govern and administer the territory or property which his deceased father possessed, and even in those cases where it was necessary, should take possession, administer, and defend this property by open force and the aid of his dependents.

But afterwards, when the social relations became more clearly fixed by law, and an union on a larger scale was formed by a general league, as the duties of military service were annexed to the soil, so the right to the soil was again determined by, and depended on, military service; now, in that primitive period of history, such a political union might have been formed by a common subordination to a higher power, or by a confederacy between several potentates; and this has really been the origin of an hereditary landed nobility in many countries.

The hereditary continuance or transmission of arts and trades, whereby the son pursues the occupation of the father, and learns and applies what the latter has discovered, has nothing singular in itself, and appears indeed to contain its own explanation. But it is not easy, or at least equally so, to account for the exclusive distribution and the exact and rigid separation of castes, particularly by any religious motives and principles, which are, however, indubitably connected with this institution. Still less can we understand the existence of a great hereditary class of priests, eternally divided from the rest of the community, such as existed both in India and Egypt. To comprehend this strange phenomenon, we must endeavour to discover its origin, and trace it back, as far as is possible, to the primitive ages of the world.—If, for the sake of brevity, I have used the expression, "a class of hereditary priests," I ought to add, in order to explain my meaning more clearly, that the word priests must not be taken in that limited sense which antiquity attached to it; that the Brahmins are not merely confined to the functions of prayer, but are strictly and eminently theologians, since they alone are permitted to read and interpret the Vedas, while the other castes can read only with their sanction such passages of those sacred writings as are adapted to their circumstances, and the fourth caste are entirely prohibited from hearing any portion of them. The Brahmins are also the lawyers and physicians of India, and hence the Greeks did not designate them erroneously when they termed them the caste of philosophers.

We have already had occasion to observe that the Mosaic narrative,—that first monument of all history, (which a very intellectual German writer has called the primitive document of the human race, and which it indeed is even in a mere historical sense, and in the literal acceptation of the word,) that the Mosaic narrative, we say, ascribes to the Cainites the origin of hereditary arts and trades. And there are two which are particularly worthy of remark, and to which I drew your attention—the knowledge of metals, and the art of music. I used the general expression, the knowledge of metals, because in the primitive ages of the world, the art of working mines, or of exploring and extracting metals from the earth, was essentially connected with the art of preparing and polishing them; and this knowledge of metals was very instrumental in forwarding the infant civilization of the primitive world, as the art of working and polishing them has ever contributed to the refinement of mankind. By the music of the Cainites, I said we were not to understand our own more elaborate and sublime system of melody. This art was chiefly consecrated in those ancient times, to the uses of divine service; still older, perhaps, was the medicinal, or rather the magical, use and influence of music. This is at least indicated by the tradition and mythology of all nations; and such a supposition is quite conformable to the spirit of those early ages; and I would here remind you that, in the primitive symbolical writing of the Chinese, the sign of a magician represents also a priest—a character which, as Remusat has observed, is not to be found in the narrow circle of their symbols. I added, that the existence of an hereditary caste of warriors among the Cainites was possible, and even probable; though not so, in my opinion, the existence of an hereditary sacerdotal caste. But though such an institution did not emanate from the Cainites, it may at least have been occasioned by them. As I said before, the Mosaic history represents the vast, boundless, prodigious corruption of the world in the age immediately preceding the deluge, as produced solely by the union of the better and godly portion of mankind with the lawless descendants of Cain. Thus this would supposes a certain dread and apprehension of any alliance and intercourse with a race laden with malediction, and pregnant with calamity. And may not this very circumstance have given rise to the establishment of a distinctly separate and hereditary class, not of priests in the later signification of that word, but of men chosen and consecrated by God, and entirely devoted to his service? and, consequently, is it not among the later Sethites, we must look for the origin of this institution?

We should transport ourselves in imagination to the age of the Patriarchs, and then consider that, with the high powers which they still possessed, they must have watched with the most jealous and far-sighted solicitude over the fate of their posterity, in order to preserve them in their original purity and high hereditary dignity. The Indian traditions acknowledge and revere the succession of the first ancestors of mankind, or the holy Patriarchs of the primitive world, under the name of the seven great Rishis, or sages of hoary antiquity; though they invest their history with a cloud of fictions. They place all these Patriarchs in the primitive world, and assign them to the race of Brahmins;—a circumstance which cannot here appear unfitting. It has been often observed that the Indians have no regular histories, no works of real historical science; and the reason is that with them the sense of the primitive world is still fresh and lively, and that not only do they clothe their ideas in a poetical garb, but all their conceptions of human affairs and events are exclusively mythological; so that all the real events of later historical times are absorbed in the element of mythology, or at least strongly tinged with its colours. It is in the same way, the Panegyrists of the Chinese language remark that the almost total absence of grammar in that language, among a people of such highly cultivated intellect, should not be taken merely to denote the poverty and jejuneness of the infancy of speech, as this in a great measure originated in the fact that the profound primitive emotions, which gave birth to those first languages, were too absorbed in the subject of their contemplation, too much bent on giving utterance to the most effective word, or expressing themselves with the most condensed brevity, to perplex or trouble themselves with nicer distinctions, and minor and often superfluous rules.

The providential care of these first Patriarchs for the preservation and prosperity of their offspring and race is evinced in those Patriarchal scenes described not only in the Sagas of other primitive nations, but also in the sacred writings of the Hebrews; and where the hoary grand-sire imparts and transmits to his sons and grand-sons the power of his benediction, which was not a mere empty form of words, as the special inheritance of each. We see, too, that, after assigning the first rank to the eldest son, or to some favourite child, perhaps, originally chosen and preferred by God, the venerable Patriarch utters some words of warning which the succeeding history but too well justifies; or darkly indicates a deep, presentiment of some great impending calamity. But there is, in particular, a passage relative to the first great progenitor of mankind which deserves to be here noticed. When the calamitous epoch of the first fraternal contest, and the first fatal fratricide had elapsed, it is said in Holy Writ, "Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth." The first thing that must strike us in this passage is the great and humiliating inferiority which it involves. Adam was created after the likeness of Almighty God; but Seth is begotten after the likeness of Adam. Yet there is no doubt that, from the peculiar style and manner of Holy Writ, a very high pre-eminence was here conferred on Seth. For in the same way as we have seen that the Patriarchs were wont to impart their blessings to their sons and their posterity, Adam granted and communicated to Seth, as to his first-born in this second commencement of the human race, and as his inheritance and exclusive birth-right, all those prerogatives and high gifts and powers, which he himself had originally received from his Creator, and which, on his reconciliation with his God, he had once more obtained. Nothing similar is said of the other sons and daughters afterwards begotten by Adam, and through whom other nations have derived their descent from the common parent. This circumstance confirms and explains that high pre-eminence which, according to sacred tradition, was conferred on the race of Seth. As to the high powers which the father of mankind had preserved after his fall, or had a second time received, we may well suppose that, after the crime and flight of Cain, he would endeavour to retrieve his errors by the establishment of the better race of Seth, and by a consequent renovation of humanity. This is not a mere arbitrary supposition, for it is expressly said in Holy Writ that the first man, ordained to be "the father of the whole earth," (as he is there called,) became on his reconciliation with his Maker, the wisest of all men, and, according to tradition, the greatest of prophets, who, in his far-reaching ken, foresaw the destinies of all mankind, in all successive ages down to the end of the world. All this must be taken in a strict historical sense, for the moral interpretation we abandon to others. The pre-eminence of the Sethites, chosen by God, and entirely devoted to his service, must be received as an undoubted historical fact, to which we find many pointed allusions even in the traditions of the other Asiatic nations. Nay the hostility between the Sethites and Cainites, and the mutual relations of these two races, form the chief clue to the history of the primitive world, and even of many particular nations of antiquity. That, after the violent but transient interruption occasioned by the deluge, the remembrance of many things might revive, and the same or a similar hostility between the two races; which had existed in the antediluvian world, might be a second time displayed, is a matter which it is unnecessary to examine any further. Equally needless would it be to shew that, in the increasing degeneracy of man, every thing was soon more and more disfigured and deranged, and finally became for the most part undistinguishable, till it was afterwards a problem for the historical enquirer to reduce to the simple elements of their origin the greatest, most extraordinary and most remarkable phenomena which still remained, or were remembered, of the primitive ages.

If I think it not impossible that the Indian constitution of castes, and its most important branch, the Brahminical class—that is to say, the moral and general conception of this ancient institution, may be connected with the scriptural history and the sacred tradition respecting the race of Seth; I must observe that to this hypothesis an objection can no more be taken from the present character and moral condition of the Brahmins, than we can estimate the high gifts, the great men and the mighty Prophets, that the Almighty once accorded to the Jewish nation, or such noble natures as those of Moses and Elias, by the present fallen state of that dispersed people.

These remarks may suffice to give an idea of the most important feature in Indian society. Before I attempt to examine the second great characteristic of this people,—the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, a principle which, if it has not produced, has at least given the peculiar bent to their whole philosophy; I wish to take a general view of Polytheism, particularly as our notions of it, chiefly derived from the Greeks, are by no means perfectly applicable to the primitive nations of Asia.