3. There was no caste—no caste, that is, in the modern sense of the term. We have long known that the connubium was the cause of a long and determined struggle between the patricians and the plebeians in Rome. Evidence has been yearly accumulating on the existence of restrictions as to intermarriage, and as to the right of eating together (commensality) among other Aryan tribes, Greeks, Germans, Russians and so on. Even without the fact of the existence now of such restrictions among the modern successors of the ancient Aryans in India, it would have been probable that they also were addicted to similar customs. It is certain that the notion of such usages was familiar enough to some at least of the tribes that preceded the Aryans in India. Rules of endogamy and exogamy; privileges, restricted to certain classes, of eating together, are not only Indian or Aryan, but world-wide phenomena. Both the spirit, and to a large degree the actual details, of modern Indian caste-usages are identical
with these ancient, and no doubt universal, customs. It is in them that we have the key to the origin of caste.
At any moment in the history of a nation such customs seem, to a superficial observer, to be fixed and immutable. As a matter of fact they are never quite the same in successive centuries, or even generations. The numerous and complicated details which we sum up under the convenient, but often misleading, single name of caste, are solely dependent for their sanction on public opinion. That opinion seems stable. But it is always tending to vary as to the degree of importance attached to some particular one of the details, as to the size and complexity of the particular groups in which each detail ought to be observed.
Owing to the fact that the particular group that in India worked its way to the top, based its claims on religious grounds, not on political power, nor on wealth, the system has, no doubt, lasted longer in India than in Europe. But public opinion still insists, in considerable circles even in Europe, on restrictions of a more or less defined kind, both as to marriage and as to eating together. And in India the problem still remains to trace, in the literature, the gradual growth of the system—the gradual formation of new sections among the people, the gradual extension of the institution to the families of people engaged in certain trades, belonging to the same group, or sect, or tribe, tracing their ancestry, whether rightly or wrongly, to the same source. All these factors, and others besides, are real factors. But they are phases of the extension and growth, not explanations of the origin of the system.
There is no evidence to show that at the time of the rise of Buddhism there was any substantial difference, as regards the barriers in question, between the peoples dwelling in the valley of the Ganges and their contemporaries, Greek or Roman, dwelling on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The point of greatest weight in the establishment of the subsequent development, the supremacy in India of the priests, was still being hotly debated. All the new evidence tends to show that the struggle was being decided rather against than for the Brahmins. What we find in the Buddha's time is caste in the making. The great mass of the people were distinguished quite roughly into four classes, social strata, of which the boundary lines were vague and uncertain. At one end of the scale were certain outlying tribes and certain hereditary crafts of a dirty or despised kind. At the other end the nobles claimed the superiority. But Brahmins by birth (not necessarily sacrificial priests, for they followed all sorts of occupations) were trying to oust the nobles from the highest grade. They only succeeded, long afterwards, when the power of Buddhism had declined.
4. It had been supposed on the authority of late priestly texts, where boasts of persecution are put forth, that the cause of the decline of Buddhism in India had been Brahmin persecution. The now accessible older authorities, with one doubtful exception,[[27]] make no mention of persecution. On the other hand, the comparison we are now able to make between the canonical books of the older Buddhism and the later texts of the following centuries, shows a continual decline from the old standpoint, a continual approximation of the Buddhist views to those of the other philosophies and religions of India. We can see now that the very event which seemed, in the eyes of the world, to be the most striking proof of the success of the new movement, the conversion and strenuous support, in the 3rd century B.C., of Asoka, the most powerful ruler India had had, only hastened the decline. The adhesion of large numbers of nominal converts, more especially from the newly incorporated and less advanced provinces, produced weakness rather than strength in the movement for reform. The day of compromise had come. Every relaxation of the old thoroughgoing position was welcomed and supported by converts only half converted. And so the margin of difference between the Buddhists and their opponents gradually faded almost entirely away. The soul theory, step by step, gained again the upper hand. The popular gods and the popular superstitions are once more favoured by Buddhists themselves. The philosophical basis of the old ethics is overshadowed by new speculations. And even the old ideal of life, the salvation of the Arahat to be won in this world and in this world only, by self-culture and self-mastery, is forgotten, or mentioned only to be condemned. The end was inevitable. The need of a separate organization became less and less apparent. The whole pantheon of the Vedic gods, with the ceremonies and the sacrifices associated with them, passed indeed away. But the ancient Buddhism, the party of reform, was overwhelmed also in its fall; and modern Hinduism arose on the ruins of both.
Authorities.—The attention of the few scholars at work on the subject being directed to the necessary first step of publishing the ancient authorities, the work of exploring them, of analysing and classifying the data they contain, has as yet been very imperfectly done. The annexed list contains only the most important works.
Texts.—Pāli Text Society, 57 vols.; Jātaka, 7 vols., ed. Fausböll, 1877-1897; Vinaya, 5 vols., ed. Oldenberg, 1879-1883; Dhammapada, ed. Fausböll, 2nd ed., 1900; Divyāvadāna, ed. Cowell and Neil, 1882; Mahāvastu, ed. Senart, 3 vols., 1882-1897; Buddha Carita, ed. Cowell, 1892; Milinda-pañho, ed. Trenckner, 1880.
Translations.—Vinaya Texts, by Rhys Davids and Oldenberg, 3 vols., 1881-1885; Dhammapada, by Max Müller, and Sutta Nipata, by Fausböll, 1881; Questions of King Milinda, by Rhys Davids, 2 vols., 1890-1894; Buddhist Suttas, by Rhys Davids, 1881; Saddharma Pundarīka, by Kern, 1884; Buddhist Mahāyāna Texts, by Cowell and Max Müller, 1894—all the above in the "Sacred Books of the East"; Jātaka, vol. i., by Rhys Davids, under the title Buddhist Birth Stories, 1880; vols. i.-vi., by Chalmers, Neil, Francis, and Rouse, 1895-1897; Buddhism in Translations, by Warren, 1896; Buddhistische Anthologie, by Neumann, 1892. Lieder der Mönche und Nonnen, 1899, by the same; Dialogues of the Buddha, by Rhys Davids, 1899; Die Reden Gotamo Buddhas, by Neumann, 3 vols., 1899-1903; Buddhist Psychology, by Mrs Rhys Davids, 1900.
Manuals, Monographs, &c.—Buddhism, by Rhys Davids, 12mo, 20th thousand, 1903; Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre und seine Gemeinde, by Oldenberg, 5th edition, 1906; Der Buddhismus und seine Geschichte in Indien, by Kern, 1882; Der Buddhismus, by Edmund Hardy, 1890; American Lectures, Buddhism, by Rhys Davids, 1896; Inscriptions de Piyadasi, by Senart, 2 vols., 1881-1886; Mara und Buddha, by Windisch, 1895; Buddhist India, by Rhys Davids, 1903.