“How various are the views which different men inspire!
How various are the ends which men of different craft desire!
The leech a patient seeks; the smith looks out for something cracked.
The priest seeks devotees from whom he may his fee extract.
With feathers, metal and the like, and sticks decayed and old,
The workman manufactures wares to coin the rich man’s gold.
A poet I, my sire a leech, and corn my mother grinds:
On gain intent we each pursue our trades of different kinds.”[5]
5. The present system of castes cannot, in fact, be dated before the time of Manu’s “Institutes” which “was originally a local code, embodying rules and precepts, perhaps by different authors, some of whom may have lived in the 5th Century B.C., others in the 2nd Century B.C., and others even later. It was at first current among a particular tribe of Brâhmans, [[xii]]called Mânavas, who probably occupied part of the North-Western regions between the rivers Sâraswati and Drishadvati, but afterwards became generally adopted.”[6]
6. As to the effect of these laws it may be well again to quote Professor Max Müller.[7] “After the victorious return of the Brâhmans the old laws of caste were re-enacted more vigorously than ever, and the Brâhmans became again what they had been before the rise of Buddhism, the terrestrial gods of India. A change, however, had come over the system of caste. Though the laws of Manu still spoke of four castes—of Brâhmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas and Sûdras—the social confusion during the long reign of Buddhism had left but one broad distinction: on the one hand the pure caste of the Brâhmans: on the other the mixed and impure castes of the people. In many places the pure castes of the Kshatriyas and Vaisyas had become extinct, and those who could not prove their Brâhmanic descent were all classed together as Sûdras. At present we should look in vain for pure Kshatriyas or Vaisyas in India, and the families which still claim these titles would find it difficult to produce their pedigree, nay, there are few who could lay claim to the pure blood of the Sûdra. Low as the Sûdra stood in the system of Manu, he stood higher than most of the mixed castes, the Varnasankaras. The son of a Sûdra by a Sûdra woman is purer than the son of a Sûdra by a [[xiii]]woman of the highest caste (Manu, X., 30). Manu calls the Chandâla one of the lowest outcastes, because he is the son of a Sûdra father and a Brâhmanic mother. He evidently considered the mésalliance of a woman more degrading than that of a man. For the son of a Brâhman father and a Sûdra mother may in the seventh generation raise his father to the highest caste (Manu, X., 64), while the son of a Sûdra father and a Brâhman mother belongs for ever to the Chandâlas.”