. The idea of caste is expressed by
the Sanskrit term _varna_, originally denoting "colour," thereby
implying differences of complexion between the several classes. The word
occurs in the Veda in the latter sense, but it is used there to mark the
distinction, not between the three classes of the Aryan community, but
between them on the one hand and a dark-coloured hostile people on the
other. The latter, called Dasas or Dasyus, consisted, no doubt, of the
indigenous tribes, with whom the Aryans had to carry on a continual
struggle for the possession of the land. The partial subjection of these
comparatively uncivilized tribes as the rule of the superior race was
gradually spreading eastward, and their submission to a state of serfdom
under the name of _Sudras_, added to the Aryan community an element,
totally separated from it by colour, by habits, by language, and by
occupation. Moreover, the religious belief of these tribes being
entirely different from that of the conquering people, the pious Aryas,
and especially the class habitually engaged in acts of worship, could
hardly fail to apprehend considerable danger to the purity of their own
faith from too close and intimate a contact between the two races. What
more natural, therefore, than that measures should have been early
devised to limit the intercourse between them within as narrow bounds as
possible? In course of time the difference of vocation, and the greater
or less exposure to the scorching influence of the tropical sky, added,
no doubt, to a certain admixture of Sudra blood, especially in the case
of the common people, seem to have produced also in the Aryan population
different shades of complexion, which greatly favoured a tendency to
rigid class-restrictions originally awakened and continually fed by the
lot of the servile race. Meanwhile the power of the sacerdotal order
having been gradually enlarged in proportion to the development of the
minutiae of sacrificial ceremonial and the increase of sacred lore, they
began to lay claim to supreme authority in regulating and controlling
the religious and social life of the people. The author of the so-called
_Purusha-sukta_, or hymn of Purusha, above referred to, represents the
four castes--the _Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya_ and _Sudra_--as having
severally sprung respectively from the mouth, the arms, the thighs and
the feet of Purusha, a primary being, here assumed to be the source of
the universe. It is very