cause he is more pure and sacred than other castes, while Mahar and Paraiyan are at the bottom because they are impure. This purity is the pivot on which the entire system turns. Rank, social position, economic condition have no direct effect on the gradation from the standpoint of caste. They are simply aids to establish the status. Caste in India is strong and rigid because the ideas of the people regarding purity and pollution are rigid.[1]
We find in our text that various articles, hours, conditions, and places, almost everything that can be imagined, were graded according to their supposed purity and impurity. The status of a caste or a tribe always depended on the karma,[2] which in various degrees might be pure or impure. The wide range and the minute gradation of substances and actions with regard to purity and
- ↑ Gautama is very often barbarously complimented as a man who fought against caste, and his creed is very often called a revolt against caste system. The disproof of this matter is needless here, but I may take the liberty of reminding advocates of this creed that the pretensions of the Buddhists regarding purity and pollution were at least as extravagant as those of the Brāhmana, and Gautama is not free from the guilt of promoting such pretensions. In cases he has shown much greater stupidity in these matters than that of all Brāhmanas put together. Mr. Rhys Davids has shown the fallacy of complimenting Buddha for breaking caste in his various introductions to the Dialogues of Buddha, Robert Chalmers also exposed the attitude of Buddhism toward caste in his article "Madhura Sutta on Caste." (J.R.A.S., April, 1894. pages 360-366.)
- ↑ The word "karma" was used in various senses. In philosophy it was used as a term expressive of the idea of "motion" as Spencer has used it. Here karma was supposed to operate on matter to produce various things. It was also used to denote that action by animate objects which governed their fate. In popular usage it was also used to denote occupations and other various actions. When applied to the topic of caste it was indiscriminately used in its philosophical as well as popular senses.
