The Philosophy of History. Friedrich von Schlegel
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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