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monotheism, and the upper class, mainly composed of sages and ascetics,
adopting formless monotheism.
Formless monotheism consisted in conceiving
God as Formless, Nameless (i.e. destitute of proper name or names), Everlasting,
Absolute, All-Merciful, Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent, and workshipping
Him in mind and spirit under the appellations Kadavu˜,
the Transcendent, and ‘IŠaivan’, the Omnipresent.
The spiritual movement started during the mediaeval period by the Mystic
School called Sittar in Tamil (Skt. Siddhas), an order of advanced ascetics
of whom eighteen have been counted, was but an attempt at revival of the
pre-Aryan Tamil monotheism which was not encouraged by the Sanskritists,
as it would be economically disadvantageous to them.
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21.
The Origin of Caste-System
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The
Indian congenital caste-system, the most arbitrary and irrational on the
face of the globe, peculiar to this subcontinent and highly prejudicial
to the progress of the non-Brahmin society of India, is erroneously considered
by Western Scholars to have been based upon the principle of division
of labour.
The Grammar of love-poetry called Agapporu˜
in Tamil required the broad classification of Tamilian society into four
classes, viz., Anda-ar (sages and scholars), Arasar (kings and chieftains),
Va-igar (merchants and traders) and V„˜ƒlar
(landlords and cultivators) purely on the occupational basis, all occupations
having been reduced under four heads viz., Learning, Protection, Trade
and Agriculture, the last including all kinds of industries and works
of manual labour; for the purpose of assigning reasons for temporary separations
of the hero from the heroine in married life, according to his profession
or business.
The Vedic Brahmins borrowed this system
of fourfold division of society from the Tamil literature, and adapted
it to their own purposes and renamed the divisions Brƒhma-a,
K™atriya, Vaisya and S‡dra,
respectively.
The Aryan system of caste-division differed
from its Tamil original in the following respects:
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