Evolution Of Civil Society Research Articles

Evolution of Civil Society and Caste System in India

In some passages of the Ṛgveda, the Upaniṣads, the Mahābhārata and the Pali canon there are references to a casteless millennium of equality, plenty and piety which was supposed to have existed in some remote unrecorded antiquity. It was the golden age of kṛta or satyayuga when there was only one caste of deva (gods) or Brāhmaṇa, when people called no goods their own nor women their chattels, when crops were produced without toil and all were pious and happy. The legendary Uttarakurus of the far north were a model of this Arcadian society of godly men who lived in their natural virtue, rich in physical and moral wealth without any disabilities of sex and distinctions of property and, consequently, who received the blessings of God in the form of timely rain and juicy harvest (Mbh. VI. 6. 13; Dīghanikāya, xxxii. 7).