Chandala

Chandala (Sanskrit: चण्डाल) is a Sanskrit word for someone who deals with the disposal of corpses, and is a Hindu lower caste, traditionally considered to be untouchable.

Quotes

• Christianity, which has sprung from Jewish roots and can only be understood as a plant that has come from this soil, represents the counter-movement to every morality of breeding, race or privilege: – it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence: Christianity the revaluation of all Aryan values, the victory of Chandala values.
  • Nietzsche, (TI Improvers 4) quoted in Elst, Koenraad. Manu as a weapon against egalitarianism: Nietzsche and Hindu political philosophy in : Siemens & Vasti Roodt, eds.: Nietzsche, Power and Politics (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2008).

• I cannot oversee whether the Semites have not already in very ancient times been in the terrible service of the Hindus: as Chandalas, so that then already certain properties took root in them that belong to the subdued and despised type (like later in Egypt). Later they ennoble themselves, to the extent that they become warriors […] and conquer their own lands and own gods. The Semitic creation of gods coincides historically with their entry into history.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche , (14[190] 13.377 f.) as quoted in Elst, Koenraad. Manu as a weapon against egalitarianism: Nietzsche and Hindu political philosophy in : Siemens & Vasti Roodt, eds.: Nietzsche, Power and Politics (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2008)
  • Louis Jacolliot and Nietzsche speculated, based on the Manu Smriti, that the Chandalas later became Semites or Jews. There is no basis for this speculation, and the claim that the Chandalas were circumcised is based on a mistranslation of the Manu Smriti. Elst writes: "In a far-fetched departure from Manu’s use of the term, [Nietzsche] relates the concept of Chandala to the psycho-sociological origin of the Jewish national character..." For a full discussion, see Elst, Koenraad. Manu as a weapon against egalitarianism: Nietzsche and Hindu political philosophy in : Siemens & Vasti Roodt, eds.: Nietzsche, Power and Politics (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2008).

• What a yes-saying Aryan religion, born from the ruling classes, looks like: Manu’s law-book. What a yes-saying Semitic religion, born from the ruling classes, looks like: Mohammed’s law-book, the Old Testament in its older parts. What a no-saying Semitic religion, born from the oppressed classes, looks like: in Indian-Aryan concepts; the New Testament, a Chandala religion. What a no-saying Aryan religion looks like, grown among the dominant classes: Buddhism.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, (14[195] 13.380 f.) quoted from Elst, Koenraad. Manu as a weapon against egalitarianism: Nietzsche and Hindu political philosophy in : Siemens & Vasti Roodt, eds.: Nietzsche, Power and Politics (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2008).

• The Chandala-s must have had the intelligence and even the more interesting side of things to themselves. They were the only ones who had access to the true source of knowledge, the empirical. Add to this the inbreeding of the castes.
  • Nietzsche, (14[203] 13.386) quoted in Elst, Koenraad. Manu as a weapon against egalitarianism: Nietzsche and Hindu political philosophy in : Siemens & Vasti Roodt, eds.: Nietzsche, Power and Politics (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2008). (14[203] 13.386)

• It makes the Jews look like a Chandala race which learns from its masters the principles of making a priestly caste the master which organizes a people.
  • Nietzsche. In a letter of 31 May 1888 to Peter Gast, (letter to Peter Gast, KSA 14.420) in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 107

• The priest is our chandala—he should be condemned, starved, and driven into every kind of desert.
  • ‘Decree Against Christianity’, Nietzsche (translation by Shapiro 1989 146). in : Conway D., in: Herman Siemens (editor)_ Vasti Roodt (editor) - Nietzsche, Power and Politics_ Rethinking Nietzsche's Legacy for Political Thought-De Gruyter (2008) p 39

• All innovators of the spirit bear for a time the pallid, fatalistic sign of the Chandala on their brow.
  • Nietzsche, quoted in Dombowsky D. in: Herman Siemens (editor)_ Vasti Roodt (editor) - Nietzsche, Power and Politics_ Rethinking Nietzsche's Legacy for Political Thought-De Gruyter (2008) p 354

• In a far-fetched departure from Manu’s use of the term, [Nietzsche] relates the concept of Chandala to the psycho-sociological origin of the Jewish national character...
  • Elst, Koenraad. Manu as a weapon against egalitarianism: Nietzsche and Hindu political philosophy in : Siemens & Vasti Roodt, eds.: Nietzsche, Power and Politics (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2008). 580

• More serious is Nietzsche’s uncritical reliance on the flawed translation of the text by Jacolliot, an amateur openly denounced by leading philologists like Friedrich Max Muller. Uncritical reading of this text led Nietzsche to quote mistranslations and later insertions in support of the claim concerning the Chandala (low caste) origins of the Semites, used to attack Christianity in TI and AC. Elst goes on to highlight what Nietzsche missed or omitted in his reading of the text, including not just the actual politics and institutions of the caste system, but also some striking affinities with his own views and teachings. Despite these philological blunders and misjudgements, however, Nietzsche seems to have landed on his feet after all; for in Elst’s view, he did succeed in grasping Manu’s view of man and society.
  • Herman Siemens and Vasti Roodt , in Introduction, in : Herman Siemens (editor)_ Vasti Roodt (editor) - Nietzsche, Power and Politics_ Rethinking Nietzsche's Legacy for Political Thought-De Gruyter (2008) p 26