I have finished reading Peter Ellis's "A Brief history of Druids" which I found to be a thoughtful and scholarly work. I was glad that he cited his sources and the book was not just made up of how he imagined Druids, as so many other works on the topic.
He advocated the position that Druids actually were a caste akin to the Brahmans of India. He traces the Indo-European roots back to the northern Indian sources to the Indo-European language family. His use of the distribution of language families to fill in the route of a pre-historical migration from northern India into Europe is legitimate.
Most of what I had read previously had seen Druids as a priest class in Celtic society, but without restrictions as to who could aspire to be a Druid. As we know, the status of Druid can only be achieved after 20 years of study, i.e. it is an achieved status not inherited, so I don't fully understand Ellis's position on this. If, in fact, there were a caste, then one would be born into that caste and new Druids could only come from that caste.
He advocated the position that Druids actually were a caste akin to the Brahmans of India. He traces the Indo-European roots back to the northern Indian sources to the Indo-European language family. His use of the distribution of language families to fill in the route of a pre-historical migration from northern India into Europe is legitimate.
Most of what I had read previously had seen Druids as a priest class in Celtic society, but without restrictions as to who could aspire to be a Druid. As we know, the status of Druid can only be achieved after 20 years of study, i.e. it is an achieved status not inherited, so I don't fully understand Ellis's position on this. If, in fact, there were a caste, then one would be born into that caste and new Druids could only come from that caste.