India has not only ancient books relating to religion, and splendid poetical productions, but also ancient codes; the existence of which latter kind of literature has been mentioned as a condition necessary to the origination of History—and yet History itself is not found. But in that country the impulse of organization, in beginning to develop social distinctions, was immediately petrified in the merely natural classification according to castes; so that, although the laws concern themselves with civil rights, they make even these dependent on natural distinctions; and are especially occupied with determining the relations (Wrongs rather than Rights) of those classes toward each other, i.e. the privileges of the higher over the lower. Consequently, the element of morality is banished from the pomp of Indian life and from its political institutions (Hegel 64-65).
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. “Introduction.“The Philosophy of History. Translated by John Sibree. Henry G. Bohn, 1861, pp. 1-82.