How varna differs from caste: Myths around the traditions of the Indian "color" hierarchy

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

More than a class, almost a synonym for Indian society - the word "caste" stuck to the mass image of India along with elephants, maharajas, Mowgli and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Although the term itself is not from Hindi or Sanskrit, but borrowed from the Portuguese and means "breed" or "origin".

However, by means of Latin (castus - "pure", "immaculate"), the origin of the term can still be traced back to the common antiquity for the Hindus with the Romans and Portuguese: to the Proto-Indo-European kas-to - "to cut". Indian society has been neatly “cut” into professional-ethnic “slices”. Or is it not so neat?

The rhythm of Indian life

The original name of the caste - "jati" ("genus", "class" in translation from Sanskrit) - can mean the category to which the creature belongs, depending on the form of birth and existence. When applied to traditional Indian music, "jati" are something like "squares" that make up a rhythmic cycle. And in Sanskrit versification - a poetic meter. Let's transfer this interpretation to society - and we will get a rhythmic "cutting", in accordance with which social life moves.

It is easy to confuse the concept of caste-jati with the concept of varna ("colors") - the original foundation of Vedic society. The first "sociologist", according to the Mahabharata, was the god Krishna. He divided people into four classes, in accordance with material nature and its three qualities, the gunas, from which all kinds of human activities arise.

Depending on the predominance of one or another guna, each person belongs to one of the four varnas:

- brahmanas (priests, scientists, custodians of spiritual culture, advisers); -kshatriyas (warriors - rulers and aristocrats); - vaishya (entrepreneurs, traders, merchants, artisans); - sudras (servants, people engaged in "unclean" labor).

How many times was born?

Representatives of the first three varnas are also called "twice-born", since at a young age they undergo initiation, that is, "spiritual birth" as full-fledged members of society. Most likely, the Indo-Aryans brought the existing varna system with them during the invasion of Hindustan in the II millennium BC.

In the Rig Veda and later texts there are indications that initially belonging to varna was not hereditary, but was determined for an individual in accordance with his natural qualities, abilities and inclinations. Accordingly, the barriers to changing varna throughout life, as well as to interwar relationships (including marriages), were fairly transparent and flexible, if they existed at all.

Among the rishis (legendary Vedic sages, that is, the brahmanas belonging to varna), one can find both a native of a family of Kshatriya warriors (Visvamitra), and the grandson of a fisherman, that is, a sudra (Vyasa), even a former robber (Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana) … Even the sudras were not forbidden to participate in rituals and study the Vedas.

How the division into jati differs from division into brahmins and sudras

In the vast territories of the peninsula (the mastery of which took more than one century), the Aryans discovered many autochthonous tribes and nationalities at different stages of development: from the descendants of the highly developed Harappan civilization to semi-wild hunters. All this motley population, disparagingly called "Mlechchi" ("savages", "barbarians", almost "animals"), had to be put in place so that it formed into a kind of a single society. These processes are accompanied by the advancement of the Aryans deep into Hindustan (XIII-XI centuries BC), the change of the shepherd's way of life to the settled one, the strengthening of the power of kings and priests, as well as the transformation of Vedic teachings into Hinduism.

The very diversity of ethnic groups, languages, stages of development, beliefs did not fit well with the tight, primordial and God-given system of varnas. So the aborigines were gradually added to the emerging all-Indian society in a different way. Almost every territorial-ethnic group found itself voluntarily and forcibly tied to a certain social model, which also consisted of a type of activity and religious and ritual prescriptions. This, in fact, became known as "jati".

The highest levels of the hierarchy - jati, corresponding to the varnas of the brahmanas and kshatriyas, which make up the "nobility" - the conquerors, of course, staked out for themselves. The process more or less coincided with the ossification of the varna system: “color” began to be inherited, hence the transition to endogamy and other restrictions on intervarna communication.

The degradation of the original varna concept is explained by the increasing power of the two higher varnas, especially the brahmanas. The latter achieved an almost godlike status "by right of birth" and held in their hands the entire spiritual side of life.

Naturally, the elite made every effort not to let in their ranks arbitrarily capable "low-born". The barriers between the jati were promoted by the increasingly frustrated notions of the "purity" and "impurity" of the professions. The idea was instilled that the fulfillment of the four key goals of human life (dharma, artha, kama and moksha) is impossible outside of jati and that climbing the social ladder can only be in the next life, provided that the caste is strictly followed in the present life.

It is not surprising that the gradual decline in status and enslavement of a woman belongs to the same period of Brahmanism. Representatives of different varnas made sacrifices in different seasons and to different patron gods. The Shudras now did not dare to address the gods directly and were deprived of access to sacred knowledge.

Even the dialects spoken by the heroes of later classical dramas immediately betray the origin of each: the commoners get the Magadhi, the singing commoners - the maharashtri, the male kings and nobility - the sacred Sanskrit, the noble ladies and ordinary old people - the exquisite shauraseni. “Divide and conquer” is not Caesar's idea.

Varieties of people

The phrase "Muslim caste" (as well as "Christian") is essentially an oxymoron. The very positions of Islam reject the division of people into grades and require the Caliph to stand in prayer along with any fellow believers, including the poor and slaves. It is no coincidence that after the conquests of the Great Mughals, Islam was especially readily accepted by representatives of the lower castes, including the untouchables: the new faith automatically raised their status, leading them out of the caste system.

However, India is a land of paradoxes. The descendants of the Turks and Arabs who came with the Great Moguls formed the "ashraf" ("noble") caste and to this day look down on the "ajlaf" - the descendants of the Hindus who converted to Islam. The caste "arzal", similar to the Hindu untouchables, was not slow to form, and off it went: today, in the individual States of India, there are dozens of Muslim castes.

What really unites people within each jati is not so much a profession as an idea of a “common dharma,” that is, a destiny. This partly explains the seemingly strange requirements for representatives of this or that caste: a blacksmith must certainly be able to do carpentry (and vice versa), a hairdresser must marry and arrange weddings. At the same time, say, a "potter" is not one jati, but several, with a division by specialization and a corresponding difference in social status.

Caste and gender prejudices in India are bursting at the seams. Read How Warriors in Pink Sarees Seek Justice.