Caste
Topic: Society in Early India: Kinship, Varna-Jati, Women · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 4 "New Beginnings: Cities and States"; Class 12, Ch 3 "Kinship, Caste and Class - Early Societies"
Meaning
Caste is a system that ranks social groups from high to low, with membership fixed by birth. The word comes from the Portuguese casta. In India it joins two layers. The first is the four varnas (Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra). The second is the many jatis, which are communities usually tied to one occupation. The Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras described an ideal order with Brahmanas at the top, and Shudras and "untouchables" at the bottom. Early Vedic texts show that status was not yet fixed by birth. The system became much more rigid over time.
Example
Rigveda 9.112.3 says: "I am a poet; my father is a physician, my mother a grinder of corn". One family followed different callings. The Purusha sukta (Rigveda, Mandala 10) gives a later picture. In it, each varna comes from a different body part of the first cosmic man, which made rank look fixed by birth.
Don't confuse with
- Varna: only four, fixed categories. Caste in practice works mostly through jatis, which were never limited in number.