Origins of the caste system

Formation –

If we shall try to trace back roots of the Indian caste system, we will have to go back to those ancient days when Aryan invasion took place in the Indian subcontinent. Most of the historians & erudites roughly estimate this period & one can go by rough estimates only, around 2000 B.C. to 1500 B.C. approximately after 1000 years after death of the Indus valley civilization.

Fair skinned Aryans not only invaded the subcontinent but they disregarded the indigenous culture to a large extent. They were much superior in war-techniques than people over here & locals hardly had any choice rather than to surrender themselves to the invaders. It is difficult to say whether mass killings of the losers took place or not but it is certain that process of accommodating these aboriginals must had been initiated, once initial feeling of the enmity started receding.

Even then the conquerors were not ready to bestow the equal status in community to the losers. Their intellectual mind soon discovered apparently softer solution & they simply divided the society into four parts. Thus, masses of agriculturists, artisans, traders formed a 'Vaishya' fraternity; rulers & warriors formed 'Kshatriya' fraternity & 'Brahmins' used to profess priesthood & thinking. They were supposed to guide a policy & perform rituals during a holocaust. In a social hierarchy ' Brahmins' used to command highest respect, then 'Kshatriyas' & then 'Vaishyas'. 'Shudras' were placed at the bottom of this scale & all indigenous tribes were accommodated in this class. 'Shudras' were the largest in numbers amongst all these classes. They were simple workers & used to perform tasks involving heavy toils & less regard. But still there situation was much better than forest dwellers & nomadic tribes who were not given place in a community & were made outcast. They were treated as 'Untouchables' & they had to do hideous works involving disposal of a sewage & dead bodies, tanning hide etc. Thus, Aryans found a peaceful but tyrannical solution to accommodate the conquered races rather than to exterminate or enslave them directly.

Our first prime minister & freedom fighter Pandit Nehru has given a convincing explanation in his classic 'Discovery of India' for this classification of the community also called as ‘four varna system’. He writes, “The Indian mind was extraordinarily analytical & had a passion for putting ideas & concepts & even life's activities into compartments. The Aryans not only divided society in four main groups but also the individual’s life in four parts. The first part consisted growth & adolescence, the student period of life, acquiring knowledge, developing self discipline & self control, continence; the second was that of the householder & man of the world; third was that of the elder statesman who had attained certain poise & objectivity & could devote himself to public work without any selfish desire & last stage was that of a recluse who lived a life largely cut off from the world's activities.”

Mr. Nehru further explains that it was not only discrimination. It was something more than that. Rather it was an attempt to accommodate all groups of the society so that synthesized community would be formed & indeed it was a synthesized community in initial stages. Rigidity came in much later. It is believed that the ‘four varna system’ was interchangeable & elastic social system at the beginning. Why it became rigid later on would be a different study altogether but as of now we shall focus on some other facet of the subject.

Aspiration to farm & role of Iron –

Probably the ‘four varna system’ was not merely an idea. It was an outcome of the materialistic conditions in those days. One of the references over the internet sheds some more light on another aspect of this discussion. It says that use of iron must have played a vital role in these regards. It says that such a connection was first established by famous Mr. D.D. Kosambi. Indo-aryans used to use iron tools in those days. They penetrated into India through north-western mountain passes & over a period of several hundreds of years they spreaded right up to the fertile and densely forested gangetic plains. Nomadic though initially they were, by the time they reached India they had learnt art of the agriculture. Fertile northern plains were waiting for getting farmed. They cut down the jungles using fire & iron axe & cultivated the land using iron ploughs ensuring them an assured food supply. This devastated forest dwellers whose resource base for living was hampered.

The author says =>
Gadgil & Guha quote Iravati karve to the effect.
“They (Brahmins) served as pioneers establishing their outposts in forests & initiating rituals which consumed large quantities of wood & animal fat. Thus, provoked native food gatherers termed demons or rakshasas would attempt to disrupt the holocaust & save their resource base in order to retain the control over their territory. Specialist warriors, Kshatriyas would then rush to the rescue of the Brahmins.
……….Dushyanta combs the forest with the help of hundreds of assistants, killing wild animals with complete abandon. It appears reasonable to conclude that the purpose of this slaughter was to destroy the resource base of hunting & gathering tribes who lived in the forest.”

Caste Genetics –

While we have sufficiently churned this subject it would make sense to percept it in the light of recent discoveries; especially when we know that there are streams of opinions who completely doubt whether any kind of Aryan migration had taken place in the ancient years.

One such discovery led by the scientist Bamshad et. al. (2001) claims that upper caste Hindus are more similar to Europeans where as lower caste Hindus are more similar to Asians. Mr. Partha Majumdar’s commentary on this study says that Aryan people’s contact with the indigenous Indians must have been progressively lower as one descends the varna hierarchy. The genetic expectation therefore is that, proportion of genomic features that characterized the ‘Aryan people’ goes on decreasing & proportion of genomic features that characterized the ‘Indigenous Indians’ goes on increasing, as we descend the caste ladder. Bamshad’s team’s results are congruent with the expectation and is a landmark, says Majumdar. He further says that results of similar kind of studies done previously were equivocal because of small sample sizes of genomic markers used for the study. Instead Bamshad used a very large battery of genomic markers & DNA sequences spanning three kinds of DNA. They were maternally derived Mt-DNA (i.e. Mitochondrial DNA), paternally derived Y- chromosome & biparentally derived Autosomal DNA. Mt-DNA was overall much similar to Asians than to Europeans & similarity to Asians goes on decreasing as we step up the caste hierarchy. Paternally inherited Y- chromosome was overall much similar to Europeans & similarity to Europeans goes on increasing as we step up the hierarchy. This confirms greater west Eurasian male admixture in the Indian community in those days. To say in simple words migrated Aryans are likely to have been mostly males & might have integrated themselves in the upper castes. Though as per the old Hindu tradition, inter caste marriage was a cultural taboo; women from lower castes used to marry with upper caste men occasionally and step up the caste ladder. This could have taken place because of less number of women in upper castes due to greater Aryan male admixture. Mr. R. Ramchandran in his article ‘Genetics of the caste’ published in the magazine ‘Frontline’ has written that this particular trend caused a female gene flow across the castes. He further writes that according to researchers, this could be the reason for differences in sex specific & caste specific genetic variation in Indian population. Thus, study concludes that Indian populations are of proto-Asian origin with west Eurasian admixture.

Epitome –

It is difficult to judge whether Aryans brought or imposed the stratification of the society or it was already prevailing & being conquerors they integrated themselves in the upper layer of the hierarchy. But later possibility appears more plausible; especially when we know that though Aryan sway never crossed the gangetic planes, all of the southern Dravidic speaking states do exhibit the caste system more or less in a similar fashion. Late Mrs. Karve (1961) has also said that ‘Something very like castes was already there in India even before coming of the Aryans’.

It is also believed that Aryan migration had taken place in successive waves. Period which we are talking about (i.e. 2000 B.C. approximately) deals with most of the recent wave. So it could also be the case that process of the stratification of the community might have been initiated when older waves of Aryan people came to India. All this is entirely baffling & ambiguous though; it appears reasonable that seeds of the stratification of the society might have been sown in even more ancient past.





SAURABH ASHOK JOGLEKAR
E-mail - saurabh.a.joglekar@gmail.com
Date - 18th July, 2009

References –
Reference Name Author
The Discovery of India, PENGUIN BOOKS Jawaharlal Nehru

The Beginnings of the caste system,
© Aharon Daniel.
http://adaniel.tripod.com/origin.htm
Iron in India and the Caste,
http://www.dalit.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67%3Airon&catid=29%3Amicropediadaliticagtol&Itemid=64
Indian Caste Origins: Genomic Insights and Future Outlook, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
http://genome.cshlp.org/content/11/6/931.full.pdf Partha P. Majumdar
The genetics of caste,
Frontline from the publishers of HINDU,
http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl1812/18120840.htm R. RAMACHANDRAN
Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations,
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
http://genome.cshlp.org/content/11/6/994.full 1. Michael Bamshad
2. Toomas Kivisild
3. W. Scott Watkins
4. Mary E. Dixon
5. Chris E. Ricker
6. Baskara B. Rao
7. J. Mastan Naidu
8. B.V. Ravi Prasad
9. P. Govinda Reddy
10. Arani Rasanayagam
11. Surinder S. Papiha
12. Richard Villems
13. Alan J. Redd
14. Michael F. Hammer
15. Son V. Nguyen
16. Marion L. Carroll
17. Mark A. Batzer
18. Lynn B. Jorde

Internet