Aryans and the Indian Caste System

Many admire the rich Indian culture, dedication to family, and their respect for tradition and customs. Indians go to great lengths to find a mate for life within their culture and hire matchmakers to ensure that the prospective bride and groom are well suited for each other, their union a successful and happy one. Indians marry within their professional circles, the modern replacement of castes. An astrologer is often consulted about their celestial signs.

The social stratification called “caste” is a hierarchy at least two-thousand-year-old, outlawed in 1950, but imposed on people at birth, marking their place in society, the types of jobs they can seek, and who they can marry.

The Hindu caste system has four varnas (classes) based on occupation:

-          Brahmins are knowledge oriented, the highest caste.

-          Kshatriyas are warriors and aristocracy, second caste.

-          Vaishyas are businesspeople, third caste.

-          Sudras are laborers, the fourth caste.

https://www.asiahighlights.com/india/caste-system

The social stratification and the caste system is believed to have originated with the conquest of the Harappan people in the Indus valley by Sanskrit-speaking Aryans who colonized the northern portion of the continent before 1000 B.C.

India was an advanced civilization at the time, home to several cultures, but the illiterate and nomadic, light-skinned Aryans who defeated in battle the darker skinned tribes, believed themselves superior due to their military ability.

The Harappan people had planned cities, irrigated their fields, had a script, arts, crafts, but were no match militarily for the destructive invaders, the Aryans, who enslaved them. Some historians believe that this multi-racial India gave rise to the complex caste social structure.

Mohandas Gandhi mentioned “the children of God,” the pariahs called the Untouchables, who do the most menial tasks in society.

A census report of 1911 mentioned that “They are so degraded that a twice-born Hindu considers it necessary to bathe if he is touched by one of them… They are not allowed to draw water from the village tank, the village barber will not shave them, the village-washer woman will not wash their clothes.”

At the time of the conquest, the Sanskrit-speaking Aryan communities were divided into three castes: the Brahman (comprised of priests and scholars), the Kshatriya (kings, warriors, and nobleman), and the Vaisya (merchants and workers). The pre-Aryan Indians made up a fourth caste, the Sudra (farmers and ordinary laborers).

The original Aryan castes were entitled to be “twice born,” the highest state, in which physical birth is followed by the symbolic birth, the initiation into the upper caste.

It is believed that the caste system may have been based on skin color since the Sanskrit word for caste, “varna,” means “color.”

Aryan, the word means “kinsmen” in Sanskrit, was actually the proper name of a group of people, who spoke one of the Indo-European family of languages. The name Aryan was used more focused on a group of people, land-hungry migratory population, who had domesticated a wild horse from their homeland in southern Russia. They used these horses to move, fight, and occupy anybody who stood in their way. They took their language with them and mixed it with the languages of the peoples they conquered along the way.

A racist myth from the 19^th century suggested that a white “master race” was responsible for all progress of humanity which is certainly not true. Adolph Hitler and his Nazis promoted this myth in the 20^th century. The truth was that the Aryans triumphed because of their fast horses, the use of chariots in battles, and the element of surprise during their massive invasions.

The historical information of the early Aryan society comes from the Rig-Veda, sacred hymns compiled around 1000 B.C., handed down orally through many generations of Brahmans until the 14^th century when it was written down.

The Vedic hymns detail the life of the Aryan tribesmen, their gambling, drinking, charioteering, skill in battle, and how they adopted gods from the Sudras, eventually settling down to farming. Their nomadic traditions of cattle rearing, however, became the romanticized “golden age.” Thus, the worship of the sacred cow in modern Hinduism was born during the Vedic times.

A thousand years after the original Rig-Veda, the distinction of caste based on skin color became impossible to make due to mixed marriages, so a new distinction emerged based on occupation.

Sub-castes called jati emerged from mixed marriages, and a person’s employment became more important than a person’s caste (varna).

When new immigrants arrived and rejected the caste system, they became part of a separate new caste or sub-caste of their own making.

The underprivileged adopted Islam when it arrived in India in the early 13^th century because it seemed to them that it was a casteless religion. In practice, however, most Muslims followed caste restrictions. Jews and Christians also formed their own groups like castes.

Industrialization, with its new professions, gave rise to new castes. Politics, social and political roles also formed their own castes. The democracy in India took advantage of the caste system in order to influence politics and the interests of their particular members in parliament. The Brahmans are still at the top of the social ladder and the Untouchables at the bottom.

And most Indians today, no matter where they may reside in the world, hire successful matchmakers and astrologers to find their perfect bride or groom for a marriage steeped in tradition and family within one’s professional class.