Jāti

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Caste (जाति) is a system of social stratification. Jāti may be translated as caste, and refers to birth. The term caste is not an Indian word. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is derived from the Portuguese casta, meaning "race, lineage, breed" and, originally, "‘pure or unmixed (stock or breed)".[1] There is no exact translation in Indian languages, but varna and jāti are the two most proximate terms.[2]

Etymology

The English word "caste" derives from the Spanish and Portuguese casta, which the Oxford English Dictionary quotes John Minsheu's Spanish dictionary (1599) to mean, "race, lineage, or breed".[3] When the Spanish colonized the New World, they used the word to mean a "clan or lineage." However, it was the Portuguese who employed casta in the primary modern sense when they applied it to the thousands of in-marrying hereditary Indian social groups they encountered upon their arrival in India in 1498.[4]

The use of the spelling "caste," with this latter meaning, is first attested to in English in 1613.[5]


The names of jātis are usually derived from occupations, and considered to be hereditary and endogamous, but this may not always have been the case. The jātis developed in post-Vedic times, possibly from crystallisation of guilds during its feudal era. The jātis are often thought of as belonging to one of the four varnas.

Caste system of India

Historically, the caste system in India has consisted of thousands of endogamous groups called Jatis or Quoms (among Muslims).

Starting with the British colonial Census of 1901 led by Herbert Hope Risley, all the Jatis were grouped under the theoretical varnas categories.[6] According to political scientist Lloyd Rudolph, Risley believed that varna, however ancient, could be applied to all the modern castes found in India, and "[he] meant to identify and place several hundred million Indians within it."[7]

The terms varna (conceptual classification based on occupation) and jāti (caste) are two distinct concepts: while varna is the idealised four-part division envisaged by the Twice-Borns, jāti (community) refers to the thousands of actual endogamous groups prevalent across the subcontinent. The classical authors scarcely speak of anything other than the varnas, as it provided a convenient shorthand; but a problem arises when even Indologists sometimes confuse the two.[8]

Varna may be translated as "class," and refers to the four social classes which existed in the Vedic society, namely Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras.[9]

Jāti may be translated as caste, and refers to birth. The names of jātis are usually derived from occupations, and considered to be hereditary and endogamous, but this may not always have been the case. The jātis developed in post-Vedic times, possibly from crystallisation of guilds during its feudal era.[10] The jātis are often thought of as belonging to one of the four varnas.[11]

varna

Literally varna means colour, and was a framework for classifying people into classes, first used in Vedic Indian society.[12] The four classes were the Brahmins (priestly people), the Kshatriyas (also called Rajanyas, who were rulers, administrators and warriors), the Vaishyas (artisans, merchants, tradesmen and farmers), and Shudras (labouring classes).[13] The varna categorisation implicitly had a fifth element, being those people deemed to be entirely outside its scope, such as tribal people and the untouchables.[14]

Jāti

Jāti, meaning birth, is mentioned much less often in ancient texts, where it is clearly distinguished from varna. There are four varnas but thousands of jātis.[15] The jātis are complex social groups that lack universally applicable definition or characteristic, and have been more flexible and diverse than was previously often assumed.[16]

History

There are at least two perspectives for the origins of the caste system in ancient and medieval India.[17][18] One focuses on the ideological factors which are claimed to drive the caste system and holds that caste rooted in the four varnas. This perspective was particularly common among scholars of the British colonial era and was articulated by Dumont, who concluded that the system was ideologically perfected several thousand years ago and has remained the primary social reality ever since. This school justifies its theory primarily by citing Manusmriti and disregards economic, political or historical evidence.[19][20]

The second school of thought focuses on socio-economic factors and claims that those factors drive the caste system. It believes caste to be rooted in the economic, political and material history of India.[68] This school, which is common among scholars of the post-colonial era such as Berreman, Marriott, and Dirks, describes the caste system as an ever-evolving social reality that can only be properly understood by the study of historical evidence of actual practice and the examination of circumstances verifiable in the economic, political and material history of India.[69][70] This school has focussed on the historical evidence from ancient and medieval society in India, during the Muslim rule between the 12th and 18th centuries, and the policies of colonial British rule from 18th century to the mid-20th century.[21][22]

The first school has focused on religious ethnology and disregarded empirical evidence in history.[23] The second school has focused on empirical evidence and sought to understand the historical circumstances.[24] The latter has criticised the former for its caste origin theory, claiming that it has dehistoricised and decontextualised Indian society.[25][26]

According to Gupta, during the Mauryan period guilds developed,[27] which crystallised into jatis[28] in post-Mauryan times with the emergence of feudalism in India, which finally crystallised from the 7th to the 12th century.[29] However, other scholars dispute when and how jatis developed in Indian history. Barbara Metcalf and Thomas Metcalf, both professors of History, write, "One of the surprising arguments of fresh scholarship, based on inscriptional and other contemporaneous evidence, is that until relatively recent centuries, social organisation in much of the subcontinent was little touched by the four varnas. Nor were jati the building blocks of society."[30]

According to Basham, ancient Indian literature refers often to varnas, but hardly if ever to jātis as a system of groups within the varnas. He concludes that "If caste is defined as a system of group within the class, which are normally endogamous, commensal and craft-exclusive, we have no real evidence of its existence until comparatively late times."[31]

References

  1. ↑ "Caste, n.". Oxford English Dictionary. 1989
  2. ↑ Corbridge, Stuart; Harriss, John; Jeffrey, Craig (2013), India Today: Economy, Politics and Society, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-0-74566-535-1, p. 239
  3. ↑ "Caste, n". Oxford English Dictionary. 1989.
  4. ↑ "Caste, n". Oxford English Dictionary. 1989.
  5. ↑ "Caste, n". Oxford English Dictionary. 1989.
  6. ↑ Nicholas B. Dirks (2001). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of New India. ISBN 978-0-691-08895-2.
  7. ↑ Rudolph, Lloyd I. (1984). The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India. Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber. University of Chicago Press. pp. 116–117. ISBN 0-226-73137-5.
  8. ↑ Dumont, Louis (1980), Homo hierarchicus: the caste system and its implications, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 66–67, ISBN 0-226-16963-4
  9. ↑ Smith, Brian K. (2005), Jones, Lindsay, ed., "Varna and Jati", Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.) (MacMillan Reference USA), ISBN 978-0-02865-734-9,p. 9522-9524
  10. ↑ Gupta, Dipankar (2000), Interrogating Caste: Understanding hierarchy & difference in Indian society, Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0-14029-706-5,p.212
  11. ↑ Robb, Peter (1997), The Concept of Race in South Asia (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19564-268-1,pp. 91-99, 349-353
  12. ↑ Fowler, Jeaneane (1997), Hinduism: Beliefs and Practices, Sussex Academic Press, ISBN 978-1-89872-360-8, pp. 19-20
  13. ↑ Fowler, Jeaneane (1997), Hinduism: Beliefs and Practices, Sussex Academic Press, ISBN 978-1-89872-360-8, pp. 19-20
  14. ↑ Bayly, Susan (2001), Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-26434-1,p. 9
  15. ↑ Basham, Arthur L. (1954), The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent before the Coming of the Muslims, Grove Press, p. 148
  16. ↑ Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics (2001), p. 9
  17. ↑ McGilvray, Dennis (1982). Caste ideology and interaction. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-521-24145-8.
  18. ↑ Hira Singh (2014). Recasting caste : from the sacred to the profane. SAGE Publications. pp. 23–32. ISBN 978-81-321-1346-1.
  19. ↑ Dirks, Nicholas B. (2001), Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of New India, ISBN 978-0-691-08895-2, pp. 55-58
  20. ↑ Dipankar Gupta, Interrogating Caste (2000), p. 181
  21. ↑ Dirks, Castes of Mind (2001), pp. 38-43
  22. ↑ Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics (2001), pp. 38-43
  23. ↑ Dipankar Gupta, Interrogating Caste (2000), p. 184
  24. ↑ Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics (2001), pp. 5-7
  25. ↑ Dirks, Castes of Mind (2001), p. 59
  26. ↑ Ganguly, Debjani (2005). Caste, colonialism and counter-modernity: notes on a postcolonial hermeneutics of caste. Routledge. pp. 5–10. ISBN 978-0-415-54435-1.
  27. ↑ Dipankar Gupta, Interrogating Caste (2000), p. 212
  28. ↑ Dipankar Gupta, Interrogating Caste (2000), p. 212
  29. ↑ Dipankar Gupta, Interrogating Caste (2000), p. 218
  30. ↑ Barbara Metcalf, Thomas Metcalf (2012). A concise history of modern India. Cambridge University Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-1-107-02649-0.
  31. ↑ Basham, Wonder that was India (1954), p. 148
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