CASTE. — From the Latin castus, with the meaning “(pure) stock”; the term was adopted in the fifteenth century by the Portuguese colonizers of Malabar and corresponds to the Sanskrit varna, “colour,” and jāti, “race.” It refers to that particular form of social coexistence proper to India, distinguished by these three characteristics: 1) hereditary specialization, from father to son, in profession and occupation; 2) rigorous prohibition of contacts, especially marriage and dining, with individuals of other c.; 3) respect for the Brahmanic hierarchy as the supreme regulator and defender of the laws of the c. If one of these elements is lacking, there is no c. in the proper sense.
The four fundamental c. of India: brahmani (priests), keatriye (warriors), vaiya (merchants), kidra (peasants), still constitute the social framework of the country. But from their intermixture various subcastes (jātayas) have been formed, whose descent has greater value if the father belongs to a higher c., whereas it is despised if the woman belongs to II.
As early as the seventeenth century, official documents entitled jativi veka, “distinction of the subcastes” (India Off. codices 1638, 1639, partially translated by R. Nobile, V. BIBLICA.), listed 60 subcastes. Since then, however, their number has increased enormously; nor has the levelling action of the English government, despite unifying so many aspects of social life (roads, commerce, access to public employment), succeeded in suppressing the fundamental framework of Indian social life, which Brahmanic tradition says emerged from the limbs of Brahma, thereby consecrating the scheme. For the differentiation between groups and subgroups, with the consequent prohibition of marriage and commensality with people from unrelated groups, continually reappears, determined by various causes: emigration, which makes emigrants strangers to the groups of those who remain; membership in different religious sects; the accession to Hinduism of marginal, semi-barbarous races, which eventually come to constitute a new c. of their own. The origin of the caste system is explained by the fact that the Aryans, a white and blond race, invaders of India, which was inhabited by races of colour, although consenting to marry women of the vanquished peoples, did not permit their daughters to be given to men of colour, and indeed degraded the offspring of such unions. A rigorous endogamy was thus established within the superior c.; and it is perhaps this endogamous rule, which restricts the possibility of marriage for girls, that explains the prohibition of widows’ second marriages and the concern to marry girls at a tender age.
The c. has ensured in India, among people whom the climate easily makes indolent, the continuity of work; it has preserved the physiognomy of the country despite the various successive Asian and European dominations; it has guaranteed the legitimacy of the social order by placing it under the aegis of a divine origin, since the four c. are said to have emerged from the limbs of the god Brahma; it has legitimized, and still legitimizes, the inevitable changes resulting from social development, insofar as it submits them to the judgment of the Brahmans, custodians of the religious tradition. The castes have now been abolished; and this is a benefit and an achievement, because, from the standpoint of Christian fraternity, they constituted a serious impediment both to conversions and to converts.
In a broader but improper sense, since the three elements mentioned at the beginning are not present, c. is sometimes used to mean “social class.” It is only in this sense that Herodotus’s information (II, 164) concerning the division of the Egyptian people into seven classes (priests, warriors, herdsmen, etc.) should be understood: a simple specialization of occupations, also found in the corporations of the Romans and in medieval guilds or corporations.