Caste, a term applied chiefly to distinct classes or sections of society in India, and, in a modified sense, to social distinctions of an exclusive nature among other nations. Such distinctions existed in ancient states, as in Persia and Peru (not Egypt), and still exist in Polynesia and elsewhere; but it is with India that we more especially associate the idea of caste. There the system has received its fullest development, and the mass of the population is divided into innumerable classes, the Hindu name for which is jāti, a race or class. This term the Portuguese rendered by their equivalent casta, whence comes the English caste.
When the Aryan race penetrated into India, the conquerors distinguished themselves from the non-Aryan population by the epithet twice-born—i.e. those who have passed through a second or religious birth, which was symbolised by the sacrament of investiture with the sacred cord at the age of puberty; the aborigines they named the once-born. The twice-born themselves were divided into three classes in the course of time, a sacerdotal class called Brahmins, a ruling military class, Kshatriyas, and an agricultural class, Vaisyas. The once-born were called Sūdras. The unequal social rank of these four classes was assigned to an inequality of origin, and this was mythically expressed in a late hymn of the Rig Veda, in which it is said that the Brahman was the mouth of the primitive Man (purusha), the Warrior his arms, the Vaisya his thighs, and that the Sūdra sprang from his feet. In the code of Manu the duties and mutual relations of these four castes are systematised and defined.
The Brahman is devoted to the service of religion; he alone mediates between God and man, and has the right of performing sacrifice and teaching the sacred Veda; he is himself an actual divinity. His life is portioned out into four periods: (1) As a student he lives with his spiritual preceptor, and acquires a knowledge of the Veda; (2) he becomes a householder by entering the married state, and performs the appointed daily sacrifices; (3) he lives in the woods as a hermit; (4) he cuts himself off from the world, and by profound meditation attains to absorption into Brahma. The last two are no longer obligatory.
The Kshatriya's sphere of duty lies in the state. He is to be the mainstay and support of the higher Brahman. The latter draws up and interprets the laws, the former executes them. The Vaisya's occupation is the cultivation of the soil and the practice of trade. The Sūdra is to be the servant of all three, especially of the Brahman; his hope is that after death he may be born into a higher caste. (Yet the Maharajah of Travancore is a Sūdra; so was Chandragupta.)
Besides these four castes, usually called varnas, or colours, various mixed castes are enumerated in Manu as resulting from the intermarriage of the pure castes. The minor castes are mostly subdivisions of the Sūdra. The Chandalas are Hinduised aborigines: the out-caste Parialhs (q.v.) of Southern India are separately dealt with. The Brahmins of Southern India are many of them not of Aryan blood.
The system of caste which at present exists throughout the greater part of India is very different from that described in the code of Manu. With the exception of the Brahmins, the pure castes have disappeared, unless the claim of the Rājputs to be the lineal descendants of the Kshatriyas be admitted, and out of the intermixture of the others have sprung innumerable classes. At the census of 1891, the inhabitants of India were divided as regards 'caste, tribe, and race' into 60 groups, some of these subdivided into many sub-groups; thus the agriculturists (of whom there were 47,927,361) fall into no less than 44 sub-groups. Of 207,731,721 Hindus or persons professing the Brahmanic faith, 14,821,732 are set down as Brahmins, broken up into a vast number of minor classes—Sherring enumerates 1886 'tribes.' There were 10,424,346 Rājputs, falling into some 500 'tribes.' Of 44 agricultural tribes, one had more than 10,000,000 members. So engrained in the whole community is this tendency to class distinctions, that Mussulmans, Jews, Parsees, and Christians fall, in some degree, into it; and even excommunicated or out-cast Parialhs form castes among themselves. Most of the existing castes partake of the nature of associations for mutual support or familiar intercourse, and are dependent upon a man's trade, occupation, or profession. Many have had their origin in guilds, in schism from other castes, in the possession of a particular sort of property (as, for instance, landlords are spoken of as the caste of zemindars), and similar accidental circumstances. Their names are often due to the district in which the caste took its rise, to their founder, to their peculiar creed, or any random circumstance. In the Bengal presidency there are many hundreds of such castes, almost every district containing some unknown in those adjacent. In the small state of Travancore, with a population of about two and a half millions, there are said to be 420 castes. There the aboriginal Sūdra Nairs form the ruling or Kshatriya caste, and the half-Arab Mohammedan Moplah takes the place of the Vaisya. Among the lowest classes, it has degenerated into a fastidious tenacity of the rights and privileges of station. For example, the man who sweeps your room will not take an empty cup from your hand; your groom will not mow a little grass; a coolie will carry any load, however offensive, upon his head, but even in a matter of life and death would refuse to carry a man, for that is the business of another caste. When an English servant pleads that such a thing 'is not his place,' his excuse is analogous to that of the Hindu servant when he pleads his caste. When an Englishman of birth or profession, which is held to confer gentility, refuses to associate with a tradesman or mechanic—or when members of a secret order exclude all others from their meetings—or when any other similar social distinction arises, it would present itself to the mind of the Hindu as a regulation of caste.
Caste does not, at the present day, tie a man down to follow his father's business, except, perhaps, in the case of the more sacred functions of the Brahmins. For the rest, Brahmins serve as soldiers, and even as cooks. Men of all castes have risen to power, just as in England statesmen have sprung from every class of society. Nor, again, is loss of caste anything so terrible as has been represented; in most cases it may be recovered by a frugal repast given to the members of the caste; or the outcast joins another caste, among whom he will commonly be received with the heartiness due to a new convert. The question of the restoration of a Christian convert wishing to rejoin the Brahmanical caste has been generally decided in the negative.
As in the West, so in the East, caste enters into all the most ordinary relations of life, producing laws often most tyrannical and too anomalous to admit of generalisation. In the West, however, whilst good sense and Christianity have ever tended to ameliorate social differences, the feeble mind of the Hindu and the records of his religion have had a contrary effect.
The question how caste is to be dealt with in converts to Christianity has now been determined by common consent of missionaries in India; and it receives no recognition within the Christian church. The opposite policy, in former times, was founded on the opinion that caste might be regarded as merely a civil or social institution, and not as a part of the religion of the Hindus.
The modified views of caste, which have begun to prevail in recent years, will be found more fully developed in Shore, On Indian Affairs; Irving's Theory and Practice of Caste. Full accounts of the petty regulations of caste, as laid down in the code of Manu, may be seen in the Translations of the Code of Manu, by Jones, Burneill, or Bühler; Robertson's Disquisition on India; Richard's India; Elphinstone's History of India; Dubois's India; Colebrooke's Asiatic Transactions, vol. v.; and in various articles in the Calcutta Review. See above all the first volume of Dr John Muir's Sanscrit Texts (5 vols.); Steele's Law and Custom of Hindu Caste (1868); Kaye and Watson, The People of India (6 vols. 1868-72); and admirable illustrations of the system are given in Sherring's Hindu Tribes and Castes in Benares (3 vols. 1872-81).