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The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic instance of social classification based on castes. It has its origins in ancient India, and was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially in the aftermath of the collapse of the Mughal Empire and the establishment of the British Raj.
Susan Bayly states that Manusmriti and other scriptures helped elevate Brahmin in the social hierarchy and these were a factor in the making of the varna system, but the ancient texts did not in some way "create the phenomenon of caste" in India. [40]
Shudra or Shoodra [1] (Sanskrit: Śūdra [2]) is one of the four varnas of the Hindu class and social system in ancient India. [3] [4] Some sources translate it into English as a caste, [4] or as a social class. Theoretically, Shudras constituted a class like workers. [2] [5] [6]
It became increasingly agricultural and was socially organised around the hierarchy of the four varnas, or social classes. This social structure was characterised both by syncretising with the native cultures of northern India [63] but also eventually by the exclusion of some indigenous peoples by labelling their occupations impure. [64]
[7] [9] [40] Chanakya, a Brahmin born in 375 BCE, was an ancient Indian polymath who was active as a teacher, author, strategist, philosopher, economist, jurist, and royal advisor, who assisted the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta Maurya in his rise to power and is widely credited for having played an important role in the establishment of ...
Wáng (王), the head of state of Ancient China. In ancient China it was a royal title, but later became a princely title. Bà Wáng (霸王), meaning "Hegemon-King" Tian Wang (天王), meaning "heavenly king" Yìxìng Wáng (異姓王), meaning "different surnamed king/prince". This title was granted to subjects as a peerage.
The Vedic period, or the Vedic age (c. 1500 – c. 500 BCE), is the period in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age of the history of India when the Vedic literature, including the Vedas (c. 1500 –900 BCE), was composed in the northern Indian subcontinent, between the end of the urban Indus Valley Civilisation and a second urbanisation, which began in the central Indo-Gangetic Plain c. 600 BCE.
By the late 19th-century, the caste system of Kerala had evolved to be the most complex to be found anywhere in India. There were over 500 groups represented in an elaborate structure of relationships and the concept of ritual pollution extended not merely to untouchability but even further, to unapproachability.