Anthropological Review of Caste in India

"The word caste comes from the Portuguese casta, a word that was meant to describe the jati system, but slowly it has come to have a much broader connation. "Gail Omvedt in her book "Buddhism in India: Challenging Brahmanism and Caste". "that Caste (varnashrama dharma) emerged as a concept only in the middle of the first millennium BC-not at first as an actual social structure but as an emerging prescription of what an ideal social structure should be"² In course of the evolution of human society, class system is a universal phenomenon studied where origin of caste system lies. Caste system is nothing but class system placed on a permanent basis in India. It was an arbitrary creation of priests. Then hereditary factor entered into the class system. "Being the most privileged class, the priests thought of fortifying their position and protecting their class interests. Religion was brought in. They propounded a theory creation which placed the class system on a permanent basis. Thus class system was converted into caste system"³