Subordinate and Marginal Groups in Early India 9780195690897

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13 UJIIYIISITJ OP CALIPORXIA [Bill.)

Subordinate and Marginal Groups in Early India

Oxford in India Readings Themes in Indian History Available in the Series David Ludden (ed.)

Agricultural Production and South Asian History, Second Edition (OIP)

P.J. Marshall (ed.)

The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? (OIP)

Ranbir Cbakravarti (ed.)

Trade in Early India (OIP)

Ian J. Kerr (ed.)

Railways in Modem India (OIP)

Jos J. L. Gommans and Dirk H. A. Kolff (eds)

Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia 1000-1800 (OIP)

Richard Eaton (ed.)

India's Islamic Traditions, 711-1750 (OIP)

Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds)

The Mughal State 1526-1750 (OIP)

Michael H. Fisher (ed.)

The Politics of the British Annexation of India 1757-1857 (OIP)

Mushirul Hasan (ed.)

India's Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization (OIP)

Kaushik Roy (ed.)

War and Society in Colonial India

Irfan S. Habib and Dhruv Raina (eds)

Social History of Science in Colonial India

lshita Banerjee Dube (ed.)

Caste in History (forthcoming)

Subordinate and Marginal Groups in Early India Second Edition

Edited by ALOKA PARASHER-SEN

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXFORD UNIVEllSITY PllESS

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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in cenain other countries Published in India by Oxford University Press, New Delhi C Oxford University Press 2004 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

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ISBN- I 3: 978-0-19-569089-7 ISBN-10: 0 I 9--569089-3 Typeset in NalandaTim I 0.3/12.6 Printed in India at Rashtriya Printers, Delhi 110 032 Published by Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 0()1

Contents ..

Series Note

Vil

.

Preface

IX

I

Introduction PART I: SUBORDINATE GROUPS

I. The Despised Castes: North-East India in Buddha's Time 83

RICHARD FICK

2. Slavery in Ancient India: As Depicted in Pili and Sanskrit Texts

96

DEV RAJ CHANANA

3. Evolution of Untouchability in Tamil Nadu up to K.R.

AD

HANUMANTHAN

1600 125

4. C81_1Qila and the Origin of Untouchability VIVEKANAND JHA

157

5. Women, Men, and Beasts: The Jatakas as Popular Tradition

UMA

CHAKRA VARTI

6. Chokhamela and Eknath: Two Bhakti Modes of Legitimacy for Modem Change ELEANOR ZELLIOT

243

PART II: MARGINAL GROUPS

7. 'Foreigner' and 'Tribe' as Barbarian (Mlecclza) in Early North India ALOKA PARASHER-SEN

275

.

CONTENTS

VI

8. Is There a Tamil Race? DAGMAR H6LLMAN-RA1ANA y AGAM

314

9. The Tyranny of Labels RoMILA THAPAR

349

10. Representing the Other? Sanskrit Sources and the Muslims BRAJADULAL CHA1TOPADHYAYA

374

11. Vai~9ava Perceptions of Muslims in Sixteenth-century Bengal J.T.O'CoNNELL

405

Afterword

429

Notes on Contributors

460

Index

461

Series Note The series focuses on important themes in Indian history, on those which have long been the subject of interest and debate, or which have acquired importance more recently. Each volume in the series consists of, first, a detailed Introduction; second, a careful choice of the essays and book-extracts vital to a proper understanding of the theme. Using this consistent fonnat, each volume seeks as a whole to critically assess the state of the art on its theme, chart the historiographical shifts that have occurred since the theme emerged, rethink old problems, open up questions which were considered closed, locate the theme within wider historiographical debates, and pose new issues of inquiry by which further work may be made possible.

Preface

This volume is a collection of essays that present data and analyse the historical roots of social oppression and exclusion on the Indian subcontinent, written by different scholars over the twentieth century beginning with the early 1920s and ending with the 1990s. The project of having such a volume under the Themes in Indian History series was suggested at a critical juncture in the evolution of our contemporary socio-political milieu, namely, the last decades of the twentieth century, a point in our history when regional and caste identities had emerged in a way that defined the character of Indian polity. An invitation to bring out a volume on subordinate and marginal groups at this time was thus a challenge but, ~ I naively thought then, not a difficult one. Instead, to put it mildly, it turned out to be a sort of treasure hunt. Little had one realized in all these years of teaching history that writings on such groups would be so rare to find. Exposure to a deep historical analysis on a much neglected subject of inequality, disparity and diversity in early India was the need of the hour. It was necessary not only because for long periods of India's premodem past, existing historiography had made such groups invisible, they were simply absent in the narratives on social history, but importantly, also because social groups juggling for power and intermingling with the fabric of the nation-state through democratic processes had identities in contemporary India that were intrinsically rooted in their not so recent history born out of ritual and cultural exclusion. This volume thus provided an opportunity to delve into a past that would make the writing of social history more expansive and that which could place before its readers various dimensions of social exclusion and inclusion and how they had historically developed.

X

PREFACE

The main objective was to highlight how identities were perceived, preserved, and changed in early India as framed within the major historiographical traditions on writing early Indian history. The aim was also to identify key areas of research for the pre-ftfteenth century period, written within different interpretative models and those that reflected on the historical experiences from different parts of the subcontinent. Key seminal, but yet, introductory essays were identified for inclusion hoping to make them the foundation on which future and more incisive studies could be taken up. The initial project had left the limits of defining the subordinate and marginal open to include various kinds of oppression--0f servants, forced labour, women, outcastes, slaves, tribes, foreigners, and barbarians-in fact, all those at the receiving-end of the society. The heterogeneity thus proposed was narrowed down to focus only on outcastes (the ritually impure) and outsiders (the barbarians). Keeping these broad categories in mind the essays have been placed in two separate sections of this volume. Each of them provide an essential empirical base on which interpretations are built further amplifying on important and hitherto unknown facets of the history of such groups. There are many to thank and acknowledge. To Professor Romila Thapar, special thanks as important initial discussions with her helped to etch out the contents of this volume. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the contributors of the volume-Vivekanand Jha, K.R. Hanumanthan, Eleanor Zelliot, Uma Chakravarti, Romila Thapar, Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, Dagmar Hellman-Rajanayagam -who, without delay or apprehension permitted me to use their writings. One would also like to acknowledge the support and help from the publishers/journals where these pieces were first published and who granted us the permission to reproduce them. The writing of the 'Introduction' and the 'Afterword' benefited from innumerable interactions I was able to have with scholars from different institutions and disciplines. In India. seminars and invited lectures at the universities of Pune, Kolhapur, Kuvempu. and Pondichery and at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, helped fonnulate initial ideas and where the feedback encouraged me to rethink various issues on the regional dimensions of such a study. Much of what went into the final version was also shared with scholars and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley, the University

PREFACE

•

XI

of Texas at Austin, the South Asia Institute at the University of Heidelberg, the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London and the University of Alberta at Edmonton and I am indebted to all those who made critical comments and had incisive conversations with me. It is of some significance for me to lay bare my indebtedness to several groups of students who opted for a course 'Marginality and Privilege in Early India' that I had based on this project and initially offered at the University of California at Berkeley and subsequently, at the University of Hyderabad. Doing collective reading and hearing each other was a wonderful experience and always opened up new lines of enquiry and to them, this volume is dedicated. My colleagues at the University of Hyderabad were always present to lend relevant reading material, brainstorm and just simply be there to encourage me from time to time. The Oxford University Press and its professional, persistent and energetic editors that I had the good fortune to interact have equally shouldered the burden of bringing out this new paperback edition and I thank them. Hyderabad 2007

ALOKA PARASHER-SEN

Introduction ALoKA PARASHER-SEN

PRELIMINARIES

T.

he Indian social landscape has always been marked by two elements: diversity and hierarchy. The two interact wherein the circle of diversity constantly impinges on the vertical and horizontal interjections of hierarchy. In this pattern of ordering social relations, erasure of one's identity has not been the nonn. Rather, at the complex intersections of the vertical and horizontal lines within the circle, as also outside, it has been maintained, accounting for a multiplicity of caste, community, ethnic and linguistic names infonning us of the rich texture in the social mosaic of the Indian subcontinent even today. Within the existing historiography of early India what had first been attempted was a definition of the so-called 'essences' of Indian society in the form of 'caste' in all its manifestations; however, this historiography looked at change primarily in terms of text-based perceptions which were apparently lacking in historical contexts. Later, there was a concern for delineating the historical processes of change by identifying broad stages and seeking reasons for such change in material conditions while still clinging to ethnographic, Indological and Orientalist substances of what 'caste'meant in such a society. This method did stress the fact that identities were never static in time and space but it hardly helped to unearth the probable dynamics of dissent, protest and conflict through modes of contestation that need not necessarily have been expressed in large-scale convulsions. Despite these endeavours, the idea of a monolith pre-modem past located in a

2

SUBORDINATE AND MARGINAL GROUPS IN EARLY INDlA

spatial and temporal entity far away from us is today difficult to dislodge. Moreover, the idea of harmonious social co-existence in early India, still remains with us an endearing image inherited from the traditionalist and more conventional views on the country's past. Today there is an urgent need to dispel both these representations. While explaining the choice of extracts for this volume it is our primary aim, in the introduction, to discuss different historiographical positions in which the history of subordinate and marginal groups has been couched. We also intend to contrast our tools for interrogating the past with those inherent in the sources we use to write this history. These are rooted in the unitary ideas of the scientific method. Anthony Grafton, in the context of western historiography, has recently shown the trajectory of how the 'footnote in history' has been treated and has convincingly argued that its value and position is embedded in the power and authority we give to our respective tools of analysis. 1 Thus, it appears that the textual past is treated as less amenable to truth and authenticity compared to a more recent official record and, therefore, fit to be located only as a 'footnote', apparently free from a world view that it impinged upon, but important to provide for solid explanations of what the past really was. Through this introduction it seems worthwhile to contrast these modern methods with the universal principles on the basis of which the early Indian discourses straddled issues of hierarchy and diversity. Undoubtedly, some of these perceptions were originally encased in metaphysical notions of classification, time and space, trying hard to make unifonn and orderly that which was outside it. However, there were others that reflected with greater ease on existential issues of living in a heterogeneous society. Nonetheless, they were not mere epistemological exercises but an endeavour to work out a living experience within a diversity that remains a reality in the subcontinent even tcxtay. It has not been common in historical studies on early India to discuss issues of cultural and ethnic diversity and caste hierarchy together. Literature on the history of 'caste' is vast and contentious and, therefore, we need to closely examine questions of the interpretation of caste as a category of understanding social stratification in India. However, the most common assumption, that 'caste' should be seen as a 'survival of an earlier world' located in some distant static past, has to be rejected outright. The implicit deduction that, in the past,

INl'RODUCTION

3

caste was never part of the political and economic framework because of its ostensible confinement to the domain of the religious, is also a common, but all too simplistic, assumption that we carry with us today which needs to be put aside. Recent writings on the social history of early India have questioned this assumption to a certain extent but not the interpretative categories of caste and ethnic names that we have inherited from the colonial endeavours to define caste society. In fact, it has been unconsciously imagined that the distant past was linked to the present without the interventions of an intermediate and immediate past. This has meant that we ignore a very critical aspect of the process of caste-formation, namely, that each period of history added a new dimension to the formation and re-information of caste society which had a bearing on its proliferation in historical time. This, it must be emphasized, happened in a culturally diverse environment which is also the focus of our attention. The volume therefore includes extracts both on groups, that were subordinate in the present hierarchical ordering of the vanµl-jati system, as well as those that were categorized as being outside it, to highlight the interaction and tension between hierarchy and diversity. Our contention is that the core of the dominant society in early India did not remain an unchanging one over time and, therefore, perceived difference with others changed in terms of language, land and place, and social and cultural practices. This also affected ideology, especially the way legal rules were framed within the Dharmasastra tradition. In addition, as society became complex, and as experiences widened, existing patterns of the definition of both van_ta and jati were repeatedly revised. In ancient literary texts the term mleccha or milak/cha was literally meant to describe all peoples without 'caste' as barbarians-social groups who were culturally different from the socalled mainstream civilized society as also from each other. Defining 'Otherness', was however, a complicated issue and it must be accepted at the outset that it was not only closely related to the question of the acceptance of the theory of va~asramdharma but also to the social, ritual religious practice in different regional situations to which writers were reacting. These three aspects further merged together in a complex way over time in different historical contexts, generating and multiplying diversity in the subcontinent. Thus, hierarchy and difference, both within the caste ordering of society, and also outside it,

4

SUBORDINATE AND MARGINAL GROUPS IN EARLY INDIA

were being continually negotiated with rather than treated in separate unrelated compartments. Nothing was equal to the 'Other' but was always in close proximity with it. In rejecting equality and assimilation as a model to define social relations, a complex array of accommodative strategies were put into place which attempted to preserve identities, not in any pristine original form, but through various transfonnative stages that were nonetheless distinct from each other. The point here is that historians have hitherto understood cultural diversity in India in terms of the modem nation state without giving due attention to the way this knowledge was accumulated in the literary ethos of India as a civilization. This raises fundamental questions about the way sociological knowledge was remembered and 'documented' in the indigenous tradition/s. We argue that the way this formation is couched in these sources allows for a multiplicity of ways of perceiving cultural diversity in terms of space and time on the subcontinent. There is indeed no rigid categorization of ethnic and cultural groups over time though a very clear-cut recognition of difference is continuously noticed and emphasized. Also, the frontiers of civilized society in the geographical entity that we call the Indian subcontinent were continually expanding in terms of a dialogue with the 'Other' at various levels. For this dialogue to have taken place, the definition of the 'Self were also continually interrogat~ while, however, retaining, the core of the belief in dharma or the order of things as visualized in the Sruti and Smfti. This study departs from earlier interpretations in emphasizing that the 'spiritual' and 'social' essences of Indian civilization and political and economical agencies at work have both to be taken into cognizance to understand the patterns of cultural integration on the one hand, and exclusion on the other since, caste formation has been intrinsically related to these processes. To see it merely as a structure of codes or simply a reflection of class relations in society would be missing the essential link between the power of hierarchy, with its apparently unquestioned control, and the fragments of difference that remained stubbornly intac~ often providing potential sites for contestation. PURPOSE

The extracts, in the form of essays, in this volume have been identified from among those writings that dwell on aspects of the history of

INTRODUcnON

5

social groups in early India who, in the period before AD 1500, were considered subordinate [Part I, Chapters 1-6) and marginal [Part D, Chapters 7-11); discussion on the subordinate focuses on issues of caste compulsions and that on the marginal throws up issues of cultural diversity. The subordinate was undoubtedly oppressed and their histories were entwined in complex ways to the trajectory of power and domination in early India. In the present context we focus particularly on those groups that were ritually isolated, making them sharply accentuated vis-a-vis caste society as a whole. The marginal, as broadly understood in the present context, were a variety of outsiders, both 'tribes' and 'foreigners', who came into contact with the mainstream caste society but were largely defmed as being excluded from the dominant perception of the 'Self' and regarded as the 'barbarian' or uncivilized. As the 'Other' they necessarily defined the 'Self' from time to time but were categorically considered culturally inferior, though not always oppressed. In the case of both subordination and marginality of communities we address those located outside the system of social stratification based on the concept of vanJDSramdharma. 2 It is well recognized that the exploitation of subordinate groups began with their economic dependence but their segregation was accomplished over historical time through the effective use of the rules of purity and pollution that in fact had, over time, become entrenched as a defining characteristic of the varr,a-jati system. The marginality of social groups, on the other hand, has to be traced in terms of the very genesis. transformation and growth of the varr,a-jati system in the subcontinent. In particular, this collection is primarily concerned with the early Brahmanic notions of the antya or antyaja3, also known as antyayoni, and the mleccha. 4 The Buddhist and Jaina literary traditions too reflect on these, demarcating their location notions and providing different terminologies to describe them, as discussed in some extracts here. The idea of the permanently subordinate and marginal is expressed in the texts but historically the social status of particular groups thus designated changed from time to time. The other notion, only perfunctorily address~ is that of the dasa; a term used in different kinds of early Indian texts to indicate a condition of slavery, though members from different social strata have also been described as slaves in the early literature.' Extracts in this volume of empirical studies on dasas

6

SUBORDINATE AND MARGINAL GROUPS IN EARLY INDIA

or 'slaves', on asprfya' 'outcastes', or those, commonly referred to as the 'untouchable, communities, and the 'foreigners' and 'tribes' that were nwlerstood by the pejorative term mleccha, or 'barbarian' reflect on different chronological and spatial contexts. They thereby also raise the question of how the subordination and marginality of these groups adjusted to the dominant perception of society embedded in the vanµi ideology that is often erroneously projected in modem writings to have had an all-India character that was stubbornly solid, strong, and unchanging. What needs to be emphasized is that the centre of power was tenuous and was constantly negotiating with these groups. Both the antyajas and mlecchas were isolated and rejected by the dominant society, in different ways-the former, as economically subordinate and culturally impure and the latter as culturally marginal and inferior though not necessarily politically and economically subordinate and oppressed. Dasa was, however, a more general term applied to a variety of subject conditions, not always applying to a particular caste or community. It was not however, as earlier scholarship7 has clarifi~ applied to interpret a given 'mode of production' in India, as was understood by 'slavery' in the ancient Graeco-Roman world. In one of the first writings on the subject, Fick explains the complexity of the place of dasas in early Indian society. He clarifies that they could definitely not be categorized as 'castes' and, therefore, they were not what he describes as the 'despised castes' who had the adjunct of 'impurity' attached to them, but neither were they the exact equivalents of the 'slaves' known in the classical Greek and Roman traditions. 8 Social stratification is to be found in almost all human communities, past and present. In modern societies such stratification is merely a ranking of occupational roles; a distinction is made between the person and the occupational role he or she occupies so that the former has possibilities for mobility within certain limits. In such a scenario tendencies towards assimilation and homogenization are greater. In contrast, in pre-modem societies no distinction was maintained between the person and his occupational role. Further, there was the added hindrance of ranking norms imposed in terms of social and cultural values. In this case the total social entity was considered significant; occupational specialization and differentiation were made coterminous with constituent groups, ultimately arranged in the hierarchy with relatively limited social mobility. This tendency resulted in a highly

INTRODUCTION

1

varied social order marked by ethnic, cultural, and social characteristics that usually did not move towards assimilating and submerging one's total identity in favour of another but tended to work towards maintenance of individual identities. However, though not assimilative, this type of social stratification was more accomodative of constituent groups that were controlled by their respective kin, descent, and occupational characteristics. This made for a greater variety and diversity but also entailed marital endogamy and social exclusion, though not absolute immobility as has been argued in certain quarters. In India the chief characteristics of a caste social order as it emerged could be summarized as follows: Hierarchy was inherent to the delineation of the var,µi-jati system. Its ideological underpinnings sought their legitimization from its sanction in a religious realization, mentioned for the first time in the ~g Veda. The existence of a 'caste' identity was intimately linked to the second characteristic of the V&rQa system that, in its very conception, outlined the hereditary nature of occupations to be governed both by function and aptitude, determined by birth. Any transgression of this was considered against dhanna or the 'natural order of things'. Therefore, to ensure adherence to the principle of heredity, that was essential to maintain a di vision of labour, two essential appendages of the VarQa-jati system grew over historical time and were conditioned by it. These were the practices of commensality and endogamy. The efficient and strong maintenance of endogamy as a weapon was to ensure continuance of the group. Enhanced exclusiveness was essential to control distance between groups through sacramental ideas of purity and impurity-all these being part of a hierarchical ordering in the midst of diversity because, it must be mentioned, a fairly large number of people remained outside the VarQa-jati system. Recent historical scholarship has pertinently argued, with particular focus on changes that took place over large tracts of the Ganga valley, that the explanation for the origin of castes has to be seen in terms of how egalitarian clans and so-called tribes began to adjust to inequality, with the rise of surplus that was generated in the earliest settled agrarian societies, leading to the fonnation of the state and its attendant institutions. 9 Social inequalities that were thus born permuted with ritual and ideological norms to create a complex non-egalitarian social order. However, even when the beginnings of a full-fledged

8

SUBORDINATE AND MARGINAL GROUPS IN EARLY INDIA

'class' system gradually emerged, it bas been suggested that there was a degree of flexibility in the practice of both the rules of endogamy and of commensality. Thus Jaiswal writes, 'restrictions on accepting wives and cooked food from the lower V&rQas evolved gradually and became stricter in course of time.' 10 Though in subsequent periods endogamy varied dramatically from period to period and region to region, it continued to get stronger as it became linked to ensuring property rights of the dominant groups in society. Ultimately, endogamy became the most central feature for the continuance of 'caste' through time. 11 Jaiswal points out that this was closely linked with the subordination of women in Indian society. 12 In this argument it is recognized that a critical way in which the interaction between the economic and the cultural took place was through the system of 'arranged marriages' that enabled a strengthening of the value attached to endogamy. It also enabled an effective spatial expansion of caste society, bringing in new social groups through marriage alliances that were substantially seen as an integral means by which ruling elites legitimized their rule in the newly conquered territories. The element of endogamy ultimately not only gave identity to the 'caste' but also helped in maintaining both the principle of heredity and hierarchy that were inherent to the system. 13 Some scholars of the early medieval and medieval period emphasized the formulation and strengthening of the jajmilni system and the accompanying proliferation of the ideology of saucacara or purity and pollution. In this connection Suvira Jaiswal has argued that the central feature of jajmilni was 'the relationship of the jiljmiln the central figure of the system, with land'. She therefore, views the jati system to be an 'elaboration of the vanµi ideology reflecting a deterioration and hardening of class relations.' 14 In this view, early medieval times were marked by tendencies offeudalism and, therefore, there was immobility of social groups. However, the fact that the two elements of 'caste' -vUQa and jati-interjected with the 'class' dimensions, as relations of differential ranking based on relative access to basic resources, meant that it allowed social mobility. Recent historical studies on the different regions of the subcontinent have addressed these questions within empirical situations that have thrown up a variety of social realities, each rooted in specific localities and regions. Most of these studies begin their enquiry into questions of such

INTRODUcnON

9

diversity during what has been labelled the early medieval period. 15 B.D. Chattopadhyaya, in particular, critiques the earlier scholarship on the so-called 'breakdown of the early historical social order'; he offers an alternative that elaborates on the expansion of the caste system in terms of the entry of a variety of peasant ruling jatis in the different regions of the country that were then inhabited by diverse non-caste communities. 16 The phenomena of caste then increasingly became embedded in different modes of production, and interestingly, took new forms in each of these, though hardly ever vanishing from Indian society. We argue here that it would be worthwhile to examine the social history of early India as a process of the makin.g of castes, jatikanµi 11 , in varied spatial contexts that were continually changing, with agricultural expansion into areas hitherto controlled by food-gathering populations. This initial and distinct encounter in each region inevitably led to the transformation of the latter at all levels of interactionpolitical, economic, social, and cultural. 18 At the political level it initiated the processes of primary or secondary state-formation; at the economic level it brought in new technologies of food production, making surplus generation possible with greater ease; at the social level, the kin-based units of tribes began to get a new identity of kin-based pea~nt groups forming ultimately into castes; and at the cultural level the diverse religious cults began to get integrated into pan-regional or pan-Indian syncretic modes of worship, wherein cult appropriation ensured a link to the totality of the overarching ideology. These complex processes were interrelated and often did not happen in a unilateral fashion. Change over time was dependent on a considerable number of variables of which a dominant marker was the respective ecological and geographical niches being inhabited by social groups at different points in time. These landscapes also underwent change so that each had forest (artu}ya, atavi, atavika), rural (grama, ur, vat!,a, vatilca), and urban (dugra nagara, pura, pa(,µi) entities that were being transformed from time to time. Therefore, social landscapes in each of these types of spaces, within a given region, generated their own specificity. Thus, undoubtedly, if we argue that it is the interjection of these processes of change that defmed the sbUcture of castes and their hierarchical ordering, which · happened essentially in regional contexts, it is imperative for us to

IO

SUBORDINATE AND MARGINAL GROUPS IN EARLY INDIA

draw in the discussion on diversity as integral to our total understanding of the local social history of early India.

TERMINOLOGIES

(a) Van,a and Jati Conceptually, at the normative level, the order of Van)~ as it developed during the later Vedic times, was exhaustive in that there could be only four van,as-brahma,µi, lcyatriya, vaisya and sudra-witb no fifth order. In essence, within the textual traditions of early India, the system and concept of varr,a and its roots in a supernatural and divine beginning, as being born of the Cosmic Man, Prajapati. 19 The attempts to hannonize man and society with the cosmic order were done on a grand scale in these earliest sruti traditions of India. In a recent elaborate study it has been pointed out by Brian Smith that the earliest cosmogonies on the origin of the universe that laid out the van,a scheme in fact do not mention the social hierarchy but revolve around all aspects of the natural world. However, ultimately: 'The end result of classification schemes organized around the concept of Van)a was that certain humans could present what was an arbitrary social status or status claim as natural and sacred; that is, social hierarchy was presented as inexorably part of the immutable and divinely given order ofthings.' 20 This ideology of an all-encompassing 'natural world' being classified into varr_za came to be deeply entrenched and persuasive, penetrating into all aspects of life in the Hindu universe. It gave an effective epistemological explanation linking the individual to the social and then to the divine and cosmic levels of existence. It was precisely because of this connectedness to an overarching supernatural authority that authors of the later smrti traditions effectively legitimized their claims to social and political pre-eminence. Simultaneously. because the whole system was layered with philosophical sanctions and precepts. any escape of ordinary people from it was difficult, if not impossible. To put it succinctly: 'Socio-historic contingencies and natural "laws" were treated within the same mythico-ritual discourse, and were endowed with the same status of utter facticity and eternal truth. To challenge any part of the system was to challenge all. and a challenge to any part could be refuted with overpowering arguments.• 21 Notwithstanding these explanations and the apparent solidity of the

INTRODUCTION

11

law and faith in dhanna as it emerged, it must be stated that the epistemological shifts made by the so-called heterodox sects as early as the sixth century ec and the later emphasis on bhakti as a medium to gain legitimacy, provided space and deviations, however limited, for a questioning of dhanna and the boundaries defined by it. The most potent forms of questioning emerged from within the Tantric traditions of the early medieval and medieval times, in many parts of the country. Though there was never a complete overthrow of the hierarchical structures, complex levels of domination and subordination emerged, defying the theoretical ordering as presented in legal texts. At best the above explanations provided the fundamental metaphysical raison d'etre for legitimizing the existence of the caturvanJ-a in the hands of the different ruling elites in later times and in the disparate regions of the subcontinent. Historical understandings of the caste system have first and foremost been embroiled in sorting out what van,a should not be translated as. 22 In fact, in its earliest usage in the ~g Veda it was not applied to any caste or class but was said to mean 'colour' and used to distinguish between the arya van,a and the dasa van,a. 23 The tenn 'caste', as is well known, is a modem term, a variant of the tenn 'castas' introduced by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century to describe this I system of social stratification. 24 V an,a and jati, though not exclusively, are the two main Sanskrit terms that were used all over the Indian subcontinent in varying degrees of specificity to describe social relations. The terms were related to each other and, at the same time, were different. In the common-sense understanding of the two terms there is a blurring of distinction, whereas in intellectual analyses it is assumed that the ancient texts ostensibly separate the two terms and understand them at two levels. 2s Sociological studies on the operation of the caste system after Independence have mainly concentrated on describing the jatis, and rightly so. Some scholars have tended to represent van,a as an all-India category and jati as a local one. It has been pointed out that the van,a model 26 has been used pre-eminently in lndological writings, which has then impacted the study of contemporary society as well. Andre Beteille, for instance, has drawn attention to the writings of Niharranjan Ray and N.K. Bose who, in the thirties and forties of the last century, recognizing that the actual divisions of Bengali Hindu society were many, continued to use the

12

SUBORDINATE AND MARGINAL GROUPS IN EARLY INDIA

term banµi (Bengali for Van)a) to articulate their views about the nature of historical and contemporary Bengali society. Beteille' s contention, however, is that what they were in fact describing was jati and, further, that in common vernacular language, Bengali in the case of his example, 'jat in the spoken language and, also jati in the written form' is what is usually used today. 27 This perceptive essay on the polemics of the use of the terms van,a and jati in a contemporary Indian situation and how this shift in vocabulary reflects on the representation of caste, points to the essential complexities of defining a dynamic and changing caste society. But to suggest, 'for two thousand years, when Hindus wrote about it [i.e. caste], they did so characteristically in the idiom of Vai-Qa' 28 may not be entirely true. Therefore, we would like to submit that similar vocabulary shifts and the interchangeability of the use of these two terms in the past have also to be recognized. It i~ true that, most commonly, historical writings had been smitten with a book-view of the caste system in ancient and medieval India. But in more recent writings it is now well understood that indigenous sources do not, in fact, scrupulously observe a distinction between the terms va11J-a and jati. Taking a detailed look at the use of these two terms in the early texts 29 , Suvira Jaiswal has given several examples highlighting their interchangeability. She points out that Patµni, writing his A~tadhyayi around the fifth century ac, used van_1a twice to describe mixed groups known in later legal texts as jati 30 but, in the same text, the brahma1.1a too is described with the term jati. She further expands that, reflecting on conditions of around the same period, early Buddhist texts frequently use the term jati to describe the brahmar:ia, k~atriya. vaisya, and siidra groups which, in the legal Brahmanic tradition of the time, were clearly known by the tenn va17J-a. However, what is significant is that in using jati to describe the four van.ias, the Buddhists clearly bring in the dimension of class in distinguishing between the high (ukka{fa) and low (hina) jatis. At the same time, these very sources frequently use the tenn jati to define, particularly, food-gathering tribes or generally, people living in forested areas like the Ve~as, Ni~adas, and Pukkasas. These groups are listed along with the so-called untouchable groups such as the C~