Ancient India the Caste System for Sixth Graders Reading Passage
8b. The Caste System
Photo courtesy of Carolyn Brown Heinz
These girls, who vest to the Untouchable caste, brand dung patties which are used for fuel and heat by members of all the castes. This job was considered and then unclean that other castes did not associate with the members of society that performed information technology.
If a Hindu person were asked to explain the nature of the caste system, he or she might start to tell the story of Brahma — the four-headed, 4-handed deity worshipped as the creator of the universe.
According to an aboriginal text known as the Rigveda, the sectionalization of Indian gild was based on Brahma's divine manifestation of iv groups.
Priests and teachers were cast from his mouth, rulers and warriors from his arms, merchants and traders from his thighs, and workers and peasants from his feet.
What does "Degree" Hateful?
Even today, most Indian languages apply the term "jati" for the system of hereditary social structures in Southern asia. When Portuguese travelers to 16th-century India first encountered what appeared to them to be race-based social stratification, they used the Portuguese term "casta" — which means "race" — to describe what they saw. Today, the term "degree" is used to describe stratified societies based on hereditary groups not only in South Asia only throughout the world.
Although born into the Kshatriya caste, Mahatma Gandhi spent much of his life working to bring the Untouchables equality. It was Gandhi who showtime named the Untouchables "Harijans," pregnant "children of God."
Others might present a biological explanation of Republic of india'southward stratification organization, based on the notion that all living things inherit a item gear up of qualities. Some inherit wisdom and intelligence, some become pride and passion, and others are stuck with less fortunate traits. Proponents of this theory aspect all aspects of one'southward lifestyle — social condition, occupation, and even diet — to these inherent qualities and thus use them to explain the foundation of the caste organization.
The Origins of the Caste System
Co-ordinate to one long-held theory nearly the origins of Southern asia's caste system, Aryans from central Asia invaded South asia and introduced the degree system equally a means of controlling the local populations. The Aryans defined key roles in society, then assigned groups of people to them. Individuals were born into, worked, married, ate, and died within those groups. There was no social mobility.
This Indian immigrant is still witting of his Brahman heritage. Here he is shown standing in front of an altar in his home in the The states.
The Aryan Myth
The idea of an "Aryan" group of people was not proposed until the 19th century. Subsequently identifying a language called Aryan from which Indo-European languages are descended, several European linguists claimed that the speakers of this linguistic communication (named Aryans by the linguists) had come from the north — from Europe.
Thus, according to this theory, European languages and cultures came first and were therefore superior to others. This thought was afterward widely promoted by Adolf Hilter in his attempts to assert the "racial superiority" of and so-called light-skinned people from Europe over so-called dark-skinned people from the rest of the globe — and thus provide justification for genocide.
But 20th-century scholarship has thoroughly disproved this theory. Almost scholars believe that at that place was no Aryan invasion from the north. In fact, some even believe that the Aryans — if they did exist — actually originated in Southern asia and spread from there to Europe. Regardless of who the Aryans were or where they lived, it is generally agreed that they did not single-handedly create South asia's caste system.
Thus, information technology has been impossible to decide the exact origins of the caste system in Southward Asia. In the midst of the argue, just one affair is certain: South asia'south caste system has been effectually for several millennia and, until the second half of the 20th century, has changed very little during all of that fourth dimension.
Time for Form
In ancient Republic of india, the ranked occupational groups were referred to equally varnas, and the hereditary occupational groups within the varnas were known equally jatis. Many take immediately assumed that ascribed social groups and rules prohibiting intermarriage among the groups signify the existence of a racist culture. Simply this assumption is false. Varnas are not racial groups but rather classes.
Four varna categories were constructed to organize guild along economical and occupational lines. Spiritual leaders and teachers were chosen Brahmins. Warriors and nobility were called Kshatriyas. Merchants and producers were chosen Vaishyas. Laborers were called Sudras.
The Untouchables
In improver to the varnas, there is a fifth grade in Hinduism. It encompassed outcasts who, literally, did all the dirty piece of work. They were referred to as "untouchables" considering they carried out the miserable tasks associated with disease and pollution, such every bit cleaning up subsequently funerals, dealing with sewage, and working with animal skin.
Brahmins were considered the apotheosis of purity, and untouchables the embodiment of pollution. Physical contact betwixt the ii groups was absolutely prohibited. Brahmins adhered then strongly to this rule that they felt obliged to bathe if even the shadow of an untouchable fell across them.
Struggling against Tradition
Although the political and social force of the caste arrangement has not disappeared completely, the Indian regime has officially outlawed caste discrimination and made widespread reforms. Particularly through the efforts of Indian nationalists such as Mohandas Gandhi, rules preventing social mobility and cross-caste mingling have been loosened.
Gandhi renamed the untouchables Harijans, which means "the people of God." Adopted in 1949, the Indian Constitution provided a legal framework for the emancipation of untouchables and for the equality of all citizens.
In recent years, the Untouchables accept become a politically active group and have adopted for themselves the name Dalits, which ways "those who have been broken."
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Source: https://www.ushistory.org/civ/8b.asp