THIS IS MY THEORY ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE CASTE SYSTEM.

As we walk around in out towns, what do we see? People. But these People are segregated into various groups. Engineers, scientists, artists, artisans, labourers, etc. What is this segregation basd on? Our occupation. We live in a society that is segegated based on what we do for a living. The society of india too did have this segregation of its society. We percieve the remenants of that system these days in what we call the caste system. But the standard argument against that theory is that its is based on heredity.Now, if a person would come into a crowded market square any place and at any time and say that certain types of people were to be considered to be of high birth and then define the hierarchy based on this, he would have been torn apart by a very angry mob.



Here is my hypothesis as to how the caste system came into being:



The creators first took into consideration the policy makers of the kingdom. They were ministers, royal councillors, village heads, judges, architects, engineers, in short those who used their brains to work. Now these people had immense scholastic aptitude which took atleast a decade to hone. This was a very difficult task as they had to live in gurukulas in forests and abstain from creature comforts. These people were given the highest position in the hierarchy of castes as the brahmins. Next came those whose scholastic aptitude was not all that great but had immense control over a perfectly coordinated musculature. These people were the warriors, martial artists, wrestlers, boxers, master swordsmen, kings, commanders of the royal army, etc. They too did not have an easy time getting to where they were in terms of physical aptitude. It did take the better part of a decade to develop a fair degree of coordination between mind, body and soul. So they were given the second place in the hierarchy as Kshatriyas. But taking into account the approximate equivalence in vitality to the kingdom of both these peoples, there isn't a clarity in discerning who exactly held the first and second position at the time of the creation of his system. Next came the traders, merchants, and anyone who bartered - and later when the concept of currency was discovered - bought and sold anything for profit in the markets. These people were given the third place in the hierarchy of the castes as the Vaishyas. Then came the Sudras, the people who had neither the mental aptitude nor the physical aptitude to be eligible for anythig other than labour.



I myself am a brahmin, and when I look about myself I do not see many of the so called Brahmins as being eligible to be in that caste. So I have drawn the hypothesis that the Brahmins of those days made their position at the top of the hierarchial order definite by making themselves indisposible in almost everything that they did. This they did by complicating all the procedures they were involved in and creating concepts of 'madi' which means the conncept of being spiritually clean and by excluding all the other people from the sources of knowledge. The next thing they did was to make this system hereditary in order to ensure that their progeny enjoyed the same respect and honour that they did irrespective of whether they were worth it or not.This last move was the most damning of them all as there can be no guarantee that if the parent has a high I.Q the offspring will too. The same goes for those with parents with low I.Qs. But this move was also the most difficult because it is one thing to create a system of segregation of people. but it is another to aspire to change the outlook of the entire population of life towards their fellow human beings and infinitely more importantly towards themselves.