Upanishads continued to be written even later: for instance, Yoga-Upanishads
were eventually appended to the Yogasutra, compiled around 500 c.e., and
the Shaiva, Shakti, and Vaishnava sects all composed their own Upanishads,
some as late as 1300 c.e. The prestige of Hindu orthodoxy became attached
to having an Upanishad for one’s particular doctrine, but only, it would seem,
after around 200–400 c.e. The contents of the “classic” Upanishads, those
collected during the phase when an anti-Buddhist syncretism was being built
up, show no sense of orthodoxy at all, and in fact offer a rather pervasive
criticism of traditional Brahmanism. Yet most custodians of the Vedic texts
were impelled, no doubt by weakness, to ally with their critics; those Vedists
who held out against the Upanishadic movement revived later, when Hinduism
gathered strength, as Mimamsa. The Upanishads’ contents suggest great diver-
sity of opinions in the Brahman camp during this time, with nothing yet
crystallizing into a doctrinal rallying point (see Figure 5.2).
The second process consisted in defining a distinctive Hindu social identity.
The first clear indications are the law books of Manu and of Yajñavalkya, both
attributed to ancient or mythical figures, but reaching their canonical forms
around 200 c.e.^29 These books lay out caste duties and prohibitions and their
penalties. This was essentially a new development. In ancient times, the four
varnas were primarily a categorization scheme; the Vedas carried no prohibi-
tions about commensualism or intermarriage. There were, however, a large
number of jatis, originally probably tribal lineage groups; it was the latter
which became organized, through the work of the Brahman legists, as castes
and fitted into a Vedic ideology.
The caste system expanded into secular life as a regulative code of social
and economic transactions. From now on new social relations were constructed
by creating distinctions among subcastes; henceforward any occupational,
kin-linked, or regional group had to compete for status by instituting its own
purity and marriage rules in emulation of the Brahmans. A new relation
developed between the Brahmans and the state: caste laws were to be enforced
by political officials, but they had no autonomy to makes laws, instead relying
on the learned Brahmans. Moreover, the center of gravity shifted toward the
local arena as Brahmans became economically central to the village. Their
rituals regulated every activity, while collecting fees for their performance;
resistance was crushed by the threat of ritual exclusion from the division of
labor. Caste laws now controlled everything from guilds and interest rates to
criminal penalties. Domestic rituals become the vehicles of family property
transfers and independence of householders (Smith, 1989: 148–149; Moore,
1966: 319–337). The transformation of the Brahman priests into their new
role as linchpin of the caste system was simultaneously the transformation of
the functioning property system.
Caste regulation grew over a long period as the states lost control of landed
External and Internal Politics: India • 209