Buddhism in India

Buddhist Civilisation 127

specifically because they were characterised primarily by egalitarian

clans they could not internally differentiate to allow the hierarchy

inevitable with the emergence of surplus production in agriculture;

instead the egalitarian tribe got absorbed as a jati with internal

equality but externally partaking of rank in a hierarchy (Klass

1980: 135–59). It is unclear whether this would put the emergence

of the caste system at the time of the Indus civilisation or in the first

millennium BCE. In a sense, it only pushes the problem further back

and leaves us with the question of why such unique tribal societies

existed in India. It also seems clear that this was not true of all the

tribes that were absorbed as castes; some, like the Maratha-Kunbis

of Maharashtra, clearly have had internal hierarchical rankings. It

would make more sense to take Klass’ thesis as showing alternative

possibilities of development, and ask what factors (including

ideological and political ones) gave thrust to the jati form.

In India itself, the most widespread ‘popular’ interpretation is the

racial theory, which becomes the ‘Aryan theory’ when applied to

India. This was originally put forward by European scholars, who

noted the links between Sanskritic languages and European languages

and viewed the higher varnas in India as having descended from

Indo-Europeans, and the lower ones from conquered indigenous

people. These theorists therefore view the caste system as a means

of subordinating a conquered population, fueled by the desire to

maintain purity of lineage and horror of sexual intermingling with

an inferior group. The Aryans are seen as the instigators. The top

three varnas (Brahman, Kshatriya and Vaishya) are descended from

the priests, the nobility and the common people of the Vedic tribes,

while the Shudras and others are descended from the conquered

indigenous peoples. Colour differences marked this division.

Varnas served to explain and ‘place’ the innumerable tribes or local

communities, which later became jatis, in the framework of the

overall system.

The racial theory became popular with the early non-Brahman

and Dalit movements. Nevertheless, there are many problems with

it. The same objection applies here as to an economic explanation:

just as division of labour (but not caste) arose everywhere in the

world, so situations of conquest and subordination between ethnic

groups have existed throughout history without giving rise to caste.

All of these have been accompanied by some notions of racial

superiority and injunctions against intermarriage, with conquered

limited to and dependent upon actual power wielded on the ground....’

(Aloysius 1999: 157–58).

This is to say that caste was neither eternal, nor an inevitable,
essential feature of Indian society. It is in history, not above it. But,
how and why did it develop? What was the process?
There have been many theories of the origin and dominance of
the caste system; we can learn something from most of them, while
accepting none in full. The ‘economic explanation’ has been perhaps
the most influential. At its simplest, this looks at caste as a form of
division of labour, in which the varnas represent ‘closed castes’. By
itself this is inadequate since it does not explain the extreme frag-
mentation and separation of jatis doing similar occupations; as
Ambedkar had many times noted, ‘caste is not a division of labour,
but a division of labourers.’
In a more sophisticated economic explanation, caste is seen as
evolving at the time of the emergence of agrarian society and surplus
production. According to this, the earlier hunting-gathering and
simple horticultural tribes were transformed into functional groups in
a complex, inequalitarian agricultural society. (As the anthropologist
Robert Redfield put it, ‘caste is a tribal society re-arranged to fit a
civilisation’). In this process, originally independent endogamous
groups were as integrated as jatis, which continued to have internal
lineage and clan structures, but which took up different occupations
and became identified with various functions. Each thus had a
separate rank and status (however disputed) in a hierarchy headed
by non-producing intellectual-priests (Brahmans) and rulers
(Kshatriyas), who shared control over the basic means of produc-
tion, the land. Kosambi, the most sophisticated exponent of this
approach, claims the power of Brahmans resulted from their tech-
nical and intellectual skills (knowledge of the seasons) which aided in
agriculture, and sees them as pioneers in the spread of agriculture
(Kosambi 1975: 26–50).
Caste can indeed by seen as one way of organising labour, of
dealing with hierarchy and the state in an economy of surplus
production. But even the sophisticated economic theory does not
explain just why this should have taken place in a caste-hierarchical
form in South Asia and not in the rest of the world. Morton Klass,
an anthropologist, tries to fill this gap by arguing that the reason
lies in certain characteristics of pre-existing tribal societies in India;

126 Buddhism in India