Thief Castes
The model for traditional Indian society
was as a collection of endogamoussub-
groups (i.e., groups in which marriages
occurred only between members of the
same group) known as jatis(“birth”).
These jatis were organized (and their
social status determined) by the group’s
hereditary occupation, over which each
group had a monopoly. Although it
sounds bizarre, this specialization
extended to all occupations, and there
were hereditary occupational groups
whose profession was thievery and ban-
ditry. The most famous individual from
these was Tirumangai(9th c.), by far the
most picturesque of the Alvars, a group
of twelve poet-saints who lived in south-
ern India between the seventh and tenth
centuries. In the nineteenth century the
British composed a list of several hun-
dred such groups, who were subject to
relentless scrutiny, opposition, and in
many cases resettlement.
Thiruvaiyaru
Temple town and sacred site (tirtha) in
the Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu,
about 170 miles south and west of
Madras. Thiruvaiyaru’s major temple is
dedicated to the god Shiva, but the site
is most famous for being the home of
the late-eighteenth-century saint and
musician Tyagaraja.
Thoreau, Henry David
(1817–1862) American writer and
philosopher, who by his own account
was powerfully influenced by the Hindu
religious text known as the Bhagavad
Gita, particularly the text’s instruction to
perform one’s duties selflessly for the
good of society, without any thought of
personal reward. Thoreau refers to this
text in both Waldenand A Week on the
Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and in
letters to his friends, Thoreau talks
about his desire to practice yoga.
Three Debts
According to tradition, repayment of
three “debts” was incumbent on all
“twice-born” men, that is, men born
into one of the three “twice-born”
groups in Indian society—brahmin,
kshatriya, or vaishya—who had under-
gone the adolescent religious initiation
known as the second birth. The first of
these debts was to the gods and was
repaid by offeringsacrifices. The second
debt was to the sages and was satisfied
by studying the Vedas, the oldest and
most authoritative religious texts. The
final debt was to the ancestors (pitrs)
and was satisfied by procreating a son,
to ensure that the ancestral rites would
be carried out without interruption.3HO/Sikh Dharma Brotherhood
Modern religious organization founded
by Yogi Bhajan; the movement’s two
names reflect differing emphases in the
phases in Yogi Bhajan’s teaching. His ini-
tial teachings were the traditional disci-
plines of hatha yogaand kundalini
yoga, with his followers organized into a
group known as the Happy, Healthy,
Holy Organization (3HO). Hatha yoga is a
system of religious discipline (yoga)
based on a series of bodily postures
known as asanas; this practice is widely
believed to provide various physical
benefits, including increased bodily
flexibility and the ability to heal chronic
ailments. Kundalini yoga is the religious
discipline whose primary focus is awak-
ening the kundalini, the latent spiritual
force that exists in every person in the
subtle body. The kundalini is awakened
through a combination of yoga practice
and ritual action and is believed to bring
further spiritual capacities and final lib-
eration (moksha) of the soul.
These two disciplines remain an
important part of Yogi Bhajan’s teach-
ings, for he claims to be a master of
tantra, a secret, ritually based religious
practice. In the 1970s his teaching
widened to include traditional Sikh
teachings and symbols. The most
prominent of these symbols are the “five3HO/Sikh Dharma Brotherhood