[quote name='Meluhhan' date='25 February 2016 - 08:02 AM' timestamp='1456367083' post='117943'][d] All of the above. According to certain narratives of Indian (South Asian?) history, Hinduism as we know it was developed in response to the rise of Sramanic traditions, and experienced a revival under the period of British rule.
2) It felt like the most appropriate place to put it. After all, the title of this thread is "History of Caste".
[/quote]
1. "South Asia" is a euphemism for Mughalistan/the "subcontinent-for-monotheism" project.
2. Can't recollect how this thread dealt with the subject, but the "history of caste" and "caste system" can only start with the Portuguese and colonialists, before which it is unknown.
3. There is varna, there is jati, and there are endogamous communities in India independent of varna and jati. These are within Hinduism. Futher, there are equivalents for all three in other countries, independent of Hinduism. (Non-exhaustive examples for each respectively: Zoroastrianism, Europe and Japan, and all over the world).
4. Varna and Jati pre-existed Buddhism/Jainism - or any so-called "Shramanic" ideology - and pre-existed islam/christianity and colonialism.
5. The subcommunities usually dubbed "castes" these days that were enumerated by one islamic visitor (Alberuni or whoever) was shown to not match up with varnas at all and did not match up with the number of other Hindu structural subcommunities (say Jatis) before or after.
6. There was one commenter at swarajyamag - "Jishnu" I think - who seemed to argue, based on his reading on the subject, that casteism is a by-product of the islamic ravages and exacerbated by colonialism (resulting in rigidity and loss of mobility), and then twisted onto Hinduism as an innate and perpetual quality thereof (to blame Hinduism), thereby neatly exhonerating christo-islami-colonialism for its own manufacture of "the system".
You could find the swarajyamag commenter Jishnu and ask him for sources.
7. "Caste" has been applied to Japan since colonialism started too: Japan has been referred to as the land of the 100 castes (or 1000 castes or something). Their nation's structuring also show signs of having developed this as specialisation for optimisation of the overall country's autonomy, success, prosperity and ability to defend itself. In their case too, it invariably resulted in endogamy. Just as, in Japan's case too, endogamy also existed in remote communities independent of Japanese "castes", as is true with China, and whereaver there are many subethnic communities. In China these subethnic communities are awkwardly labelled "ethnic minorities" by the current government which is Han majority.*
Asides:
- *In some ways, Han Chinese feel less direct affinity with their ethnic minorities than Hindus of one subcommunity in one part of India with Hindus of a totally different subcommunity in some distant part. Although they don't generally seem to culturally identify with each other (unlike the case with Hindus where there is a cultural unity), all Han Chinese I've spoken to feel regretful about how their government doesn't really preserve the cultural diversity in their nation but seeks to enforce "Han" culture starting with language on all the communities, and they regard this enforcement disapprovingly. This comes even from those that feel strongly that Tibet is part of China.
- Something I noticed that seemed interesting, but not on topic either. Until very recently (in relative terms), Koreans used to use their standard set of surnames (which denote family names/lineages, several are moreover ancient aristocratic Chinese lineages) in the way Hindus use gotras: by social law - and perhaps by actual or religious law at some point in time? - Koreans were not allowed to marry those with the same lineage surname. Note that this is in addition to Koreans in ancient times having endogamous groups as well as ancient Koreans also being endogamous in terms of "class". (The way gotra too is a case of exogamy combined with endogamy.)
In recent decades, the Korean government found this taboo of people of the same surnames/lineages not being allowed to intermarry to be "discrimination" and enacted a law stipulating that people of the same surname should be allowed to marry each other. (I wonder whether there was any christian impetus behind the supposed "democratisation" and "egalitarianism" in the recent legislation, with the aim of breaking Korean tradition-based taboos? The way there had been christian meddling - to various degrees - regarding hair-cutting in Korean men, dog-eating, funeral ceremonies for ancestors, and other traditional matters in S Korea, which had been turned into controversial issues. Some still are, as christianity hasn't yet eradicated all these traditions.)
Actually, looking it up, it turns out to be more interesting than I suspected. It is traced to Confucian influences. (Since many of the surnames involved are ancient Chinese, like Lee etc, it may in ancient times have had a Taoist origin at least in Chinese regions.) And the taboo had apparently been enacted as an actual law too for some time, until it was removed as being unconstitutional in 1997 (falls during a major wave of S Korea's christianisation) after some family from Seoul (hotbed of christianism) said this law prevented the "pursuit of happiness" (and insert other secular and democratic sounding western phrases that christians use to antagonise native traditions, e.g. christians use "right to food" to antagonise the Hindu tradition-based ban on killing cows in India, etc.):
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_809_of_the_Korean_Civil_Code
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_South_Korea
2) It felt like the most appropriate place to put it. After all, the title of this thread is "History of Caste".
[/quote]
1. "South Asia" is a euphemism for Mughalistan/the "subcontinent-for-monotheism" project.
2. Can't recollect how this thread dealt with the subject, but the "history of caste" and "caste system" can only start with the Portuguese and colonialists, before which it is unknown.
3. There is varna, there is jati, and there are endogamous communities in India independent of varna and jati. These are within Hinduism. Futher, there are equivalents for all three in other countries, independent of Hinduism. (Non-exhaustive examples for each respectively: Zoroastrianism, Europe and Japan, and all over the world).
4. Varna and Jati pre-existed Buddhism/Jainism - or any so-called "Shramanic" ideology - and pre-existed islam/christianity and colonialism.
5. The subcommunities usually dubbed "castes" these days that were enumerated by one islamic visitor (Alberuni or whoever) was shown to not match up with varnas at all and did not match up with the number of other Hindu structural subcommunities (say Jatis) before or after.
6. There was one commenter at swarajyamag - "Jishnu" I think - who seemed to argue, based on his reading on the subject, that casteism is a by-product of the islamic ravages and exacerbated by colonialism (resulting in rigidity and loss of mobility), and then twisted onto Hinduism as an innate and perpetual quality thereof (to blame Hinduism), thereby neatly exhonerating christo-islami-colonialism for its own manufacture of "the system".
You could find the swarajyamag commenter Jishnu and ask him for sources.
7. "Caste" has been applied to Japan since colonialism started too: Japan has been referred to as the land of the 100 castes (or 1000 castes or something). Their nation's structuring also show signs of having developed this as specialisation for optimisation of the overall country's autonomy, success, prosperity and ability to defend itself. In their case too, it invariably resulted in endogamy. Just as, in Japan's case too, endogamy also existed in remote communities independent of Japanese "castes", as is true with China, and whereaver there are many subethnic communities. In China these subethnic communities are awkwardly labelled "ethnic minorities" by the current government which is Han majority.*
Asides:
- *In some ways, Han Chinese feel less direct affinity with their ethnic minorities than Hindus of one subcommunity in one part of India with Hindus of a totally different subcommunity in some distant part. Although they don't generally seem to culturally identify with each other (unlike the case with Hindus where there is a cultural unity), all Han Chinese I've spoken to feel regretful about how their government doesn't really preserve the cultural diversity in their nation but seeks to enforce "Han" culture starting with language on all the communities, and they regard this enforcement disapprovingly. This comes even from those that feel strongly that Tibet is part of China.
- Something I noticed that seemed interesting, but not on topic either. Until very recently (in relative terms), Koreans used to use their standard set of surnames (which denote family names/lineages, several are moreover ancient aristocratic Chinese lineages) in the way Hindus use gotras: by social law - and perhaps by actual or religious law at some point in time? - Koreans were not allowed to marry those with the same lineage surname. Note that this is in addition to Koreans in ancient times having endogamous groups as well as ancient Koreans also being endogamous in terms of "class". (The way gotra too is a case of exogamy combined with endogamy.)
In recent decades, the Korean government found this taboo of people of the same surnames/lineages not being allowed to intermarry to be "discrimination" and enacted a law stipulating that people of the same surname should be allowed to marry each other. (I wonder whether there was any christian impetus behind the supposed "democratisation" and "egalitarianism" in the recent legislation, with the aim of breaking Korean tradition-based taboos? The way there had been christian meddling - to various degrees - regarding hair-cutting in Korean men, dog-eating, funeral ceremonies for ancestors, and other traditional matters in S Korea, which had been turned into controversial issues. Some still are, as christianity hasn't yet eradicated all these traditions.)
Actually, looking it up, it turns out to be more interesting than I suspected. It is traced to Confucian influences. (Since many of the surnames involved are ancient Chinese, like Lee etc, it may in ancient times have had a Taoist origin at least in Chinese regions.) And the taboo had apparently been enacted as an actual law too for some time, until it was removed as being unconstitutional in 1997 (falls during a major wave of S Korea's christianisation) after some family from Seoul (hotbed of christianism) said this law prevented the "pursuit of happiness" (and insert other secular and democratic sounding western phrases that christians use to antagonise native traditions, e.g. christians use "right to food" to antagonise the Hindu tradition-based ban on killing cows in India, etc.):
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_809_of_the_Korean_Civil_Code
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_South_Korea
Death to traitors.