CASTE is a term obtained from the English cast, and that from the Portuguese or Spanish Caste, a breed, race, lineage, or class. It is ap plied to the separate sections of the Hindu races, who now usually employ the word Jat or Zat, meaning birth or descent, though the Sanskrit term Varna, meaning colour, has been in use from the most ancient times till now. Caste is the first institution of Hindu society which forces itself upon the attention of the stranger. Bunsen says that the system of caste seems to have be come completely formed B.C. 3000, during the formation of the kingdom of Puru ; and, he adds, was in full force when the Code of Menu was composed. In the Vedic hymns nothing appears of a priesthood, properly so called. In some, Brahmans officiate, but are evidently sub ject to the Kshatriya, as chaplains to the noblemen. The allusion to castes is very vague, as when the five classes of beings are mentioned, which may mean the four castes of Aryans and a fifth of the barbarians. But there is one hymn in the Veda, known as the Purusha Sakta, which represents the Brahman as superior, though it does not correspond with the legend on that subject in its later form. It is given in Dr. Muir's Sanskrit Texts (p. 7), and is a mystical description of existences from original being, under the simili tude of a sacrifice or as a mental sacrifice.
Sir Henry Elliot says that about the 6th and 7th centuries the divisions of castes were secular, not religious. In former times, he says, the four classes existed equally amongst the Buddhists and Hindus of India, as they do at this day amongst the Buddhists of Ceylon, and amongst the Jains of the Peninsula, in whose temples even Brahman priests may be found officiating.
A minute division of labour is a very marked fenturo in Hindu civilisation. Every employment is apportioned to a separate class. This minute ness of appointment is generally the result of a very far advanced stage of society, but seems to have obtained among the Hindus from very early times.
In ancient Hindu writings, four great divisions are recognised,—the Brahman, or learned ; the Kshatriya, or warrior ; the Vaisya, or merchant ; and the Sudra, or labourer,—all others being Whlecha. But in practice, at the present day, the minute differences of race, of native country, of avocation, and of religion, are sufficient to form differences of castes, in most of which no man may lawfully cat with any individual of any other caste, or partake of food cooked by him, or marry into another caste family ; but he may be his friend, his master, his servant, his partner.
As a rule, it may be said that the Aryan or mites adhere most closely to the ethnical principle of division ; the `once-born' or distinctly non-Aryan to the same principle, but profoundly modified by the concurrent principle of employment; while the mixed progeny of the two are almost entirely classified in modern times according to their occupation.
The Brahmans are popularly divided into ten great septs, according to their locality,—five on the north, and five on the south of the Vindhya range. But the minor distinctions are innumer able. Thus the first of the five northern septs, the Saraswata, in the Panjab, consist of 469 classes. Mr. Sherring enumerates 1886 separate Brahmanical tribes.
Their sectarian religious views are now also sources of separation. In the physiological worship of the Hindus, for instance, while two classes of sectarians, the Saiva and the Lingaet, worship the form of the lingam, another set of sectarians, the Sakta, worship the yoni, in ac cordance with the doctrine of the Tantras. The Sakta are divided into two classes, the Dakshina chari, or right-hand Sakta, and the Varna chara, or left-hand Sakta. The right-hand worship is public, and addressed to the goddesses usually adored, but especially to the forms of Durga, Bliawani, and Parvati, also to Lakshmi and Maha Lakshmi, and others. But in the worship of the left-hand divisions, the Tantraka impersonations of Durga as Deva, Kali, Syama, etc., or a living woman representing the Sakta, the worship is private, and said to be impure, and is said to have the most numerous followers. The Vira Saiva, who are known as the Jangam, also as the Lingaet or Linghadari, from always wearing the lingam, and who are very numerous in the Canarese speaking tract, ought not, according to the tenets of their sect, to have any caste distinctions ; but they are the most bigoted of all the Hindu sects, and their caste distinctions are those of trade and avocation, and are rigidly adhered to. Among the JaMs, whose religion consists principally in the practice of austerities, and in avoiding to destroy life, caste restrictions are not prescribed ; nevertheless they too retain the practice of caste divisions, and the Sarawak practise many usages common to other Hindus.