Caste and Race in India c7.10

c7.10

These classes are regularly referred to in later literature as varṇas, so much so, that popularly Hindu religion has come to be defined as Varṇāśrama Dharma. Yet in the Rigveda the word "varṇa" is never applied to any one of these classes. It is only the Ārya varṇa, or the Aryan people, that is contrasted with the Dāsa varṇa. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, on the other hand, describes the four classes as the four varṇas.³ "Varṇa" means "colour", and it was in this sense that the word seems to have been employed in contrasting the Ārya and the Dāsa, referring to their fair and dark colours respectively. The colour-connotation of the word was so strong that later on when the classes came to be regularly described as varṇas, four different colours were assigned to the four classes, by which their members were supposed to be distinguished.