Caste and Race in India c7.4

c7.4

In the Rigveda, the earliest literature of the first period, three classes of society are very frequently mentioned, and named Brahma, Kshatra, and Viś. The first two represented broadly the two professions of the poet-priest and the warrior-chief. The third division was apparently a group comprising all the common people. It is only in one of the later hymns, the celebrated Purushasūkta, that a reference has been made to four orders of society as emanating from the sacrifice of the Primeval Being. The names of those four orders are given there as Brāhmaṇa, Rājanya, Vaiśya, and Śūdra, and are said to have come from the mouth, the arms, the thighs, and the feet of the Creator. The particular limbs ascribed as the origins of these divisions and the order in which they are mentioned probably indicate their status in the society of the time, though no such interpretation is directly given in the hymn.