Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v2.c4.s7.192

v2.c4.s7.192

(a) Caste in the Rigveda.—The use of the term Varṇa is not, of course, conclusive for the question whether caste existed in the Rigveda. In one sense it must be admitted to have existed: the Puruṣa-sūkta, ‘hymn of man,’ in the tenth Maṇḍala⁴ clearly contemplates the division of mankind into four classes—the Brāhmaṇa, Rājanya, Vaiśya, and Śūdra. But the hymn being admittedly late,⁵ its evidence is not cogent for the bulk of the Rigveda. Zimmer⁶ has with great force combatted the view that the Rigveda was produced in a society that knew the caste system. He points out that the Brāhmaṇas⁷ show us the Vedic Indians on the Indus as unbrahminized, and not under the caste system; he argues that the Rigveda was the product of tribes living in the Indus region and the Panjab; later on a part of this people, who had wandered farther east, developed the peculiar civilization of the caste system. He adopts the arguments of Muir,⁸ derived from the study of the data of the Rigveda, viz.: that (a) the four castes appear only in the late Puruṣasūkta; (b) the term Varṇa, as shown above, covers the three highest castes of later times, and is only contrasted with Dāsa; (c) that Brāhmaṇa is rare in the Rigveda, Kṣatriya occurs seldom,⁹ Rājanya only in the Puruṣasūkta, where too, alone, Vaiśya and Śūdra are found; (d) that Brahman denotes at first ‘poet,’ ‘sage,’ and then ‘officiating priest,’ or still later a special class of priest; (e) that in some only of the passages¹⁰ where it occurs does Brahman denote a ‘priest by profession,’ while in others it denotes something peculiar to the individual, designating a person distinguished for genius or virtue, or specially chosen to receive divine inspiration.¹¹ Brāhmaṇa, on the other hand, as Muir admits,¹² already denotes a hereditary professional priesthood.