Caste

the caste of the future be determined. Not only one's caste and trade, furthermore, but also all the things that happen to one…are determined by, and exactly appropriate to, one's nature and profoundest requirement.

Zimmer argues that caste is a karmic precipitate: one's present station is the exact moral consequence of past-life action, and present conduct will determine future caste, integrating the concept fully into the Hindu doctrine of dharma and rebirth.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951thesis

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Relinquishment of caste is the outward and visible sign of the realization that one's true state is 'unclassified,' that one's role or person is simply conventional, and that one's true nature is 'no-thing' and 'no-body.'

Watts reads the Buddha's abandonment of caste as a paradigmatic expression of non-self: social classification is merely conventional, and liberation requires recognizing one's essential 'unclassified' nature.

Watts, Alan, The Way of Zen, 1957thesis

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This spiritual evolution is the original basis of what is called the caste system in India. But though in ancient times a man could move from one caste to another depending upon his personal merits, the system became rigid so that a man's caste was determined only by birth, not by merit.

Easwaran locates the original caste system in guna-based spiritual evolution, arguing that its subsequent rigidification by birth alone transformed a meritocratic instrument of development into a source of exploitation.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975thesis

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the eligibility of the Brāhman to serve and conjure the gods of the community had rested in the high rank of his caste in that community, whereas the eligibility of the Tāntric devotee reposed in the ripeness of his mind and power of experience.

Zimmer contrasts the brahminical caste-based access to sacred power with the Tantric democratization of ritual eligibility, showing how Tantra supplanted birth-rank with interior readiness.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951thesis

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jāti, class, caste, occupation; deśa, place, country of origin; kāla, time; samaya, circumstance; anavacchinnāḥ, unconditioned, unlimited by… [These yamas] are considered the great vow. They are not exempted by one's class, place, time, or circumstance.

Bryant's commentary on Patañjali demonstrates that the mahāvrata yamas explicitly override all caste distinctions, establishing an ethical universalism that cuts across social stratification.

Bryant, Edwin F., The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009thesis

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there are four castes or classes. In India, the four castes a…

Campbell introduces the four-caste structure as a formal illustration of the classical Indian model of cosmic order (dharma) and the individual life-cycle, linking it to the Indo-European trifunctional scheme.

Campbell, Joseph, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, 2004supporting

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There are very practical reasons for traditions like these, which help to explain why the caste system has endured for probably three thousand years or more. First, we are talking here about culture – perhaps a hundred generations in which the families in a particular varna shaped their lives around the same habits, values, and standards.

Easwaran offers a socio-cultural explanation for the caste system's endurance, emphasizing the multigenerational transmission of values within varna communities as a practical rather than purely metaphysical phenomenon.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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The ritual required that the renunciant remove all the external signs of his caste and throw the utensils used in sacrifice into the fire. Henceforth, he would be called a Sannyasin ('Caster-Off'), and his yellow robe became the insignia of his rebellion.

Armstrong describes the Pabbajja ceremony as a ritual deconstruction of caste identity, in which physical removal of caste insignia enacts the monk's deliberate exit from Aryan social structure.

Armstrong, Karen, Buddha, 2000supporting

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the author of this text… had been of the Brahmin caste himself before joining the Buddhist order, and is humorously satirizing here the pieties of his own earlier belief… notions of spiritual merit, and reckonings of caste.

Campbell reads a Buddhist satirical text as evidence of early Buddhism's self-conscious critique of brahminical caste-merit reckoning, using the author's own biography as an interpretive key.

Campbell, Joseph, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting

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Aryan culture had never taken root there, and they had no caste system. But times were changing.

Armstrong notes that the Sakyan republic where the Buddha was born lacked a caste system, suggesting that his later critique of caste was not merely philosophical but rooted in a non-brahminical cultural origin.

Armstrong, Karen, Buddha, 2000supporting

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One branch followed the lead of Caitanya's friend and intimate companion, Nityananda, known as the 'casteless Avadhūta'… He was not only cast…

Turner uses the figure of Nityananda as the 'casteless Avadhūta' to illustrate how devotional movements generate an anti-structural communitas that challenges hierarchical caste distinctions.

Victor Turner, Victor Witter Turner, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966supporting

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Brahmin: A member of the priestly caste in Aryan society, responsible for sacrifice and the transmission of the Vedas.

Armstrong's glossary entry establishes the brahmin as the defining instance of caste-based sacral authority within Aryan society, providing a baseline for understanding Buddhism's counter-position.

Armstrong, Karen, Buddha, 2000supporting

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the masking of the weak in aggressive strength and the concomitant masking of the strong in humility and passivity are devices that cleanse society of its structurally engendered 'sins'

Turner's analysis of Holi rituals in village India implicitly addresses the inversion of caste hierarchy as a periodic purification of social structure through communitas.

Victor Turner, Victor Witter Turner, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966aside

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Greek thinking begins with and for a long time holds to the proposition that mankind is divided into 'good' and 'bad,' and these terms are quite as much social, political, and economic as they are moral.

Nietzsche's analysis of Greek aristocratic dichotomy provides a comparative Indo-European parallel to caste thinking, linking social stratification to the genealogy of moral valuation.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887aside

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the equivalent term to kṣatriya is, in its Avestan form, raθaēštā-… 'he who stands upright in the chariot,' just like the corresponding Vedic ratheṣṭhā, the epithet of the great warrior god Indra.

Benveniste traces the Indo-European etymology of the warrior-caste designation (kṣatriya/raθaēštār), grounding social stratification in a shared heroic ideology of the chariot warrior.

Benveniste, Émile, Indo European Language and Society, 1973aside

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