Caste and India

So, I don't think I nearly know the whole story here, but having used the indices of my books and read Wikipedia I've learned as much as I'm going to immediately.

Varna If your education is at all like mine, you'll have heard of the 4+1 division by at least the English names: brahmin (priest), kshatriya (warrior/ruler), vaisya (peasant/merchant), sudra (indigenous artisans) + pariahs (untouchables, those who handle dead bodies and human waste.) The first four are the varna in Hindu terminology.

Seven?
One thing I didn't mention about Wood is that he quotes Megasthenes, a Greek ambassador in 302 BC, describing *seven* castes: brahmins (and a huge annual gathering, possibly precursor to the khumba mela), peasants, cattle herders + sherpherds, hunters + trappers + bird-catchers, artisans + craftsmen + material-workers, military (kshatriyas), civil service, councillors + administrators + magistrates. Wood says this is also found in *southern* Indian brahaminical accounts. Megasthenes notes the usual, allegedly over-simplified caste rules: can't marry outside caste or change professions. I don't see much discussion of this seven-fold division elsewhere.

Jati
But there's also the jati, often translated as "sub-caste"; these are what you have hundreds and thousands of, and which seem to be actually in force. Honestly the details, not to mention history, of everything here seems in dispute; my other books talk about varna coming first, and being sub-divided later, but Wikipedia has indications of the jati being primordial, and the varna being a descriptive simplification, much like the Three Estates of France or "upper middle class" today. But seems like in practice you don't worry about marrying another brahmin or vaisya, you worry about marrying another Iyer or Gandhi, endogamous groups which belong to the brahmin or vaisya varnas, with specific occupations to boot. Except that some jati used to span more than one varna, which might support the jati coming first and the varna being a descriptive simplification, rather than prescriptive. Also, pariahs are outside the varna system, not a fifth varna, but they have their own jati, with some untouchables looking down on others. ("We may be clotheswashers, but you touch corpses. Ewwww.")

One thing that would make sense to me would be that the jati are like civilized tribes. India still *has* tribes (the real, pre-Dravidian, ingigenes, probably; "forest tribes" and hill tribes), endogamous groups that control some land and practice a closed subsistence economy. Jati are endogamous groups that are part of a more complex economy; perhaps various tribes got taken up by civilization, while retaining their endogamous nature, like Orthodox Jews today, or Korean immigrants wanting to marry other Koreans. Here, the occupational focus would be secondary, a result of inherited-occupation tendencies, a matter not so much of law as one naturally learning one's parents' occupations. OTOH, a new occupation might form a guild and turn endogamous, goldsmiths marrying goldsmiths for bonding and to keep secrets within the group.

Indo-Europeans
Going back to the classical varna, the first three are all Aryan. Aryan priests (but see below), Aryan warriors, and Aryan everyone else -- Vaisya comes from 'vis', free. Note this matches the Three Estates perfectly: priest, warrior, others. The three varna are also "twice-born", and allowed to study the Vedas, the Aryan scriptures; the Sudras, the "dark-skinned" (in Aryan words) native artisans aren't. Though a Wikipedia page says that prohibition may have developed later.

Sooo complicated
One source also says that in southern India, native jati don't belong to the kshatriya or vaisya varnas, just brahmin and sudra. The latter makes sense, everyone in the south is 'indigenous' in that sense. The former... maybe the priest-concept moved south faster. Or maybe it had native analogues; one page said brahmin might actually be a Dravidian word. And Kerala, which is as far from the Aryan invasion as one can get in India, has brahminic jati that study the Vedas... also some brahminic jati that are matriarchal, again suggesting really deep tribal roots.

"Everything's worse with colonialism". Sources tend to agree that whatever was originally the case got rigidified by the British, trying to match varna to their own ideas of class, trying to shoehorn jati into single varnas everywhere and to fix them in a rigid rank of prestige vs. earlier fluidity, using the census to bring this to the forefront and hammer it in. As for the past, force is always good for social mobility, with mention of sudra and brahmin kings, as well as ones of obscure origins. (But priest-kings aren't too exotic, and sudra might just mean native rulers; where're the vaisya kings?)

Religion. Is all this a Hindu thing? Sort of. Varnas have descriptions in early Vedas, but aren't very prominent; they're prescribed more in the later Manusmirti. Jati might be primordial, as mentioned. Various Hindu reformers, especially the bhakti, have attacked the caste system, not just Buddhist and Jain outsiders. Conversely, Indian converts to Christianity and Islam often keep the caste system, especially with regard to discrimination against pariahs. So there's association with Hinduism, but neither seems sufficient or necessary for the other. I'm not sure if Buddhism is more successful in breaking this down. Currently 90% of Indian Buddhists are from scheduled (officially recognized as prone to massive discrimination and thus targeted for affirmative action) castes and tribes, perhaps representing an attempt to escape -- of limited success, if no one else joins you, but at least ti might break down barriers within the underclass.

Conclusion
Hopefully you're now as confused as I am! Takeaway: there's the four varna, yeah. But what matters more is jati, not whether you're "scholar" but whether you're "Sullivan" or "Tilson". Also whether you're untouchable or not. Some Hindus, among others, have tried to reform or break all this; they've all failed. It survives even if you convert away from Hinduism, at least for some religions.

India vs. China

So, about that sparking claim that people study India or China but not both, which is from just one guy and might be BS for all I know, but anyway: I was thinking that people who visit India might fall in love with it, but if you do some superficial reading about the two, China may seem more attractive to learn about.

Distinctive social features: both are undemocratic autocracies, but what comes to mind about them? China: the civil service examinations. Charmingly meritocratic, and if you're the sort to read lots of history, you can imagine you'd do well in them; I can totally see myself as a magistrate by now, with a couple of concubines in the garden. India's feature... the caste system, where people care what you're born to, not what your talents and intelligence are, and with a whole lot of robust racism. Which do you want to learn more about, or write an RPG about? (A fair number of Chinese or pseudo-Chinese or influenced RPGs exist: Exalted, Weapons of the Gods, Qin, Oriental Adventures, probably more; there's some Indian influence in Exalted, but not so definitive, and no other RPGs.) One is a feature we could envision importing to our own society, or even already have, the other is a feature even native reformers want to burn to the ground.

Inventions: China has paper, the compass, gunpowder, Go, and lots of other things. India has zero and chess. Advantage China, especially with gunpowder. Boom! Though I wonder who first tamed war-elephants. Those are cool too, but I think less mentally prominent.

(Note that all this doesn't have to be entirely accurate, just the perceptions one quickly picks up. Also, it may seem like offensive generalizations, but that's exactly what might underlie gut decisions to study one thing over another.)

Religion: China is charmingly exotic yet seemingly understandable, with a Celestial Bureaucracy of distinct gods, plus some ancestor worship (and burning paper money for the dead!) And people think they get Daoism and Buddhism, kind of. Hinduism just seems more confusing, and so far more so the more I learn. And the core afterlife concept is karma + reincarnation, which provokes "this is totally unfair" and "why should I care?" in a lot of people. My fate depends on a bunch of stuff someone else did with my soul that I don't remember? Gee, thanks. My actions determine a future life conscious-me will never experience? Whoop. Give me my paper money.

Spirituality: the highest achievement of native Chinese mysticism is to become immortal as an individual, elixir of life and all. The highest achievement of Indian mysticism is to stop being an individual, merging with Godhead.

Women: neither looks good here, but it's foot-binding vs. widow-burning.

Prestige: China was the Middle Kingdom, influencing all of East Asia. India seems un-unified and passive. Buddhism, that most hip of non-European religions in Western eyes, did influence Asia but got rejected by India itself; doesn't speak well for India.

ETA:
Pop culture: China has wuxia and Hong Kong flicks and martial arts. India has nothing similar that's hit the Western consciousness. Wording chosen deliberately because India *does* have Bollywood, and the Ramayana, and reportedly lots of cinematically amazing stuff that would make the Iliad seem like a bunch of ignorant barbarians scrabbling in the dust. The flashy "anime" Charms in Exalted allegedly owe more to what gods and heroes were doing in the Ramayana than to anime. OTOH, the fact that almost everyone ascribes them to anime rather than the Ramayana says something about relative awareness.


Feel free to rant and tear this to shreds. :)

Further thought

Of course, for all that babbling earlier, the most obvious reason for not being expert in both India and China is that it's absurd to be expert in even one of them. 2000+ years, 1/5 to 1/4 of the human population each... Yeah. Compare to being an expert in Polish or Scottish history.

Of course, one can be expert in one thing and at least have a clue in another. But that'd be facilitated by interaction, a la England & Scotland, England & France, Japan & China (from the POV of Scotland or Japan, at least.) India and China have had trade, embassies, and missionaries, but not invasions.