Lecture 5

Tuesday, October 17, 2017 8:24 PM

Caste continued and karma

Stereotype
1) Caste determined entirely by birth
2) No mobility
3) No intermarriage
4) Eternal/divinely created
5) Jobs invariably correspond w/caste
6) Always same hierarchy

Counter examples to the stereotype

• 1) and 2) Satya/kama ( student ) appears at the door of the guru Brahman, he asks whats
your varna is, and he says he doesn’t know his varna, he asked his mother but since she
doesn’t know who is father is then he doesn’t know, the guru says that since you got the
courage that he is a brahmana, thus one must embody the virtues of their varna
• 2)Geeta- krsna and arjuna, K is teaching a in the text, occurs at the outset of a huge battle ,
fight against pandavas ( 4 brothers) and kauravas ( 100 cousins ), Pandava shots a buck while
he was mating, he condems him to be killed the next time he mates, so he doesn’t have sex
but he needs to have a son to perform the dead ritual, One of his wives did good and got a
mantra where she can call a god to have sex with to have a child, when she is young she has a
child and puts him in a basket and sends him down the river, child serves and lives with a
family of charioteers and his name is Karna, hes wives states mantras and have kids first 3 are
from the first wife, arjuna is the 3rd, second wife has 2 and she has sex with pandavas and
dies, the brothers go to live with the blind uncle Kauravas who is married and has 100 cousins,
P are better than K so the king brings Drona who is a teacher, at the end of the training with
Drona they put on a show, arjuna wins contest and humiliates the 100 cousins, as arjuna wins
karna shows up and he doesn’t know who is but he challenges karna, the brothers laugh,
Duryodhana ( cousin) says to karna that is now the prince of a place, now you are a Kshatriya
• 2)Entire jattis can move from one varna to another, one way is that there is a reconstruction of
the family tree i.e show that there is a linage of a different varna, and 2. show that your
ancestor faught in a battle then you demonstrate that the family is kshatryia, 3. change
dietary habit to be pure ie stop eating meat 4. refuse to perform certain jobs or certain jattis
• 3) in the law books there is a punishment for intermarriage, fact that such care is used to
prohibit suggest that there was actually a wide case at the time
• 4)Purvsa-sukta is a hymn the primal man split to become varna, this is an interpolation,
someone stuck that in there and was not there in the first place
• 5)Economic and political power of jattis depends on number of population rather than the
jobs the they perform ex. 100s of brahman jattis, agricultural jattis are in all varnas but they
should be vaisya not brahmana
• 6) disputes between brahmana and kyshatrias on who is more powerfull
- Phenomena of caste system is much more complicated than it might seem
Theory of Karma
- Bare-bones conception
○ Actions ---> merit (good) & demerit (bad)---> personal consequences in this life or some
future life
- Theory of karma best understood by samskaras ( habits) if I lie today its easier to do it next
time
- Actions ----> Samskaras -----> personal consequences
- Good actions --> good habits--> good personal consequence ie success
- bad actions --> bad habits--> bad personal consequence ie failure

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