Varna's aka Vedic Caste System

Hi Folks,

Sharing a short story which I had read during my school.It is a letter being written by an old man to his grandson, demystifying why do we need to earn money and make profits.

I have to put in a disclaimer - this is my personal view, not meant to be read as an output from research nor based on any facts.

The old man explains in his letter about an mystic village in the pre-historic age.

where the population of the village is a one hundered human beings, who all do the same things over and over again.

he explains this by narrating their daily routine.

The villagers wake up every morning and start their daily chores by gathering food and water for the day's consumption.

Each family of villagers does this. So to fetch water from a brook which lies on the other side of the valley where the village lies. everyone lines up with a vessel and crosses the mountain seperating the village and the brook. this daily activity takes them almost half a day.

but human as they were who could not survive without the basic needs. they had no choice but to undergo this painful task.

one of the villagers - the dreamer as they would call him, starts thinking about a way to minimise this daunting task. He observes the mountain highs and lows, steep curves and bends. He makes note of his observation and starts digging a channel from the brook to the village. The channel gets filled with water and ends into a pond near his hutment.

this channel has costed him few extra hours daily, he would digg before he reached the brook, so in a way he worked backwards from destination to source.

And when the villagers started noticing him lazing and dreaming with abundant water at his disposal they started to envy him.

one of the villagers approached the dreamer and asked him if he could fetch water from his pond instead.

The dreamer allows him to do so but with a condition that, he should spare 5 minutes of his time to work for the dreamer everyday.

The happy villager readily accepts the offer, he has just profited from half-a-day's toil.

Slowly everyone realises that they can save time and energy. everyone approaches the dreamer and offer their five minutes. The dreamer welcomes all and is happy that he has got literally nothing to do. He carried on dreaming and worked on inventing few more things which would help not only him but all of his fellow villagers. He became powerful and his booty was abundantly filled. The village profited from each other and everyone led a happy and prosperous life.

wow ! what a tale.

This was explained by the narrator, our old man to his grandson in his letter.

Now to the other angle to this story. I interpret this story as the very begining of community and caste system - Varna in Sanskrit in ancient India.

The dreamer is the Brahmin who focusses on invention, remedies, medicine, science and discovery.

He employs various skilled craftsment who are sub divided into Shudra's.

The intial belief was all Shudra's are artisans and craftsmen beyond compare. their alienation and decline in social strata is the degeneration history of the caste system. I would not delve into that now.

The accountants and traders were the Vaishya's. who would classify, maintain, log and distribute the benefits amongst everyone fairly.

When the bounty, crop or wealth whatever you call it was abundant. There was a need to protect, secure and save the bounty from man, animal and nature.
The protectors were the Kshatriya's. Their strength and valor was counted for.

In this distribution each individual contributed to the well being of the system and the equation worked well for one and all.

I am sure that you might feel I am crazy but this is a hypothesis and I want to believe in the noble cause which might have helped design the Varna in Hindu system.

I want to believe that there is a much better reason for being a Brahmin because I am born as one. I want to believe that I am what I am not by birth but by pure virtue alone.

Pls let me know your comments on my thoughts.

The 4 Ashramas (stages) of Vedic Indian Life

The four Ashramas of Vedic Indian Life

The life span in vedic India was divided in 4 parts, each of 25 years. These were called Ashrams.

For Hindus the whole life is a Yagya(penance) and that is what this denotes.

These ashrams were named following:

Brahmcharya Ashram - Celibacy, Education

Grihasth Ashram - Matrimony

Vanprastha Ashrama - Social

Sanyas Ashrama - Meditation

1)Brahmcharya Ashram (Upnanyan Sanskaar-25 years)

After Upnayan Sanskar (Thread Ceremony) the person will go to Gurukul(School).
Under the guidance of revered guru (Teacher), he or she will study Vedas. The vedas have different parts or Angas. Vedas have knowlege of Adhyatm (Brahm), material and life...They will study and practise those till the age of 25. During this time they will live away from parents. During this they could not marry they had to maintain celibacy. The name Brahmcharya means the practice(of Yoga) on Brahm or actions carrying towards Brahm. Since in this Ashram celibacy was required so Brahmcharya also refers to celibacy. Not only Brahm Gyan was the focus, pupils also learnt various skills (Aayurveda, Shastra Vidya..) during this period.

read more on the importance of Celibacy at - http://www.yoga-age.com/modern/brahma.html

2)Grihastha Ashram (25 years - 50 Years)

After the age of 25 years people will get married and do work according to their skill set. They will have children and they will make sure that their children get Vidya (education). There is a shloka which means "that mother is an enemy and the father is an ill-wisher who do not send their child for education".

3)Vaanprastha Ashram (50 years - 75 Years)

In this Ashram people will still live in society and with family (spouse and children and grandchildren) but they will maintain celebacy and live with Niyama.

4)Sanyaas Ashram (75 years - 100 Years)

At this age person will leave general society and live with Rishis(Hermits) in some forests and fully meditate upon Brahm(GOD).

The beauty of this kind of division of the human life according to the Vedas was in its simplicity.

these stages or Ashrama's were also meant for all castes (denominations) in Hinduism

Now I need to gear up to write more on the denominations in ancient Vedic Hindu culture. keep watching this blog.

With due acknowledgements to Sarvesh Dipal - http://www.geocities.com/dipalsarvesh/

One more lovely post worth reading is available at - http://mysticsaint.blogspot.com/2006/03/hinduism-in-holy-nutshell.html


regards,
Ganesh

Sanatan Dharma facts & links

As promised, this post covers some good links to facts about Hinduism and some decent websites.

enjoy reading and surfing the links.

1) Historical facts about Lord Rama's existence - http://lakdiva.org/aryan/rama.html

2) Lord Rama's conquest to Lanka, Vaanar-sena (army of monkeys) built the bridge connecting India to Sri Lanka satelite images

- http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php?Number=461309
- http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=STS033&roll=74&frame=74

3) Sanatan Dharma -website

http://www.sanatandharm.net/

http://www.hindu.org

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hinduism2.htm

4) Online Magazines

http://www.hindusimtoday.org

http://www.hindunet.org

5) Intresting articles on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiranjeevins