How were jatis formed ?
Answers
(1) That there are the four varṇas: brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, vaiśya, śūdra, and the order of enumeration reflects a ‘descending scale of social status’;
(2) That marriage should ideally occur within the varṇas;
(3) That marriage is permissible when the husband’s status if higher than the wife’s (anuloma), but it is reprehensible if the wife’s status is higher (pratiloma);
(4) That products of anuloma marriages generally enjoy ‘a position intermediate in status between the two parents’;[3]
(5) That the products of pratiloma marriages generally acquire a status lower than that of either parent;
(6) That these intermarriages account for the various subcastes called jātis, as distinguished from the four main castes or varṇas;
(7) That further subcastes ‘arise from the unions of the anulomas and the pratilomas with the four varṇas and of the male of one anuloma which the female of another, from the unions of the pratilomas among themselves and from the union of a male or a female of the anuloma caste and the female or male of a pratiloma caste.’[4]
(8) That there exists great diversity of opinion among the authors of thedharmaśāstra about the derivation and status of the various subcastes;[5] and
(9) That the system of subcastes or subclasses is believed to have resulted from varṇa-saṅkara or this admixture of castes, beginning with four varṇas but extending to the jātis as well.
The next question to be asked now is: how valid is this traditional explanation of the emergence of the castes system as we know it?
The answer briefly is that it is invalid. It is fictive. This traditional explanation may have been accepted by early Indologists but is now rejected in modern Indology.[6]
A related question also arises: what about the four original varṇas? Is that original formulation at least valid? Even here, according to many scholars, we are dealing with the ‘fiction of four original castes;’ in fact one meets with the even stronger statement, that ‘nobody can understand the caste system until he has freed himself from the mistaken notion based on the current interpretation of the Institutes of Manu that there were ‘four original castes’. No four original castes existed at any time or place.’[7]