Kinship, Caste and Class

Theme Two traced kings, farmers and towns from c. 600 BCE to 600 CE. This theme asks how those changes affected society: farming spread into forests and changed forest-dwellers’ lives, craft specialists became distinct groups, and unequal wealth sharpened differences. The main source is the Mahabharata — over 100,000 verses composed over about a thousand years from c. 500 BCE — read together with law books, Buddhist and Tamil texts and inscriptions. Every text was written from the viewpoint of particular social groups, so the guiding questions are always: who composed it, for whom, in what language, and how did it circulate?

• Links: Theme Two (the same period, political and economic history); Theme Four (Buddhism and Jainism, whose texts supply the critiques used here).
• UPSC: GS1 Ancient History and Culture — varna and jati, marriage rules, Dharmashastra authors, Satavahanas, the Mahabharata and its regional versions, Sangam society, slavery in the Arthashastra; Mains asks about Vedic society and its continuities.
• How to read this page: each section separates what the normative texts prescribed from what other sources show — the method the chapter itself follows.

• Critical Edition of the Mahabharata: from 1919 under V.S. Sukthankar; 47 years; 13,000+ pages, more than half on regional variations.
• Normative texts: Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras (from c. 500 BCE); Manusmriti c. 200 BCE–200 CE — authoritative in claim, but questioned and not always followed.
• Kinship: patriliny idealised; exogamy and kanyadana; eight forms of marriage (four ‘good’); gotra rules — tested against Satavahana metronymics, which show endogamy.
• Varna: four, with prescribed duties; jatis unlimited and growing; kings of many origins (Mauryas debated, Shungas/Kanvas Brahmana, Shakas ‘mlechchha’, Satavahanas ‘eka bamhana’).
• Outside and below: forest peoples (nishada), ‘rakshasa’ practices, chandalas and untouchability in the Manusmriti — contested in the Matanga Jataka; Buddhist critique and mahasammata.
• Resources: stridhana; 7 means of wealth for men vs 6 for women; the ‘wealthy Shudra’ argument; Tamil chiefs expected to share; Mahabharata grew to ~100,000 verses.

In 1919 the Sanskritist V.S. Sukthankar led a team of dozens of scholars to prepare a critical edition of the Mahabharata. They collected Sanskrit manuscripts in many scripts from all over the country, compared them verse by verse, chose the verses common to most versions, and published them in volumes running to over 13,000 pages; the work took 47 years. Two things became clear: common elements in manuscripts from Kashmir and Nepal to Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and enormous regional variation, recorded in footnotes and appendices that fill more than half the pages. NCERT reads these variations as traces of dialogues between dominant traditions and resilient local ideas — with both conflict and consensus.

Our picture of social history comes mainly from texts written in Sanskrit by and for Brahmanas. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians took them at face value, assuming everything prescribed was practised. Later scholars studied works in Pali, Prakrit and Tamil and found that the normative ideas were on the whole recognised as authoritative — but were also questioned and occasionally rejected.

Families vary in size, relations and shared activities; they are part of wider networks of kinfolk, and even what counts as ‘blood’ varies (some societies count cousins as blood relations, others do not). For early societies, elite families are far easier to trace than ordinary ones. Historians also study attitudes to family, which shaped actions and were shaped by them.

The Mahabharata tells of a feud over land and power between two sets of cousins, the Kauravas and Pandavas, of the Kuru ruling family. The Pandavas won and patrilineal succession was proclaimed. Patriliny existed before the epic, but its central story reinforced the idea. Under patriliny sons could claim their father’s resources — the throne, for kings. Most dynasties from c. sixth century BCE claimed to follow it, with variations: no sons, brothers succeeding, other kinsmen claiming, and exceptionally women such as Prabhavati Gupta exercising power. The concern also appears in ritual texts such as the Rigveda, and was probably shared by wealthy men and those claiming high status.

Sons mattered for continuing the patrilineage; daughters were viewed differently, and marrying them outside the kin (exogamy) was considered desirable. So the lives of girls in families claiming high status were closely regulated to ensure marriage at the ‘right’ time to the ‘right’ person — and kanyadana, the gift of a daughter, became a father’s religious duty. With new towns, people met, traded and exchanged ideas, and earlier beliefs were questioned. Brahmanas responded with detailed codes of social behaviour for Brahmanas in particular and society in general, compiled from c. 500 BCE in the Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras; the most important, the Manusmriti, was compiled c. 200 BCE–200 CE.

Their authors claimed universal validity, but real social relations were probably more complicated, and given regional diversity and poor communications Brahmanical influence was by no means all-pervasive. Tellingly, these texts recognised eight forms of marriage: the first four ‘good’, the rest condemned — perhaps practised by those who did not accept Brahmanical norms.

From c. 1000 BCE Brahmanical practice classified people (especially Brahmanas) by gotra, each named after a Vedic seer whose descendants its members were held to be. Two rules mattered: a woman gave up her father’s gotra and took her husband’s on marriage, and members of the same gotra could not marry. Historians test this with names, which were sometimes derived from gotra names — available for powerful lineages such as the Satavahanas (parts of western India and the Deccan, c. 2nd century BCE–2nd century CE), whose inscriptions record family ties and marriages.

Some Satavahana rulers were polygynous. Their wives’ names come from gotras such as Gotama and Vasistha — their fathers’ gotras; they evidently kept these names instead of adopting their husband’s, as the rules required. Some wives also belonged to the same gotra — against the ideal of exogamy, and an example of endogamy, marriage within the kin group, which was (and is) common among several south Indian communities, where marriages among cousins kept communities close-knit. Similar variation probably existed elsewhere, but has not yet been reconstructed.

Were mothers important? Satavahana kings were identified by metronymics, which might suggest so — but caution is needed, since Satavahana succession was generally patrilineal.

NCERT defines caste as a set of hierarchically ordered social categories, an order laid down in the Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras. The 2026-27 reprint describes varnas as defined by qualifications, occupations and professions according to abilities and interests. The texts prescribed duties for the four varnas:

The reprint adds that other texts — the Bhagavad Gita, which it calls a pan-Indian authority across traditions — describe the four-fold order as based on guna (qualities) and karma (actions) rather than a rigid order fixed by birth, and that similar references occur in Buddhist traditions. It also points to signs of flexibility and mobility in occupational roles in early Vedic society.

According to the Shastras, only Kshatriyas could be kings, but many ruling lineages had other origins. The Mauryas’ background is hotly debated: later Buddhist texts call them Kshatriyas; Brahmanical texts, of ‘low’ origin. Their successors the Shungas and Kanvas were Brahmanas. Political power was in effect open to anyone who could muster support and resources, and rarely depended on birth as a Kshatriya.

The Shakas from Central Asia were called mlechchhas (barbarians, outsiders) by Brahmanas — yet one of the earliest Sanskrit inscriptions records that Rudradaman (c. 2nd century CE) rebuilt the Sudarshana lake, showing powerful mlechchhas were familiar with Sanskritic tradition. The best-known Satavahana, Gotami-puta Siri-Satakani, claimed to be a unique Brahmana (eka bamhana) and a destroyer of Kshatriya pride, and to have prevented intermarriage among the four varnas — while himself marrying into Rudradaman’s kin. So integration into the caste framework was complicated: the Satavahanas claimed to be Brahmanas though kings ‘ought’ to be Kshatriyas; claimed to uphold the varna order but allied with ‘excluded’ people; and practised endogamy rather than exogamy.

Jati was another term for social categories. Varnas were fixed at four; jatis had no limit and kept increasing as society met new groups and new occupations. Jatis sharing an occupation sometimes formed shrenis (guilds). A rare record is a stone inscription of c. 5th century CE from Mandasor (Madhya Pradesh), recording a guild of silk weavers who migrated with children and kin from Lata (Gujarat) to Mandasor, then Dashapura, attracted by the fame of the local king. Although membership rested on a shared craft, some members took up other occupations; together they invested their earnings in a splendid temple to the sun god.

In a diverse subcontinent there always were populations not influenced by Brahmanical ideas. Sanskrit texts often describe them as odd, uncivilised or animal-like: forest-dwellers for whom hunting and gathering mattered (such as the nishadas), nomadic pastoralists who did not fit a settled agrarian framework, and speakers of non-Sanskritic languages labelled mlechchhas. Yet ideas and beliefs were also shared, as Mahabharata stories show.

Some people were placed outside the system, deepening social divides by classifying some categories as ‘untouchable’. This rested on the notion that certain ritual activities were sacred and so ‘pure’; those who saw themselves as pure avoided food from those they called ‘untouchable’. Some activities — handling corpses and dead animals — were seen as ‘polluting’; those who did them, the chandalas, were placed at the very bottom, and their touch, sometimes even their sight, was considered polluting by those claiming the top.

The Manusmriti laid down chandalas’ ‘duties’: live outside the village, use discarded utensils, wear the clothes of the dead and iron ornaments, not walk in villages and cities at night, dispose of unclaimed bodies and serve as executioners. Much later, Fa Xian (c. 5th century CE) wrote that ‘untouchables’ had to sound a clapper in the streets so people could avoid seeing them, and Xuan Zang (c. 7th century) saw executioners and scavengers forced to live outside the city. Historians read non-Brahmanical texts to see whether chandalas accepted this life: sometimes the depictions match the Shastras, sometimes they hint at other realities.

Slaves, landless labourers, hunters, fisherfolk, pastoralists, peasants, headmen, craftspeople, merchants and kings were all social actors (Theme Two); their positions were often shaped by access to resources. In the Mahabharata’s dice game, Yudhisthira, deceived by Duryodhana, staked and lost his gold, elephants, chariots, slaves, army, treasury, kingdom, his subjects’ property, his brothers, himself — and finally their common wife Draupadi.

In the smriti tradition, paternal property was divided equally among the sons after the parents’ death, with a special share for the eldest. (NCERT’s reprint words this as ‘children’; the smriti rules it describes concerned sons.) Women could keep gifts received at marriage as stridhana, which their children could inherit without the husband having any claim. Upper-class women such as Prabhavati Gupta had resources, but cumulative evidence shows that land, cattle and money were generally controlled by men, so differences in access sharpened gender differences.

Varna and property. In the Brahmanical texts varna also regulated wealth: servitude was the only ‘occupation’ prescribed for Shudras, many for the first three varnas; if implemented, Brahmanas and Kshatriyas would be wealthiest — and other texts do depict kings as wealthy and priests as generally rich, with occasional poor Brahmanas. Meanwhile critiques developed, especially in early Buddhism (from c. 6th century BCE), which recognised social differences but did not see them as natural or inflexible, and rejected claims to status by birth.

Sharing wealth. In ancient Tamilakam, chiefs patronised bards and poets; Sangam poems suggest that while rich and poor differed, those who controlled resources were expected to share, and the generous were respected, the miserly despised.

A social contract. In a myth in the Sutta Pitaka, humans and plants were at first not fully formed; all lived peacefully, taking from nature only what each meal needed. As people became greedy, vindictive and deceitful, they chose one being to rebuke and banish wrongdoers in return for a share of rice: the mahasammata, ‘the great elect’. So kingship rested on human choice, with taxes as payment for services; and if humans created the system, they could change it.

Language and content. The Mahabharata’s Sanskrit is far simpler than that of the Vedas or the prashastis, so it was probably widely understood. Historians divide its contents into narrative (stories) and didactic (prescriptions) sections — not watertight, but most agree the epic was meant as a dramatic story and that didactic portions were added later. Tradition calls it itihasa (‘thus it was’). Was there a real war? Some historians think a memory of a conflict among kin survives; others note there is no corroborating evidence.

Authors and dates. The original story was probably composed by sutas, charioteer-bards who accompanied Kshatriya warriors and celebrated their deeds; these poems circulated orally. From the 5th century BCE Brahmanas took over the story and began to write it down — when chiefdoms like the Kurus and Panchalas were becoming kingdoms, perhaps wanting their itihasa recorded, and when upheavals replaced old values with new norms. Between c. 200 BCE and 200 CE worship of Vishnu grew and Krishna came to be identified with him; between c. 200 and 400 CE large didactic sections resembling the Manusmriti were added. A text of perhaps under 10,000 verses grew to about 100,000, traditionally attributed to the sage Vyasa.

The search for convergence. In 1951–52 B.B. Lal excavated a village called Hastinapura in Meerut (Uttar Pradesh). The name could be coincidence, but its location in the upper Ganga doab, the Kuru heartland, suggests it may have been the Kuru capital. Lal found five occupation levels; in phase II (c. 12th–7th centuries BCE) no clear house plans, walls of mud and mud-brick, and reed walls plastered with mud; in phase III (c. 6th–3rd centuries BCE) mud-brick and burnt-brick houses, soakage jars, brick drains and terracotta ring-wells.

A dynamic text. The epic kept growing beyond Sanskrit: versions in many languages, regional stories absorbed, the central story retold, episodes painted and sculpted, and performed in plays, dance and narration. The Bengali writer Mahashweta Devi, in ‘Kunti O Nishadi’, takes up a question the Sanskrit text ignores: the nishada woman and her five sons who died in the house of lac so the Pandavas could escape. In her story a nishadi confronts Kunti, now in the forest after the war, for never once remembering those six lives; as a forest fire approaches, the nishadi escapes and Kunti stays.

Q1–5: 100–150 words. Q6–9: short essays of about 500 words. Each outline separates what normative texts said from what other evidence shows.

Numbers

One-liners

• Normative texts prescribe; other sources show practice — compare them.
• Kula = family, jnati = kin network, vamsha = lineage.
• Patriliny proclaimed after the Pandavas’ victory.
• Eight forms of marriage: the very list shows variety.
• Satavahana queens kept their fathers’ gotras — endogamy.
• Varnas four and fixed; jatis many and growing.
• Power went to whoever mustered support and resources.
• Chandala ‘duties’: Manusmriti; clapper: Fa Xian; living outside the city: Xuan Zang.
• Buddhists: status from wealth or virtue, not birth; kingship by human choice (mahasammata).
• Mahabharata: sutas → Brahmanas → Vishnu–Krishna → didactic additions.

Traps to avoid

• Metronymics did not mean matriliny — Satavahana succession was patrilineal.
• The gotra rule required exogamy; the Satavahanas practised endogamy.
• Shungas and Kanvas were Brahmanas; the Satavahanas claimed to be Brahmanas.
• The Mrichchhakatika’s hero Charudatta is a Brahmana and a merchant.
• Pratiloma = woman of higher varna marries man of lower varna (UPSC 1990).
• Kosa (treasury) is not a kinship term; kula, vamsa and gotra are (UPSC 1996).
• The Critical Edition began in 1919 under Sukthankar — not 1947.
• Hastinapura’s finds do not match the epic’s grand city.
• The reprint no longer prints the Purusha Sukta, though exercise Q4 refers to it.
• Section 3.1 (Shudras ‘assist’) and section 4.2 (‘servitude’) describe the Shudras’ prescribed role differently — quote the text you mean.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Varna, jati and marriage: varna vs jati (1984), vertical hierarchy (1990), pratiloma (1990), kula/vamsa/gotra (1996), post-Vedic purusharthas (1994), lawgivers — Manu (1980), Yajnavalkya and Narada vs Bharavi (1990), Mitakshara vs Dayabhaga (2021).
• Texts and the Mahabharata: Jaya Samhita (1989), regional versions — Pampa (1997), Gita in Sanskrit (1981), Mrichchhakatika (2003), Hala’s Gathasaptasati (1989).
• Society beyond the texts: Sangam poets and varna (2022), Arthashastra on slavery (2022), why foreign rulers took up Buddhism (1998). Expect statement questions that mix prescription and practice — check which source each statement comes from.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 2023: main features of Vedic society and religion and their survival today — use the Rigvedic marriage mantra (patriliny), the flexibility hymn (Source 6), gotra from c. 1000 BCE, and the later codification in the Dharmashastras; present continuity and change neutrally.
• Answer frame for social-history questions: what normative texts prescribed → what other sources show (inscriptions, Pali/Tamil texts, travellers, archaeology) → variation by region and class → historians’ conclusions and debates.
• Modern ‘caste in Indian society’ questions (GS1 Society) are not this chapter’s subject; use it only for historical background.

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