I know it has been and still is a cause of considerable discrimination. However, I can't help but think that there must have been a reason for this thing to have gotten created in the first place.
Some of my thougths -
When mastery over craftsmanship has to be passed from generation to generation, it probably made sense to restrict people who have been performing something for generations to insist that they continue doing so, so that the wisdom and experience gets passed to the descendants. This would be especially useful if there was a lack of permanent records.
People in any group find some reason to further subdivide into sub-groups. Probably the most rational way to do this might have been their occupations.
Identification with a group gives a strong feeling of individuality. Additionally, when the same occupational groups are across disparate regions, it's easier for a person to move from one region to another and fit in/be welcomed by a similar group, where similar sets of rules are followed. This is also a natural human tendency, I feel. Whenever we go to a foreign city, it always helps to find someone from a similar background but who is also conversant of the rules of the new place.
Contrary to some other types of social systems, where wealth and power usually accumulate the higher one goes up the social hierarchy, in the Indian system, the highest caste, the brahmins, are not supposed to horde wealth. Instead, they are supposed to believe in austerity, simple living and renunciation. So, although, they wield power, they cannot accumulate wealth. The royalty, on the other hand, accumulate wealth, and they do have the power over the people; however, they are supposed to be subservient to the brahmins, which is contrary to other systems.
Also, from what I understand, it was possible to move up the ladder, so to speak, but to do so, you really had to prove your mettle. There are numerous mythologies surrounding this idea.
I'm sure I'm mistaken in some / all of these points. But can someone enlighten me, as to what the real benefits might have been. Because from a conceptual point of view, the caste system does sound quite rational, albeit for a different time.
The reality is quite different, I know. However, I'm trying to gauge the soundness of the theory!
The word “caste” comes from the term “casta,” which the Portuguese used to describe the jati and varna systems, but understanding the distinction may help you with your question.
The varna system is where your Brahmins and Vaishya and such come in- one of the Vedas, the Rigveda, describes the cosmic being Purusha, whose body is divided into four parts during a sacrifice to create things, like different animals and celestial bodies. These four parts give rise to the Brahmins, the Rajanya (the term Kshatriya wasn’t used in the text,) the Vaishya, and the Shudra. The Brahmins come from the head, the Rajanya from the arms/hands, Vaishya from the thighs, and Shudra from the feet. This organization also reflects ritual purity. The candala, ‘untouchables’, were considered outside the varna system and of the lowest ritual purity. An old religious/legal text, the Manusmriti, lays down rules and guidelines for each varna’s behavior. Chapter X details how the candala are born from Brahmin and Shudra unions, consigned to work with the dead, live outside villages, not deal with members of the four varnas at all, and have some sort of identifying marker to let others know of their status.
From its first chapter:
- To Brahmanas he assigned teaching and studying (the Veda), sacrificing for their own benefit and for others, giving and accepting (of alms).
So you can see how it could be beneficial to be considered of a higher varna.
The jati system isn’t religiously based, and unlike the varna system, there’s no ideally rigid and orderly hierarchy among them. There are also thousands of them in India, as opposed to only four varna. Jati is much more fluid and more based on occupation, though you don’t necessarily have to perform that task to be considered part of the jati anymore. It gets tacked onto different varna due to its roots in occupation, so a group of hereditary leatherworkers might be placed lower than a family of hereditary landowners or soldiers, though the leatherworking group could still be considered of higher status if they were the group with the greatest local dominance/control, or at least better than other leatherworking families in the area. If all the members of a jati decide to change their behavior/occupation, like all taking up vegetarianism for example, then once this is well-established, they could petition for higher status (jatis can be ranked against each other,) or even claim a higher varna. There can also be overlap, where a jati could be considered part of multiple varna.
From Shankar:
…where varna is a more abstract classification mostly found in texts, jati is an actual socially and culturally delimited community to which an individual belongs….When it comes to marriage, or sharing food, for example, from an orthodox point of view jati identity dictates more than varna identity. It determines an individual’s caste practices more than varna…nevertheless [varna]…has real historical consequences…jatis have maneuvered to have themselves defined as belonging to a particular varna in an attempt to “raise” themselves in the caste hierarchy. In its very abstraction, varna serves as a potent, hegemonic idealization of caste as a system and thus becomes a goad to the organization and hierarchization of jati.”
Aside from specialized labor and religious beliefs, people could have used a jati connection to varna in order to gain and/or maintain influence in their community, so that would be a benefit to some.
This might be interesting to you- the book Class and Religion in Ancient India from 2007 has a section talking about how the section about Purusha in the Rigveda may have been modified or added at some point to talk about four varna in order to “legitimize…the oppressive status” of the ruling class at the time the modification occurred. This idea showed up in Vol 25 of the 1891 Census of India, but is dismissed. I really can’t comment on this though.
Hopefully this will help you on your question.
Sources
[English and Sanskrit text of the Purusha Suktam] (http://www.sathyasaiottawa.org/pdf/Vedam/Purusha_Suktam.pdf)
[English text of the Manusmriti] (http://hinduism.about.com/library/weekly/extra/bl-lawsofmanu1.htm)
Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 by Romila Thapar
A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India.... by Upinder Singh
Flesh and Fish Blood: Postcolonialism, Translation, and the Vernacular by Subramanian Shankar
Edit for formatting...oh- you can read the relevant sections of those books on Google Books. I tried not to use things not publicly available so that you'd be able to read them without JSTOR access or something.
I don't have an answer for you, but I thought maybe you should clarify the question:
Do you mean what are the benefits of the caste system to India overall, as a society? or what are the benefits of the caste system to the people in position to most enjoy it?
Caste system originally was not hereditary. You chose your profession and based on the kind of work you did your caste was decided. Valmaki was born into a Shudra family but he is revered in Hindu traditions as being the author of holy book of 'Ramayana'. The caste systems was similar to differentiating people based on white or blue collar work in the modern world.
Now as time went by it so happened that a son of a Brahmin naturally become a Brahmin. The speculative reason of why this happened are following:
Over thousand of years the practice degenerated into a hereditary only system where no matter what you did you would continue to be of the caste you were born into.