Kanchan Banerjee in the sixth part of the series demystifies the varnashram system and what is its greatness and utility in this day and age
There are several interpretations of the idea and the meaning of the word varna as well. Some scholars associated varna with colour. However, if we look at it etymologically, the colour theory does not hold good. Varna is a Sanskrit term derived from the root vṛ, meaning “to cover, to envelop”. Derived meanings include “kind, sort, character, quality”. One can find the usage of these meanings of the word in the oldest text in the world – the Rig Veda. Varna could be referred to colours in the sense of symbolic colors given to gunas, or guiding principles like white as sattwa, red and yellow as rajas, and black as tamas as described by some ancient texts. They have nothing to do with the colour of skin, but refer to symbolism and metaphor.
The idea of a vanna-based classification originates in the ancient texts which are deeply connected to the cosmology and creation concepts of ancient India. The world is created by Brahma and pancha bhutas (five basic elements) – kshiti, ap, tej, marut and byom — and three gunas — sattwa, rajas and tamas are applied in this process. Each entity in existence is built by the bhutas and influenced by these gunas.
The guiding principle — responsible for creation, action, move etc and which pushes to achieve pursuits and infuses drive, passion and excitement — is called rajas or active principle. This drives a person for career or any other goals to be achieved, energetic but outward, generating strong prana (vital energy) impacting the sense and motor organs.
Tamas is the static principle symbolized by darkness, ignorance and delusion, which is responsible for slow down, to be lazy, de-motivated, sleepy, stationary, undeveloped or unrefined nature, illiterate, disorganized, impure and disheveled.
Sattwa is the illuminating principle that makes one neither active nor inactive, in a balanced state, peaceful, calm and yet high-level of extra-intellectual activities, refined or cultivated nature, vision, knowledge, understanding and discipline. In sattwic state, there is an absence of forces of opposition, resistance and violence and that’s the attribute of sat or the real nature of things, harmony.
Even different types of food and fruits have guna influences — each can increase certain gunas and qualities in each person. Based on these, three doshas (qualities) of life were described in the Ayurveda namely Kapha, Vata and Pitta. Similar principles are applied to identify individuals and their quality and thus individuals were associated with a particular group. Sattwaguna relates to mind and allows for clarity of perception, which is necessary for any higher evolution of consciousness whereas the other two takes care of both survival and sustenance.
If one knows their predominant guna-prakriti or nature, then s/he can chose their way of life, profession and follow their pursuits and activities to bring more harmony in body-mind-spirit, be most productive to the society and realize full potential. So, the system is to actually assist people to move on from lower state of existence to a higher one and finally find ultimate realization, or moksha, the complete freedom from emotions, bondages and cycle of karma – and that is the goal of life, according to Indian ideals.
Though each individual is potentially equal to others, reality presents a different scenario. Modern science has accepted that the DNA pretty much determines what a person is going to become — at least physically and temperamentally. Indian thinkers went another step beyond. They said the karma and past living experiences shaped the destiny of this life, actually this life was chosen to evolve from lower state to the next state. Though a bundle of karma is going to lead the completion of this life, current karma, in the form of samskaras (impressions of the environment) will also have a great impact in this and next. Modern scientists already agree that apart from DNA, the formation of neurons and circuits in the brain is heavily influenced by living environment and activities that one pursues. Some speculate, just like matters in the environment, our actions including thinking also may change our genetic codes. One’s character is a combination of the code in DNA and the activities of early life. Both affect future, in a way destiny, in this life and next. Even if one doubts the existence of after-life, though there are plenty of evidence that prove the concept of re-incarnation, the collective actions of a generation of people definitely will impact the generation of tomorrow – the culture, economy and health of a family, society and country.
So, it is obvious that if somehow the traits of a person are known in advance, their profession and activities in life can be guided better. The society can be more productive, reducing conflicts in socio-economic system. Many thinkers have suggested that the role of a teacher is not just providing information, but allow the students to be the best they could. And if there was a way to predict what a child is going to become, the teacher’s job is more of a guru than an instructor. And then, one can ask, how to bring one up from a lower mental, emotional and intellectual level to a higher plane? Then answer will come only if we can evaluate the person’s current state.
What do the ancient texts say about the evolution of varnas? Apart from four basic varnas, in the ancient texts, there is a mention of a fifthone, which is beyond the influence of all gunas. Lord Shiva is said to be trigunatit, that means influence of these natural principles do not affect him – and goal for each life according to the shastras should be to go beyond the play of these three gunas to ascend to the state or varna is called Hansa. After evolving through each of the main four varnas, one in a way destroys the binds of those four varnas – or rather the four varnas becomes ladder to the highest achievement – the hansa state. Hansa is the title is given to most evolved sages, who are called ‘Paramhansa’.
The four or five varnas are part of the Virat Purusa, the mundane yet conscious universe. All texts, including Manu Smriti, has stated that all classes will eventually reach the highest stage of life, but only through the play of sattwa guna and sadhana or austerity and practice to reach higher realms via any of the following paths – jnana (knowledge), bhakti (devotion),karma (work) or a combination – where secular and sacred are no different, but one continuous state where religious dogmas are out and only Dharma is in play, thanks to direct experience.
Swami Vivekananda explains it as: “…the dictates of our Vedantic religion, by our attaining spirituality and by our becoming ideal Brahmana. …. everyone in this country has to try and become the ideal Brahmana. This Vedantic idea is applicable not only here but over the whole world. The Brahmana-hood is the ideal of humanity in India as wonderfully put forward by Shankaracharya at the beginning of his commentary on the Gita, where he speaks about the reason for Krishna’s coming as a preacher for the preservation of Brahmana-hood, of Brahmananess. That was the great end. This Brahmana, the man of God, he who has known Brahman, the ideal man, the perfect man, must remain, he must not go.’
Due to lack of depth of understanding of Indian ideas by the West and the invaders, during the periods of long subjugation, the meaning of certain ideas in India was super-imposed by foreign concepts so much so that even the natives also started to imbibe their ideas and culture. India was truly a slave nation during the period of subjugation, and the mental slavery is still present among the minds of the intellectual class. For example, Dharma has been equated to religion, Varna to caste, Iswara to God, Adhyatma to spirituality etc. Just like other cultures, such as China, certain concepts and ideas are very difficult to translate, because the concepts have long history which has created a paradigm to that society not comparable to others. Spirituality in Indian sense has nothing to do with a dogma, theory or rituals or a belief system or a place of worship, rather it is defined as an experience of oneness and the knowledge of self, alignment with an universal interconnected conscious whole-self and the entire existence. So, in a way, a yogi, a physicist and a social-worker, all can experience this oneness with their subjects or objects.
Let us look at the terms varna and jāti (caste) again which are two distinct concepts. While varna is the idealized four-part division envisaged by the ancients: jāti (community) refers to the thousands of endogamous groups prevalent across the Indian subcontinent. A jati can be divided into exogamous groups based on same gotras (lineage). Jati may be defined rigidly by birth or based on new profession. A big problem in India is nepotism or promoting one’s family members irrespective of merit. This practice extends to all groups and castes and in case of Scheduled Castes and Tribes, the reservation policies in education and jobs in many ways aids to keep the system alive.
We will discuss how the ancients gave relations between the increase and decrease of number of people with various gunas and thus various varnas during various yugas namely Satya, Treta, Dwapar and Kali cyclically evolves.
Indian cosmology and yuga concepts. While there are direct proofs of validity of Indian yoga and Ayurveda given by the ancients, same people who gave much of mathematics, scientific knowledge to the world, also gave the idea of cyclical creation of the universe which is beautifully described by late Carl Sagan, the distinguished Cornell University astronomer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author in an interview: “…wonderful aspect of Hindu cosmology which first of all gives a time-scale for the Earth and the universe — a time-scale which is consonant with that of modern scientific cosmology. We know that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and the cosmos, or at least in its present incarnation, is something like 10 or 20 billion years old. The Hindu tradition has a day and night of Brahma in this range, somewhere in the region of 8.4 billion years.
As far as I know. It is the only ancient religious tradition on the Earth which talks about the right time-scale. .. The Hindu concept is very clear. Finally, the many billion year time-scale of Hindu cosmology is not the entire history of the universe, but just the day and night of Brahma, and there is the idea of an infinite cycle of births and deaths and an infinite number of universes, each with its own gods.”
Theoretical physicists like Paul Steinhardt at the Princeton University hints at that the Big Bang is not the complete answer to the creation and existence of the universe and perhaps universes and civilizations existed before our own and we may have been here before, come and go in a cyclical order.
According to modern physics, the energy from sun is the source of earth’s birth and after matter gave birth to organic matter; it led to life and then came the senses and consciousness. The Hindu cosmology says that there is unmanifest conscious being which became manifest and gave birth to the creation which is material, yet consciousness is the cause behind it. This is in a way contradicting to modern science. However, new researches and discoveries are questioning this material paradigm of the world. While scientists are still struggling to settle on the Heisenberg’s Uncertainty theory, many are accepting consciousness as a factor in the study of material science, indicating consciousness influences matter and all existence. Physics, like Vedic ideas, does agree that universe came into existence from an inert, unborn, irreducible state! Physical science is yet to explain the nature of the primal cause and the state, the Vedic description of it is chit or ‘pure and absolute consciousnesses. If we are to follow the Hindu cosmology, it gives a whole different idea of a socio-psycho evolution of consciousness through different cycles of the creation.
Since the varnashram system is integrally related with the Indian cosmology, here are few details on the Hindu ideas if the Kala-chakra (cosmic cycle) for better understanding:
One famous medieval poet Vidyapati prays to the Supreme:
‘kata chaturanana mari mari jawata, na tuwa adi avasana/ tohe janami punah tohe samawata, saagar lahari samana’ it means so many Creator Brahmas have been born from You who is without beginning and end, and died again, like waves on an infinite ocean).
The above chart shows what the ancient Indian cosmology has to say about the age of the universe and how it goes through cycles of four yugas (era) making it a Mahayuga. There are 10,000 caranas in one day (also called one Kalpa) of Brhama which are the building blocks of the yugas.
Much of these information is found in the works of Aryabhatta (Aryabhatia: 476–550 CE) who was the first in the line of great mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. His contributions in modern concepts of mathematics (algebra, trigonometry, progression etc) and astronomy are enormous.
Commonly available sources explain the cyclical creation and destruction of the physical world with the large numbers. However, recently many scholars doubt this number citing that during the medieval period the astronomy and cosmology and Hindu calendar got mixed up and a major misunderstanding of the whole system sipped in. The error is debated to be a distinction between a human year and a daiva (divine) year, a factor of 360 or 365. More importantly the interpretation of Sri Yukteswar in the last century and others like him seems more rational.
The Mahayuga is a cycle of four yugas: four caraṇas make the Satya Yuga, three caraṇas make the Tretā Yuga, two caraṇas make the Dvāpara Yuga and one caraṇa makes the Kali Yuga. Conventional ideas suggest that each carana is 432,000 solar years and the cycle goes through Satya to Kali and there is dissolution and it starts with Satya again. The new school of thought suggests that there was a confusion/error during the medieval period and the new calculations as par with the original numbers and also finds support in modern cosmology.
Each carana being 1,200 solar years and the half of a full cycle of Yugas or mahayuga — Satya to Kali (descending 12,000 years) and from Kali back to Satya (ascending 12,000 years) making the full mahayuga to be 24,000 years which is very close to the modern astronomical calculation of one full precession of the equinox is 25,772 years, probably causing warm and ice ages bringing dissolution (parlay) cyclically. According to that, the Kali Yuga started after the death of Sri Krishna after the Mahabharata war around 3102 BCE and Kali ended around 1700 CE. After 200 years of Samdhi or intermediate phase, we are now supposed to be in the reverse or ascending Dwapra Yuga where civilization is based on energy as opposed to raw material based civilization in Kali. According to this, each mahayuga goes through descending and ascending cycles for 71 times.
The broad formula is: one day of Brahma= one Kalpa (aeon) = 14 manvantaras (71 mahayugas) + 15 twilights (six Mahayugas each) = 10,000 mahayugas (four descending and four ascending yugas)
Long before the era of modern astrophysics Indian seers gave such time frame which may not always match the exact time, but it is clear, that the numbers are not absurd and it calls for much more research. According to modern cosmology the age of our universe is between 15-30 billion years and our planet earth is about five billion years old.
71 mahayugas make the life of one Manu and after that period a manvantar or change of guard happens with much natural upheavals and much of the species vanishes and new civilization starts again. Each manvatara is ruled by a Manu, which is perhaps a symbolic guardian or presiding representation. After each Manvatara follows one Saṃdhi Kalā of the duration as fourcaraṇas. (It is said that during a Saṃdhi Kalā, the entire earth is submerged in water.)
A Kalpa consists of a 14 Manvataras and Saṃdhi Kalas. After each kalpa equal amount of time (a night of Brahma) the whole universe goes through kalpantar, or total dissolution.
Many of the major catastrophic events such as the meteor hitting earth 65 million years ago which may have caused mass extinction of many species, including the dinosaurs, could be connected with the macro age and the kalpantar-manvantar-yuga-sandhis. Similarly, a micro-level yuga research can also be done to analyze our recent history and the earth’s future.
So, according to the new school of thoughts we are in the ascending Dwapara Yuga of the 28th mahayuga of the seventh manvantara of 51st kalpa (that is 51st day of current Brahma’s life) which is the 454th mahayuga out of 1,000. This reference to time (with current year, date, time, place etc.) is chanted during the sankalp (oath) before performing any ritual in Hinduism.
In order to understand the varnasharam system, one must have a grasp over Indian cosmology since they are intrinsically linked..
