The varna system
Vedic society is described as four ranked orders, and the description becomes prescriptive.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 400 years
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
A late hymn of the Rigveda describes society as four varnas — priests, warriors, producers and servants — created from the body of a cosmic being. Over the following centuries this becomes an enforced hierarchy with rules on marriage, occupation and contact, elaborated in the law books and cross-cut by thousands of local jati groups. It is one of the most durable systems of social stratification anywhere, and remains legally abolished and socially present.