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Austronesian Quadripartition and the Indian Varna System

Contributed by Paul K. Manansala

Austronesian Quadripartition and the Indian Varna System In 1995, I wrote an article "Austric Influence in the Brahmanaand Rishi Traditions," in which I examined the Austric contribution to the formation of the varna, or four caste system, andalso to the linked brahmin and rishi (seer) traditions of India.

My view was that the varna system was mainly an indigenous development with major contributions from Dravidian and

Austric societies rather than something brought in by Indo-European invaders, which is the more common position inWestern scholarship.

The mainstream Western view is that the Aryan invaders or migrants into South Asia retained the Proto-Indo-Europeansystem of three classes, conceived by Georges Dumzil as consisting of clerics, warriors andhusbandmen/agriculturalists. Upon arriving in India, they supposedly forced those aborigines who adopted their religioussystem into a fourth lower class known as Sudras. A strong racial component is evident in this theory with someasserting the Sudras were originally slaves and they were darker-skinned than the other three classes composed of theAryan invaders. According to this theory, these four classes eventually evolved into the four varnas.

To support this theory, it is argued that the supposedly oldest parts of the Rgveda, considered the oldest literary work ofIndia, do not mention the Sudra caste. Sudras though are mentioned in Purusa-sukta section of the book. Also,supporters of this view point out that the Sudras were not considered "twice-born" and worthy of pursuit of Brahman, a

mana-like spiritual power or asset.

Here are a few of the main problems with this theory:

- The Vedas, which supposedly cover the period of Aryan invasion/migration into India do not mention the massconversion process of aborigines into Sudras or the conversion of the old Indo-European husbandman/agriculturalistclass into, presumably, the Vaisya or merchant caste. Such a conversion process would have been messy to say theleast. In comparison, latter works mention the adoption of foreigners like the Sakas and Cinas into the caste system.- According to present-day mainstream Western views, a relatively small number of Aryan speakers were involved in amigration and elite dominance scenario upon arriving in South Asia. However, how successful could a small number ofpeople be in converting an entire indigenous population into slavery or servitude? More recent history shows that theprocess of caste assimilation involved introducing people into the brahmin system according to their position and rank inthe previous society. Thus, we have Dravidian Brahmins and Dravidian Kshatriyas (warriors) and Yavana brahmins and

Yavana Kshatriyas.- Neither genetic nor physical anthropology studies support ideas that the upper castes are composed of recent (post-Neolithic) migrants to India or that the Sudra caste is more aboriginal than the upper castes. As caste is determined bypatrilineage, the genetic evidence suggests that upper castes consist overwhelmingly of Y chromosome types that havebeen in India long before the Neolithic. The only male haplogroups that show strong evidence of relatively recent arrivalare J haplogroup and O haplogroup, neither of which appear linked with the theory of an Aryan invasion/migration intoNorthwest India. In most parts of India, forensic science can not reliably distinguish upper castes from sudra castesbased on craniofacial or other physical anthropology techniques.- The most important aspects of the varna system are not reconstructible to the suggested Proto-Indo-European system.http://sambali.blogspot.com/2008/03/pmp-quadripartite-social-structures.html

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