The Making and Proliferation of Jāti: A Historical Inquiry

Abstract

The article seeks to argue that the making of jāti was homologous with the opening up of deltas for agriculture, involving integration of agro-pastoral descent groups into hereditary specialists of occupational identity, and formation of stratified relations of production transcending kin labour. It emphasises that productive relations in the deltas had preconditions such as hereditary occupations, asymmetrical social relations, amenability to differential allocation of status, and the dominant presence of the Brāhman.a-s with tacitly recognized ritual supremacy, resource potential, social control, political influence and cultural pre-eminence for the emergence of jāti hierarchy. A related argument is that the emergence of hereditary occupation groups and promulgation of sāstraic norms must have been processes of mutuality and concurrence. It has been understood the context of the Jāti institution of coercive control and seigniorial jurisdiction over the labouring body was crucial. As regards proliferation of jāti-s, the argument is that it had been an ongoing process ever since jāti became the dominant paradigm of identity construction for occupational groups and service personnel claiming socio-cultural distinction on the basis of their association with the seigniorial power. Rewarded under land-tenure, the personnel in service to the king and the local chieftains became hereditary for stability of service as well as permanence of family landholding. Illustrating the historical experience of the Tamil South in general and the Kerala region in particular, the argument found feasible is that the proliferation of jāti-s happened as a land tenure based phenomenon under the three seigniorial streams represented by the king, the chieftain and the temple – brahmadēya combine, as realized in terms of the sāstraic norms.