What is "caste"

Caste \Caste\, n. [Pg. casta race, lineage, fr. L. castus pure, chaste: cf. F. caste, of same origin.]

1. One of the hereditary classes into which the Hindu are divided according to the laws of Brahmanism.

   Note: The members of the same caste are theoretically of equal rank, and same profession or occupation, and may not eat or intermarry with those not of their own caste. The original are four, viz., the Brahmans, or sacerdotal order; the Kshatriyas, or soldiers and rulers; the Vaisyas, or husbandmen and merchants; and the Sudras, or laborers and mechanics. Men of no caste are Pariahs, outcasts. Numerous mixed classes, or castes, have sprung up in the progress of time.

2. A separate and fixed order or class of persons in society who chiefly hold intercourse among themselves.

   The tinkers then formed an hereditary caste.
   --Macaulay.

   To lose caste, to be degraded from the caste to which one has belonged; to lose social position or consideration.

1550s, "a race of men," from Latin castus "chaste," from castus "cut off, separated; pure" (via notion of "cut off" from faults), past participle of carere "to be cut off from" (and related to castration), from PIE *kas-to-, from root *kes- "to cut" (cognates: Latin cassus "empty, void"). Originally spelled cast in English and later often merged with cast (n.) in its secondary sense "sort, kind, style." \n

\nApplication to Hindu social groups was picked up by English in India 1610s from Portuguese casta "breed, race, caste," earlier casta raça, "unmixed race," from the same Latin word. The current spelling of of the English word is from this reborrowing. Caste system is first recorded 1840.

n. 1 Any of the hereditary social classes and subclasses of South Asian society. 2 A separate and fixed order or class of persons in society who chiefly associate with each other.

1. n. social status or position conferred by a system based on class; "lose caste by doing work beneath one's station"

2. (Hinduism) a hereditary social class among Hindus; stratified according to ritual purity

3. a social class separated from others by distinctions of hereditary rank or profession or wealth

Caste may refer to:

• Caste, a hereditary system of occupation, endogamy, social culture, social class, and political power in human society
• Caste (biology)
• Caste system in India
• Caste (play), a play by Thomas William Robertson
• Wine Caste, a system that defines the variety of grapes to make wine.

Caste is a comedy drama by Thomas William Robertson, first seen in 1867. The play was the third of several successes by Robertson produced in London's West End by Squire Bancroft and his wife Marie Wilton. As its name suggests, Caste concerns distinctions of class and rank. The son of a French nobleman marries a ballet dancer and then goes to war. When word arrives that he has been killed in action, his mother tries to wrest the child from his penniless widow.

Caste is a form of social stratification characterized by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a lifestyle which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural notions of purity and pollution. Its paradigmatic ethnographic example is the division of Indian society into rigid social groups, with roots in India's ancient history and persisting until today. However, the economic significance of the caste system in India has been declining as a result of urbanization and affirmative action programs. A subject of much scholarship by sociologists and anthropologists, the Indian caste system is sometimes used as an analogical basis for the study of caste-like social divisions existing outside India. The term is also applied to non-human populations like ants and bees.