GL responds: Does Avelino or any other Goan know the proportion of current (or 1970's) residents of Goa (native GOANS) that belonged to each of the four Varnas and those outside the Varna classification? Thanks GL
D'Souza, Avelino" After the British conquered Bengal and eventually the whole of India, they set out to administer the colony. In this context they encountered two phenomena with which they were not familiar: (1) the relation of people to land for production (and not for revenue receiving, household living, etc.), and (2) the caste system of India, viz. the jati stratification of society.=20 Soon they realized that the varna stratification of society (which denotes the varnas of Brahmans-mainly the priests, Kshatriya-the warriors, Vaisya-the husbandmen, and Sudra-the lowly people) is not unique to Indian society. In the late 19th and early 20th century, J. Jolly (1896), H. Oldenberg (1897), E. Senart (1927), and others clarified that the varnas denote the status system in Hindu society, which (e.g. varnas) are found with different nomenclatures in other societies of the world. I had discussed this point in my book entitled The Dynamics of Rural Society (1957a).=20