Where the Word "Caste" Came From

Lesson 2 did this once already, for the word "Hinduism": an English word with an English suffix, applied from outside, holding together things that had not called themselves one thing. The method there was to ask where the word came from, what job it was built to do, and what it commits its user to.

This lesson does the same for "caste", and the result is sharper, because here the English word is standing in for two Sanskrit words that do not mean the same thing as each other.

Set the two entries from the last two lessons side by side.

Varṇa — covering, appearance, form, colour; then kind, sort, character, quality, applied to persons and things; then class of men. Four of them. A scheme.