Re: Why r ppl classified into Syeds, Rajputs..
Instead of labeling the tribal system outrightly, we should pay attention to the circumstances that necessitate it.
All societies are tribal before their mode of production change from cattle-herding and primitive agriculture to advanced, extenensive, and large-scale agriculture with a surpless of "produce". To protect this surplus and the resource (here agricultural land) it comes from, an organized and permanent army and a leader is needed. Tribal social structure cannot fulfil this need and so it disintegrates giving birth to a feudal society. The feudal society ultimately gives rise to fiefdom and kingdoms.
Caste system is a characteristic of feudal and agrarian society where it is used as basis of distribution of work. The powerful people assign themselves the superior jobs i.e. martial profession, the management and administration of society, the seting up of rules, law, and ethics-and the interpretation of the deeper meanings of life. The weaker is assigned the menial work i.e. carpenting, cobbling, farmering, etc. Usually, three classes emerge:
A class of warriors, rulers, leaders who perform military service, provides political leadership, administers the society, define rules of governance, and decides and dictates who would do what. This class has brute power and therefore has control of resources (often land for agriculture).
A class of priests emerge who "pretend" to be knowledgeful about the deeper meanings of life e.g. where we came from, what is the purpose of life, what is our destiny, etc. The class "preaches" "moral values" to the rest, often poor and defines standards for good and bad conduct. This class claims to have sanction from supernatural forces. This class therefore has devine power. It has profound influence on the masses and control their mind.
A class of weak people who do the menial jobs. This class doesn't have power and so doesn't have the resources (often the land).
The class of warriors/rulers/adminstrators and the class of priests have resources and power. They therefore are forces of the status-quo. In order to perpetuate their control over resources and people, they use "brute-force" as well as the claim of "divine-sanction" from the "super-natural". The create a myth that the division of society in classes is natural, according to will of God, and permanent----that is certain races have been "genetically tailored" to be warriors, rulers, adminstrators, mangers, God's chosen people, etc. And so the cast system continues to be socially and "religiously" accepted fact and a fate.
Tribal society is bit different. It usauuly evolves in an environment where there is little land for agriculture. Because of limited land, there cannot be surpless produce and maintenance of a permanent and organized army is not feasible. In such a society, your share in limited resources (land, water, pastures for cattle grazing) depends on two things.
- The numeric strength of your blood relatives, and
- the cohesion among them
The close blood relatives become organized as a tribe. The tribe is not only necessary to claim share in resources but also to hold onto already-owned resources. But such society usually doesn't have a class-based system. Members are usaully on equal level and one tribe has supremacy over another tribe only when it has a greater numeric strength and more cohesion. But in a tribal society it is possible for a weaker tribe to balance the supremacy of numerically powerful tribe through inter-tribal alliance (remember there is no organized army).