Brahmin is a varna as well as a caste within Hindu society. The other three varnas are the Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra. The traditional occupation of Brahmins is that of priesthood at Hindu temples or at socio-religious ceremonies, and the performing of rite of passage rituals, such as solemnising a wedding with hymns and prayers.
Brahmins worshipping River Ganges 1882.
Vedic Brahmin Rishi worshipping Shakti.
A Brahmin soldier
Four ascetic Brahmins from Gandhara, 2nd century
A caste is a fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification: a caste system. Within such a system, individuals are expected to: marry exclusively within the same caste (endogamy), follow lifestyles often linked to a particular occupation, hold a ritual status observed within a hierarchy, and interact with others based on cultural notions of exclusion, with certain castes considered as either more pure or more polluted than others. Its paradigmatic ethnographic example is the division of India's Hindu society into rigid social groups. Its roots lie in South Asia's ancient history and it still exists. However, the economic significance of the caste system in India has been declining as a result of urbanisation and affirmative action programs. A subject of much scholarship by sociologists and anthropologists, the Hindu caste system is sometimes used as an analogical basis for the study of caste-like social divisions existing outside Hinduism and India. In colonial Spanish America, mixed-race castas were a category within the Hispanic sector, but the social order was otherwise fluid.
The Basor weaving bamboo baskets in a 1916 book. The Basor are a Scheduled Caste found in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India.
An image of a man and woman from the toddy-tapping community in Malabar from the manuscript Seventy-two Specimens of Castes in India, which consists of 72 full-color hand-painted images of men and women of various religions, occupations and ethnic groups found in Madura, India in 1837, which confirms the popular perception and nature of caste as Jati, before the British colonial authorities made it applicable only to Hindus grouped under the varna categories from the 1901 census onwards
A Sudra caste man from Bali. Photo from 1870, courtesy of Tropenmuseum, Netherlands.
A typical Yangban family scene from 1904. The Yoon family had an enduring presence in Korean politics from the 1800s until the 1970s.