[Y-Indology] cross-varna kayasthas

[Guest guest]

> > Lynken Ghose wrote:

 

> > That seems to be true. Origin of Yavanas and Turushkas etc has also

> > been given in some texts, assuming that they too are varna-sankaras.

 

Just yesterday I read

 

Chattopadhyaya, Brajadulal; Representing the Other? Sanskrit sources and

the Muslims (eighth to fourteenth century); Manohar; New Delhi: 1998,

 

which has an interesting argument about how 'othering' categories like

mleccha, yavana, and turuSka were used selectively to distinguish only

those foreigners, including Muslims, who could not be assimilated into

'inclusive' varNa and jaati categories. According to Chattopadhyaya,

there was little or no sense, during the early part at least of what we

think of as the period of the Muslim conquest of India, that the cities of

Northern India were under attack by groups that were members of a

monolithic religious 'alien'; rather, Hindu social forms showed their

usual penchant for flexibility and assimilation, and space was found in

the theoretical classical social system for what seemed to be just another

wave of

disparate mleccha groups. It seems that, to some degree, the great

invasions of history are constructed retrospectively, a point that seems

so obvious that I hope I will not be chided for banality.

 

P. Ernest