Cultural Anthropology: Hindu Caste System and the Concepts of Productivity and Displacement

Cultural Anthropology
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Cultural Anthropology
Indian Caste System
The caste system dates back over 3,000 years and divides Hindu people into four primary groups based on their ancestry, karma, and previous lives, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras. It is widely believed that the god of creation, called Brahma in Hindu culture, is the source of the system with various body parts, representing the four primary groups of Hindu people (Deshpande, 2010). Brahma's mind and eyes are the most valuable parts and therefore are frequently used to represent elite people in society, such as teachers and priests. This group refers to people as Brahmins (Sankaran et al., 2017). The second body part is god's arms representing warriors in society, and people belonging to this group are called Kshatriyas. The third part is the legs, representing people such as merchants and farmers, and the people in this group are called Vaishyas (Sankaran et al., 2017). The fourth and last part is the Brahmin's feet representing the poor people in society, such as laborers, and people in this group are referred to as Shudras. Manusmriti, a widely recognized and most authoritative and important book in Hindu culture, dating over 1000 B.C., justifies and acknowledges this system as the basis of order and regularity in society. For years, the caste system in India has dictated nearly all aspects of Hindu social and religious life, with every group occupying a particular place in this complex (Sankaran et al., 2017). For example, in India, rural communities have long been organized on a caste system basis, with the lower and upper castes usually living in segregated colonies. In such arrangements, resources such as water would not be shared among individuals of different castes. Brahmins would not accept anything from Shudras, and members of one caste could not marry outside their caste. During meal times, members of all lower castes are expected to accept food from Brahmins' hands, but Brahmins would be polluted if they accepted certain food types from members of lower castes (Sankaran et al., 2017). It is also important to note that the caste system greatly contributed to India's discrimination. For example, labor allocation based on caste has been a fundamental tenet of the caste system, with members of lower castes usually restricted to occupations and tasks perceived as filthy or polluting for members of higher castes.
Human Language Displacement and Productivity
According to Hockett, human language has different features that separate it from other living creatures (Tamura & Hashimoto, 2012). He refers to these characteristics as the design features of human language. Displacement and productivity are two characteristics of human language used to explain differences between human language and from languages of other living organisms. Displacement refers to the ability to talk about remote things in time or space or from where the talking is going on (Tamura & Hashimoto, 2012). By virtue of this feature, humans can refer to both existing things and past and future things, including fictional objects and animals. In contrast, symbolic communication in other living creatur...