Modules task
The origins and functions of the Hindu
Students are only required to complete a total of two writing assignments during the term, but at least ONE writing assignment must be completed by the Mid-Term.
Each Module contains at least one writing assignment on a topic related to the content covered in that Module. Students can choose any one of these essays to fulfill the Mandatory 2 Writing Assignments required for this course. When you have completed your first writing assignment please submit it to the Writing Assignments Dropbox which has been set up for uploading written work.
You must clearly indicate which assignment you are uploading. Since one assignment must be completed by the Mid-term, you must submit an essay from Modules 1 or 2. Therefore, your first assignment must be labeled Writing 1A, 1B, 2A, or 2B. Make sure that you clearly indicate which one you have selected.
Your second mandatory writing submission will be selected from Modules 3 or 4. Make sure that you also clearly indicate which one you have selected.
Links have been provided in the Student Writing Resources Folder under Course Content, to various sites that offer guidance for essay writing, and APA formatting.
Writing Assignment – Option 1A – The origins and functions of the Hindu
Write a well-organized essay, a minimum of 700 words (but not limited to), including supporting details from the documents/textbook/other sources, in which you analyze and discuss the material that has been assigned to address the following question:
Analyze and discuss the Hindu caste system by addressing its origins, and how it is linked to the religious belief system, identifying the major Indian castes and subcastes that make up the Indian social pyramid and explaining its purpose. Your essay should include a discussion in which you evaluate the caste system, and argue if it is a stabilizing or destabilizing factor in Indian society (or both). All discussion must be supported.
Caste System.
Beginning around 1900 BCE large numbers of Indo-European migrants known as Aryans, moved into India from central Asia. Merging with the local Dravidian culture they developed a distinctive Indian society, characterized by a complex social class system called the caste system.
INSTRUCTIONS
Identify and review the relevant sections of Chapter 2 in the textbook that discuss the caste system.
Read the following text (below) and use this source to support your discussion. ( B. Guehler, trans., The Laws of Manu, in F. Max Mueller, ed., The Sacred Books of the East, 50 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879-1910), vol. 25, pp. 24, 69, 84-85, 195-197, 260-326, 329-330, 343-344, 370-371, 402-404, 413-416, 420, 423, passim.)
Locate and incorporate at least two outside sources to support your discussion. Wikipedia is not an acceptable reference. You may use any material outside of the textbook that I have provided in the course.
REMINDERS
Paragraphs in an essay are not numbered. Any questions that are associated with an assigned reading are there to serve as a guide for your discussion.
Your discussion should incorporate all of the information from the documents and or textbook, and outside sources as one essay.
Students are required to research and incorporate into their discussions additional sources that relate to the content. Chapters contain documents in sections titled Comparative Essays, Comparative Illustrations, and Opposing Viewpoints, and maps and tables also provide information that can be used to support discussion of your essay topic. Recommendations can be found at the end of the textbook chapter in Suggested Reading, in Primary Source documents posted in many of the chapter folders, in the Enrichment Activites folder. Many chapters also have videos relating to the content of that chapter and can be used as reference material. Wikipedia is not an acceptable reference.
All statements must be supported, and all sources including your textbook and assigned readings must be cited in the essay, and included in your reference list. Failure to do so constitutes Plagiarism, and the college has strict policies and penalties for failure to comply. I recommend that students use APA to format their essay. Since you are not writing a Research paper, you do not have to include an Abstract. Students should ask their instructor which format style they prefer you to use.
Proofread your work.Make sure that you have looked for all of the spelling and grammatical errors and corrected them, and that you have organized your work into coherent paragraphs.
Prepare the assignment as a Word Document, double-spaced and using a standard font of 12 points.
The Laws of Manu
VARNA
The Brahmin, the Kshatriya, and the Vaisya castes are the twice-born ones,[1] but the fourth, the Sudra, has one birth only; there is no fifth caste….
To Brahmins he[2] assigned teaching and studying the Vedas, sacrificing for their own benefit and for others, giving and accepting of alms.
The Kshatriya he commanded to protect the people, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study the Vedas, and to abstain from attaching himself to sensual pleasures;
The Vaisya to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study the Vedas, to trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land.
One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Sudra, to serve meekly…these other three castes.
JATIS
From a male Sudra are born an Ayogava, a Kshattri, and a Kandala, the lowest of men, by Vaisya, Kshatriya, and Brahmin females respectively, sons who owe their origin to a confusion of the castes.[3]…
Killing fish to Nishadas; carpenters’ work to the Ayogava; to Medas, Andhras, Kunkus, and Madgus, the slaughter of wild animals….
But the dwellings of Kandalas…shall be outside the village….
Their dress shall be the garments of the dead, they shall eat their food from broken dishes, black iron shall be their ornaments, and they must always wander from place to place.
A man who fulfills a religious duty, shall not seek intercourse with them; their [Kandala] transactions shall be among themselves, and their marriages with their equals….
At night they shall not walk about in villages and in towns.
By day they may go about for the purpose of their work, distinguished by marks at the king’s command, and they shall carry out the corpses of persons who have no relatives; that is a settled rule.
By the king’s order they shall always execute the criminals, in accordance with the law, and they shall take for themselves the clothes, the beds, and the ornaments of such criminals.
DHARMA
A king who knows the sacred law must inquire into the laws of castes [jatis], of districts, of guilds, and of families, and settle the peculiar law of each….
Among the several occupations the most commendable are, teaching the Vedas for a Brahmin, protecting the people for a Kshatriya, and trade for a Vaisya.
But a Brahmin, unable to subsist by his peculiar occupations just mentioned, may live according to the law applicable to Kshatriyas; for the latter is next to him in rank….
A man of low caste [varna] who through covetousness lives by the occupations of a higher one, the king shall deprive of his property and banish.
It is better to discharge one’s own duty incompletely than to perform completely that of another; for he who lives according to the law of another caste is instantly excluded from his own.
A Vaisya who is unable to subsist by his own duties, may even maintain himself by a Sudra’s mode of life, avoiding however acts forbidden to him, and he should give it up, when he is able to do so….
Abstention from injuring creatures, veracity, abstention from unlawfully appropriating the goods of others, purity, and control of the organs,[4] Manu has declared to be the summary of the law for the four castes.
THE NATURE OF WOMEN
It is the nature of women to seduce men in this world; for that reason the wise are never unguarded in the company of females….
For women no rite is performed with sacred texts, thus the law is settled; women who are destitute of strength and destitute of the knowledge of Vedic texts are as impure as falsehood itself; that is a fixed rule.
HONORING WOMEN
Where women are honored, there the gods are pleased; but where they are not honored, no sacred rite yields rewards.
Where the female relations live in grief, the family soon wholly perishes; but that family where they are not unhappy ever prospers.
FEMALE PROPERTY RIGHTS
A wife, a son, and a slave, these three are declared to have no property; the wealth which they earn is acquired for him to whom they belong….
What was given before the nuptial fire, what was given on the bridal procession, what was given in token of love, and what was received from her brother, mother, or father, that is called the six-fold property of a woman.
Such property, as well as a gift subsequent and what was given to her by her affectionate husband, shall go to her offspring, even if she dies in the lifetime of her husband….
But when the mother has died, all the uterine[5] brothers and the uterine sisters shall equally divide the mother’s estate.
A WOMAN’S DEPENDENCE
In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.
She must not seek to separate herself from her father, husband, or sons; by leaving them she would make both her own and her husband’s families contemptible….
Him to whom her father may give her, or her brother with the father’s permission, she shall obey as long as he lives, and when he is dead, she must not insult his memory.
BETROTHAL
No father who knows the law must take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter; for a man who, through avarice, takes a gratuity, is a seller of his offspring….
Three years let a damsel wait,[6] though she be marriageable,[7] but after that time let her choose for herself a bridegroom of equal caste and rank. If, being not given in marriage, she herself seeks a husband, she incurs no guilt, nor does he whom she weds.
MARRIAGE AND ITS DUTIES
To be mothers were women created, and to be fathers men; religious rites, therefore, are ordained in the Vedas to be performed by the husband together with the wife….
No sacrifice, no vow, no fast must be performed by women apart from their husbands; if a wife obeys her husband, she will for that reason alone be exalted in heaven.[8]…
By violating her duty towards her husband, a wife is disgraced in this world, after death she enters the womb of a jackal, and is tormented by diseases as punishment for her sin….
Let the husband employ his wife in the collection and expenditure of his wealth, in keeping everything clean, in the fulfillment of religious duties, in the preparation of his food, and in looking after the household utensils….
Drinking spirituous liquor, associating with wicked people, separation from the husband, rambling abroad, sleeping at unseasonable hours, and dwelling in other men’s houses, are the six causes of the ruin of women….
Offspring, religious rites, faithful service, highest conjugal happiness and heavenly bliss for the ancestors and oneself, depend on one’s wife alone….
“Let mutual fidelity continue until death”…may be considered as the summary of the highest law for husband and wife.
Let man and woman, united in marriage, constantly exert themselves, that they may not be disunited and may not violate their mutual fidelity.
DIVORCE
For one year let a husband bear with a wife who hates him; but after a year let him deprive her of her property and cease to cohabit with her….
But she who shows aversion towards a mad or outcaste[9] husband, a eunuch,[10] one destitute of manly strength, or one afflicted with such diseases as punish crimes,[11] shall neither be cast off nor be deprived of her property….
A barren[12] wife may be superseded[13] in the eighth year, she whose children all die in the tenth, she who bears only daughters in the eleventh, but she who is quarrelsome without delay.
But a sick wife who is kind to her husband and virtuous in her conduct, may be superseded only with her own consent and must never be disgraced.
[1] One’s second birth is initiation into the recitation of the Vedas. Only men can be twice-born.
[2] Brahman.
[3] This explains the existence of certain low-born, or unclean, jatis; they originated in mythic time as the result of illicit unions between people of different castes. The greatest profanation of all was when a male Sudra defiled (had sexual intercourse with) a female Brahmin, and the consequence was the origin of the Kandala jati–the basest of all jatis.
[4] Control of all the senses and especially one’s sexual drives.
[5] All natural siblings (born from her uterus).
[6] To be offered in marriage by her father or brother.
[7] Twelve was a common age of marriage for women; men tended to wait until their twenties.
[8] While waiting for the next incarnation on the karmic journey of release from the bonds of matter, a soul can be assigned to one of an infinite number of heavens or hells. Thus, depending on how well or poorly a person followed dharma, there was a double reward or punishment: a heaven or a hell followed by incarnation into a higher or lower caste or even a lower life form. Compare this with Virgil’s ideas regarding the afterlife and reincarnation (source 30).
[9] He has so egregiously violated the dharma of his caste (varna) that he has been made an outcaste–for example, a Brahmin who knowingly receives food or a gift from a Kandala or other unclean person.
[10] Sexually impotent.
[11] A disease incurred by reason of a sin in a previous incarnation (the law of karma). Hindu society evolved complex and lengthy lists of diseases and their corresponding sins.
[12] Childless.
[13] Replaced as primary wife by a second wife.
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