Daily life and social structure in ancient india
Daily life in ancient India is based upon the social structure. Depending on your class, or varna, you would have different jobs, roles, and homes. Your class was one of the 4 in the caste system. The caste system is a class structure that determines your class with your birth. In other words, if your parents are poor, then you are poor; but if your parents are rich, you are also rich. The highest caste are the Brahmins. They are the priests and religious scholars. The Brahmins lived lives of luxury and style. They had servants to wait on them and were considered the most important people in the society. Brahmins had the duty of studying and teaching the Vedas, which was the collection of sacred Hindu writings used like a sort of Bible to the ancient Indians. They can be identified by the sacred thread worn over their shoulders.Then come the Kshatriyas, the warriors, rulers, and soldiers. They also had fairly easy lives, but the warriors and soldiers had to fight in wars and often camped out in tough conditions and were injured or killed in service. They are also charged with protecting the other citizens. The Vaishyas are the merchants, herders, craftspeople, and farmers. Lastly come the Shudras who are the servants. Each caste is said to come from the primordial being. The Brahmins who are the highest up come from the mouth and the Kshatriyas come from the arms. Next are the Vaishyas, who come from the thighs and then the Shudras from the feet as they are very low down and subordinate to all other castes.
There is a 5th and final caste, but to most ancient Indians, they are not considered pure. They are the untouchables. People believe that untouchables have bad karma. They think in an untouchable’s past life, they did not behave as they should have and broke laws or did other bad things. Hindus believed in karma, a belief that says how you behaved in your past lives determines your caste in this life. If you were bad, you get a lower varna, and if you were good, you get a higher varna. Because the untouchables were so ‘impure’ and ‘dirty’, they had to perform the unclean jobs such as any work involving physical contact with blood, excrement, or any other bodily ‘defilements.’ This includes, but is not limited to, cremating the dead, cleaning latrines, cutting umbilical cords, removing dead animals from the roads, tanning hides, and sweeping gutters. Some also work as low-payed farmhands. As you can see, the untouchables have very unfair lives. They were so low down in the caste system that the primordial being did not claim them. The untouchables are considered unworthy of this honor. They even had to live downwind of the other varnas so they didn't have to smell the untouchables. The untouchables were the lowly and dirty, so they couldn't enter most public buildings or schools. They had very bad lives in ancient India because of karma, which the ancient Indians thought was very important.
To learn a little more about ancient India, you must know what karma and dharma are. Dharma represents law, obligation, and duty. If you follow your dharma, you perform one’s duties and live as you should. Karma, as we explained earlier, is the belief that your previous lives will affect your current life negatively or positively depending on how you acted in your past lives. These two concepts are very important to daily life in ancient India along with religion. But, this will be discussed more in the Culture section.