Law of Dharma/Caste SYSTEM

Dharma- duties and obligations that a person has

 Taught to Hindu children from an early age

 Helped to ensure moral order in society

Caste System- gave people a role and rules to live by in society

The pattern of social classes in Hinduism is called the "caste system." The word caste derives from the
Portuguese casta , meaning breed, race, or kind.

The Indian Caste System is historically one of the main dimensions where people in India are socially differentiated
through class, religion, region, tribe, gender, and language.

There is no exact translation of caste in Indian languages, but varna and jati are the two most proximate terms.

Varna
Varna literally means colour, and was a framework for grouping people into classes, first used in Vedic Indian
society. It is referred to frequently in the ancient Indian texts.
Jati
Jati, meaning birth, is mentioned much less often in ancient texts, where it is clearly distinguished from varna.
There are four varnas but thousands of jatis.
The caste system is a classification of people into four hierarchically ranked castes called varnas. They are classified
according to occupation and determine access to wealth, power, and privilege.

 Brahmans, usually priests and scholars, are at the top.

 Kshatriyas, or political rulers and soldiers.
 Vaishyas, or merchants,
 Shudras, who are usually laborers, peasants, artisans, and servants.
 At the very bottom are those considered the untouchables. These individuals perform occupations that
are considered unclean and polluting, such as scavenging and skinning dead animals and are considered
outcastes. They are not considered to be included in the ranked castes.

Caste System

 Started with the Aryan civilization

 People belonged to one of the four varnas, or clases.

 Caste system developed over thousands of years

 Based on the idea that there are separate kinds of humans

 Higher caste people considered purer closer to moksha

 Lower caste were impure

 Divided people within each class until there were thousands of castes and sub-castes
Rules of Caste System

 Rules were meant to keep people spiritually pure

 Especially for higher caste members who were the most pure

 Contact with a lower class gave you a polluted soul

 Some believed that a shadow could make a soul impure

Rules of Caste System

 Cooking and eating habits

 Marriage
 Employment (each job had its own caste)
 Job was determined at birth
 Different gods for each caste
 Where you lived
 How you dressed
 Each caste has a council that enforces all the rules

 Ex: –A Brahman could only eat food prepared by anther Brahman

 You could only marry someone from your own caste

Interdependence of the Caste System

 Creates stability in the society and order

 Everyone knows what to do and why

 Different castes depended on one another

 An upper-caste merchant, for example needed the service of a lower caste water carrier.

 This system is imbedded in the laws, customs, and religious traditions, and they accepted the view of their
unworthiness.

Village Life

 Most people in India treat the village as the basic unit of society

 Village led by a Headman- respected landlord that inherits the position from his father

Family Life

 Traditionally Indians favor the Joint Family

 Joint Family- includes husband, wife, their sons with their families and unmarried daughters

 Family was patriarchal (father ruled)

 Family interests were put ahead of individual

 “Father is heaven, father is religion, the gods are pleased by pleasing father.

 Father has complete control over household

Marriage

 Head of the family arranged marriages to protect and benefit family

 Bride and groom have no say in this

 Marriages arranged at an early age but the ceremony happens later

 When married the girl would leave her family/home and go to her husband’s family

 Might visit her own family once a year

Religious Traditions : Hinduism and Buddhism

Hinduism
 Hinduism is the chief Religion of India
1. No founder
2. No formal church
3. Ancient Aryan beliefs and practices
 What is the symbol of Hinduism?
Aum is the main symbol of Hinduism. It is the sound heard in deepest meditation and is said to be the
name most suited for God.
 Sacred Texts
1. Vedas
Internal truths that were reveled to wise men
2. Upanishads ( oo pan ih shadz)
Helped to explain the ideas contained in the Vedas
3. The Ramayana (rah mah yuh) and the Mahabharata (muh hah bah rah tuh)
Two of the most famous hindu epics.
 Brahman
 Hindus worshiped thousands of Gods.
 Each god is part of a single supreme force called brahman.
 the eternal, unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine
Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe
 3 Main Gods
 Brahma- creator
 Vishnu- preserver
 Siva- destroyer
 Each has own family.
 Sects- group with distinctive religious, political or philosophical beliefs.
 Atman (AHT MUHN)- an essential self, part of a universal soul.
 Karma
 “to do”
 Every deed, mental or physical, in this life affects a persons fate in future life.

Buddhism

 Guatama’s enlightenment
 Realized there was suffering and misery
 Set out to find the cause of misery
 6 years-found the answer
 Known as Buddha or “enlightened one”
  The Buddha’s Teachings
Four Noble Truths
1) Suffering is universal
2) Cause of suffering is desire
3) only way to end suffering is to crush desire
4) the only way to end desire is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path.
 Denied the existence of Gods
 Rejected the caste system

Literature and the Arts of India

Siva – Lord of the dance

The Visual Arts

Stupas. Buddhist tradition helped shape the arts of India. Asoka was the first great patron, or supporter, of the
arts. He had builders construct tall columns inscribed with messages praising peace and non violence. As you have
read, to strengthen Buddhism, he ordered the building of stupas or dome-shaped burial mounds.

Symbolic meaning of stupa

Dome – dome of the heaven.

On top of the dome is a square structure – the world

Umbrella – royalty

Railings and gateways – life, daily life, scenes from stories, animals, monsters and spirits

Temples. Both Buddhist and Hindu carved huge temples into hillside. The Buddhist cave temple at Karli, built
around A>D 50, has a vast hall that is 124 feet (38m) long and almost 50 feet (15m) high. At Ellora, Hindu workers
built an immense temple 96 feet (29m) high by chiseling from the top of a hill down to its base.

Sculpture. Sculptors decorated every inch of temples with rich carvings. Through carvings, people learned Hindu
stories and traditions. Hindus recognize hundreds of gods and goddesses. Each may appear in many forms, giving
scuplturs a vast choice of subjects.

Islamic art. Muslims introduced new styles of art to South Asia. They built graceful mosques and tombs that
reflected Persian, Greek, nad Roman influences. In time, Islamic and Hindu styles mingled to create a rich new
Indian art.

They decorated buildings with passages from the Koran, written in an ornate form of writing called calligraphy.

 India the Land of Literature

It will be the most accurate judgment in considering Literature as legacy of India .Indian literature includes
everything which is included in the word ‘literature’ in its broadest, sense: religious and mundane, epic and lyric,
dramatic and didactic poetry, narrative and scientific prose, as well as oral poetry and song.

Indian literature represents the Past , Present and Future of Indian Society , binding the multi cultural diverse and
vast society acting as a soul to preserve the glorious history which man kind has every recorded.

 Its represents the era

  It represents the mundane life
 It represents the social economic condition Its represents the progress of the society and thought
 It represents the custom & culture
 It represents the philosophy and psychology

Vedas , the Oldest Indian literature can considered to be the assimilation of the early thoughts of human
interaction withnature , comprised about 1500 BC. Classification of old Indian Literature

Literature

The great sources of Indian literature are two epic poems, the Mahabharata(“The Great Story”) and the Ramayan
(“Rama’s Way”)

Hindu epic. The Mahabharata has 100000 verses and contains many basic Hindu ideas and teaching. This long
poem tell about a 12- year war between two branches of a royal family. The Ramayana continues to be popular in
India today.

Diffusion and diversity. The epic poems and many early stories began as part of oral tradition. Eventually, they
were written down in Sanskrit. Through cultural contacts, stories spread to other parts of the world. The
Panchatantra Is a famous collection of Indian stories, many of them featuring animals as characters.

Tagore. Among India’s most famous modern writers is Rabindranath Tagore. He wrote poems, short stories,
essays, fables, and plays in both Bengali and English. In 1913, Tagore was the first Asian writer to win the Nobel
Prize for literature.

One of Tagore’s poems celebrated the cultural and ethnic diversity of India. The poem later became India’s
national anthem.

Novelist. Modern Indian writers have gained worldwide audiences. They dram on many themes, inc. the struggles
of the poor in both villages and cities .In his novel Untouchable, Mulk Raj Anand re-creates a day in life of a young
sweeper, an outcaste in Indian society. In Nectar in a sieve, Kamal Markandaya tells a woman’s struggle to hold her
family together in the face of desperate poverty.

The Performing Arts

Dance and Theater. Dance and music are closely linked. Every movement in Indian dancing has meaning. Through
their eye, head and hand movements, dancers tell story. Dancers train for years to learn hundreds of hand
gestures, called mudras. The audience knows the emotion or idea suggested by each movement.

Indian theater combines music, dance, pantomime, and dialogue. Many dramas are based on episodes from the
Mahabharata and the Ramayana, or other well-known tales.

Movies. Today, movies are India’s most popular performing art. India has the largest motion-picture industry in the
world. Its studios turn out more than 900 films each year.
 PANPACIFIC UNIVERSITY NORTH PHILIPPINES

URDANETA CITY

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS EDUCATION

Culture of Southeast Asia

(India)
Patterns of life: Caste System
Religious Traditions: Hinduism and Buddhism
Literature and the Arts

Grading System Submitted By:

50% Reporting Chelsie A. Bagsic

 30% Mastery Ryan Garcia

 10% Stage Presence Angel Laroya

 10% Visual Aids/ Written Report Submitted To:

50% Activity Sharmaine Ventura

 30% Relevance to the topic

 25% Creativity