Culture, bhakti and science

Most of what we know about jātis (communities) comes from texts and some inscriptions, and there are many gaps. The system varied a lot by region, showing that varṇa and jāti were flexible, not fixed. For example, several sources say the Pālas and the Kākatīyas were originally Śhūdras, but over time came to be seen as Kṣhatriyas.

At the same time, a few texts use words like aspṛiśhya ('not to be touched'), showing discrimination against some communities seen as 'impure'. Xuanzang noted that butchers, fishers, dancers, executioners and scavengers had to live outside the city. Yet different varṇas and jātis usually worked together, because they depended on each other's work.

How did a job become a jāti? The Kāyasthas were scribes and clerks, a professional group open to people of different varṇas. In the 10th century they became a separate jāti, as over time they married mostly within the group.

Women: Bāṇabhaṭṭa shows women working in farming and crafts, and at court as entertainers, musicians, storytellers and attendants. Many inscriptions record women giving gifts to temples or paying for water structures. Several queens ruled: the Bhauma-Karas of Odisha had several, most notably Tribhuvana Mahadevi I, who strengthened the dynasty, put down revolts, ran the state well, supported Hindu and Buddhist institutions, and issued land grants as 'supreme sovereign empress, great queen of the three worlds'.

Religious traditions mixed in complex ways, sharing ideas (like dharma and karma), holy places, art and sometimes gods. Most of the time they lived side by side peacefully. Around the 6th century, Tantric schools arose, stressing rituals, meditation, mantras and the worship of powerful goddesses, especially Shakti. Jainism stayed popular in western India and Karnataka; the giant monolithic statue of Bāhubalī stands at Shravanabelagola.

From the 6th century, devotion grew into what is called the Bhakti movement. Bhakti (loving devotion to a god) existed earlier, but now it spread widely through all levels of society across India — not an organised movement, but a great wave.

It began in the South with the 12 Ālvārs, devotees of Viṣhṇu (one, Āṇḍāḷ, was a woman), and the 63 Nāyanārs, devotees of Śhiva (including three women). Their poems, mostly in regional languages, spoke of a direct, personal bond with God open to everyone, whatever their gender or social group. Several bhakti saints were themselves Śhūdras. Their influence lasts to this day.

Mathematics flourished too. Brahmagupta, born in 598 CE in Bhillamāla, wrote the Brahmasphutasiddhānta, giving the rules for working with zero, negative numbers and fractions — the same rules you learn now — and new ways to solve equations, making him one of the founders of algebra; his work was translated into Persian and later Latin. Others: Bhāskara I in trigonometry; Virahānka, who first described the Virahānka-Fibonacci numbers; and Mahāvīra, a Jain scholar at Amoghavarṣha's court, who wrote the first mathematics book separate from astronomy.