Indian tradition states that the intermingling of people from the North and South, separated by the Vindhya Mountains , started taking place during the time when Sage Viswamitra lived.
Sage Viswamitra banished his 56 children to the ‘Dravida‘ ,meaning South of Vindhya Mountains, as they disobeyed him.
They moved to the South, found a culturally rich civilization , married integrated the Veda and Dravidian Customs and formed the Agamas.
Sage Apasthamba compiled the Vedas for those living south of the Vindhyas , comprising the best of both the Cultures and gave the Apasthamba Sutra,.
This is practiced in the South even today.
Recent studies date this period around 4000 years earlier from now.
This roughly corresponds to the beginning of Kali Yuga of Indian calendar.
( According to the Surya Siddhanta, Kali Yuga began at midnight (00:00) on 18 February 3102 BCE in the proleptic Julian calendar, or 14 January 3102 BC)
But the system of caste has been in existence much before the intermingling of people between the South and the North, in the North and South,
Though the names are different , there were marriages between different groups in the south or the Dravida area as well.
People were classified on the basis of the basis of their geographical location in the South.
The Tamil Literature assigns names ,
Kuringi, Hilly Terrain.
Mullai.Forest areas.
Marutham, Arable land mass.
Neydal, Area around the Sea and
Palai, the Desrt area.
The characteristics and specific issues are elaborated in the Tholkappiyam Agathiyam, the ancient works in Tamil.
Each area had its own God’s,Profession and social Mores.
Cowherds lived in Mullai,farmers in Marutham, Hunters in Kurinji,Fishermen in Neyadal and Kallars in Palai.
There were injunctions against marrying from different geographical group.
So the Caste system is not because of the mingling from the North.
The Study at best conveys the fact that people from the North started mingling with each other , that’s all.
This does not mean that Caste has been imported to South from the North.
This confusion or deliberate misinformation is because of the Myth of Aryan Invasion of the South.
Please read my posts on Aryan Invasion Myths and On Viswamitra.
The name Viswamitra appears in all the Four Yugas, or the Time Scale of the Hindus,
it is difficult to assign a time for him.
And Viswamitra is a Nom de plume, meaning ‘friend of the Universe ‘.
The name of the Viswamitra as it appears in the Ramayana, which took place in the Treta Yuga, is Kausika.
And the Viswamitra of Dwapara Yuga can not be same as the Yugas are separated by thousands of Years.
Unless people were living for very long period of time, which, in my opinion, is possible.
More important is the concept of Time in Hinduism.
Read my post on Time.
There is another anomaly in the study.
It says the intermingling of the North and South stopped about 2000 years ago.
Are there not marriages today between the people of the north and the South?
Some more doubts on Viswamitra,
“I had some confusion about Sage Vishwamitra. We hear
about Sage Vishwamitra in many places:
[1] Much before the Lord Rama came down to the earth.
(Vishwamitra was the one who build the heaven for the
ancestor of Lord Rama, Satyavrata, later called as
Trishanku).
[2] Then Vishwamitra went into penance with an enimity
with Sage Vasista. Thats when Gayathri mantra was
given to us.
[3] During the penance Menaka comes down and from them
is born the Bharatha dynasty king – Dushyant. So does
that mean while Lord Rama’s dynasty (SuryaVamsa) were
ruling in Treta Yuga, the seed for the Bharatha’s
dynasty (ChandraVamsa) was sown and set to begin in
Dwapara Yuga? in which Yugas did the Chandra Vamsa and
Surya Vamsa dynasties gain importance?…
I cannot provide you with a religious/spiritual answer, but as far as chronology
is concerned – here is my answer:
If you please refer to my ‘Royal Chronology of India’ at
(http://www.newdharma.org/India_Chron.zip) you’ll see the name Vishvamitra come
up many times (as you will also see with Vasishtha) because these are not one
person. They represent an incredible lineage of Rsis going back thousands of
years. These priests have been mentioned in our scriptures by their family
names (“last names”) and on a few occassions their first names are also
mentioned.
”
Analysis of mtDNA Suggests a Proto-Asian Origin of
Indians
MtDNA HVR1 genetic distances between caste populations and Africans, Asians, and Europeans are significantly different from zero (p<0.001) and reveal that, regardless of rank, each caste group is most closely related to Asians and is most dissimilar from Africans (Table (Table1).1). The genetic distances from major continental populations (e.g., Europeans) differ among the three caste groups, and the comparison reveals an intriguing pattern. As one moves from lower to upper castes, the distance from Asians becomes progressively larger. The distance between Europeans and lower castes is larger than the distance between Europeans and upper castes, but the distance between Europeans and middle castes is smaller than the upper caste-European distance. These trends are the same whether the Kshatriya and Vysya are included in the upper castes, the middle castes, or excluded from the analysis. This may be owing, in part, to the small sample size (n=10) of each of these castes. Among the upper castes the genetic distance between Brahmins and Europeans (0.10) is smaller than that between either the Kshatriya and Europeans (0.12) or the Vysya and Europeans (0.16). Assuming that contemporary Europeans reflect West Eurasian affinities, these data indicate that the amount of West Eurasian admixture with Indian populations may have been proportionate to caste rank.”
“India’s caste system, says a new genetic study, began about 2,000 years ago. The study adds that people from different genetic populations — from the North and the South — began to mix with each other about 4,200 years ago but that the mixing stopped about 2,000 years ago.
The study was carried out by Harvard Medical School and the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad. David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, said that the caste system in India has been around for a long time, but that it had certainly not begun right at the very beginning.
Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC311057/
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