NCERT Solutions for Class 9th Social Science Chapter 5 Varṇa and Jāti — LET'S EXPLORE

The source, as the chapter prints it (Ṛigveda 9.112.3):

What the source tells us — the evidence, stated plainly and without going beyond the words:

• The speaker is a poet (kāru). A composer of hymns is speaking in his own voice.
• His father is a physician (bhiṣhaj) — a different occupation from the son's.
• His mother is a grinder of corn (upalaprakṣhiṇī) — a third occupation, and a woman's work named in a hymn.
• All three live in one family, at the same time.
• They are described as “desiring riches” — an ordinary, material motive, openly stated in a sacred text.
• The verse uses a simile — the family remains in the world “like cattle (in the stalls)”.

We can understand that in the society this verse comes from, occupation was not automatically inherited from the father, and that different kinds of work could sit together inside a single household without embarrassment.

Three inferences the evidence supports:

1. Occupations were flexible and mobile. The chapter draws exactly this conclusion: at this stage occupations remained flexible and mobile, and the idea of strict hereditary occupations had not yet become firmly established. If sons had automatically followed fathers, a poet with a physician father could not exist.
2. Women's work was visible and named. The mother's occupation is stated as plainly as the father's. This fits the chapter's account of a period in which women participated in scholarly learning, performed rituals, attended the sabhā, and had hymns of the Ṛigveda attributed to them — Apālā, Viśhvavārā, Ghoṣhā and Lopāmudrā.
3. Ordinary material life was not thought unfit for a hymn. The family “desiring riches” appears inside a Vedic hymn. Wealth (artha) was a legitimate goal — later formalised as one of the four puruṣhārthas, desirable provided it is guided by dharma.

It is one verse about one family. Knowing its limits is as much a part of the historian's craft as reading it.

• It is a single case. Three occupations in one family show that such a family could exist. They do not tell us whether it was common or unusual — a poet may have mentioned it precisely because it was striking.
• It gives no date and no place. The chapter notes that the date of composition of the Ṛigveda remains debated among historians, with estimates ranging from the fifth millennium BCE to the second millennium BCE. So we cannot pin this family to a century.
• It says nothing about status, ranking or reward. We learn what the three people did, not how they were regarded, what they earned or whether they could marry outside their group.
• It is a hymn, not a record. Its purpose is ritual and poetic. The simile of cattle in stalls is an image; we should not read it as a description of living conditions.
• It reaches us through a long oral tradition. Vedic literature existed in oral form for several centuries before it was written down.
• It is silent about most people. It tells us nothing about farmers, herders, weavers or traders — the great majority — nor about people outside this one household.

Three occupations are mentioned, one for each member of the family:

What this indicates about the nature of occupations in Vedic society:

• Occupations were diverse within a single family — the verse is quoted by the chapter precisely as “a verse of the Ṛigveda in which the seer refers to occupational diversity within a single family”.
• They were flexible and mobile. A son could take up work quite different from his father's.
• They were not yet strictly hereditary — the chapter says the idea of strict hereditary occupations had not yet become firmly established.
• Work of very different kinds — intellectual, professional and manual — could coexist in one household without any suggestion in the verse that one disgraced the others.

It challenges that idea directly, because if occupation were fixed by birth, this family could not exist. The son of a physician would be a physician. He is a poet.

The argument, step by step:

What strengthens the challenge:

• The chapter states that early Vedic texts do not indicate any fixed social status strictly based on birth. Social identity was shaped by several complex and overlapping factors — ethnicity, subgroups, geographic region, village affiliation, gotra, language, and especially occupation.
• The varṇa division was a functional one, resting on a system of values in which knowledge was given the highest status, followed by political power and wealth — a ranking of functions, not of ancestries.
• An independent source says the same thing in plain words. The Buddhist Sutta Nipāta: “No brāhmaņa is such by birth. No outcaste is such by birth but only by his deeds. A brāhmaņa is such by his deeds.”
• Later evidence shows mobility continuing. Rulers came from diverse social backgrounds — the Nandas, Mauryas, Śhuṅgas, Satavāhanas, Vākāṭakas, Guptas and Puṣhyabhūtis. The Mandsaur Stone Inscription (473 CE) records a guild of silk weavers, migrants from Lata to Dashapura, proficient also in archery and astrology. The Karitalai copper plates of Mahārāja Jayanātha (late 5th century CE) record brāhmaṇas working as land managers.
• In the south, the Tolkappiyam's four-fold classification seems to be premised on occupation, and was marked by fluidity; the Pattinappalai describes a society organised more by occupation and economic function than by rigid varṇa.

Method. The point of this question is comparison, not list-making. Group today's occupations by the same kinds of work the verse names — words and learning, healing, food and manual work — and then say what has changed. A good answer ends with the comparison, not with the list.

Sample answer: Today the range of occupations is far wider than the three in the verse, but many of them are recognisably descended from them.

Three comparisons worth making:

• Occupations have multiplied. Many of today's jobs did not exist a generation ago. The chapter's own explanation of jātis works here: as new social groups and occupations developed, the number of jātis continued to grow — new work has always generated new groups.
• Choice is now protected by law. The Ṛigvedic family shows occupation was not fixed by birth in practice. Today it is a legal right — my occupation is not decided by my parents' occupation.
• One family, many occupations, is still normal. In most households today the parents, the children and the grandparents do quite different work — exactly the pattern the seer described three thousand years or more ago.

Method. This is a reflection on method, so answer it about method. Report honestly what your two groups agreed and disagreed about, then draw the general lesson. What a good answer needs: (i) at least one real point of agreement, (ii) at least one real difference, (iii) an explanation of why the difference arose, and (iv) the conclusion about how history is written.

Sample answer: Our group and the group beside us agreed on everything the verse actually says — that a poet, a physician and a corn-grinder belonged to one family, and that they were “desiring riches”. That is the evidence, and evidence is not a matter of opinion.

We differed on what it means. Our group argued that the verse proves occupations were freely chosen in Vedic society. The other group said it proves only that this one family had three occupations, and that a single verse cannot describe a whole society. On reflection we thought their reading was the more careful one: our claim went further than one verse can carry. A third difference was about the mother — we had barely mentioned her, while the other group made her the most interesting figure in the verse, because a woman's work is named in a sacred hymn.

What this tells us about how historians use evidence:

• Evidence and interpretation are different steps. The words of a source are fixed; what they mean has to be argued for. Groups agreed on the first and differed on the second.
• Interpretations must be argued, not asserted. The stronger reading is the one that fits the evidence without going beyond it — which is why the more cautious group was more convincing.
• What you ask determines what you see. The group that was looking for women in the past found the mother; we, looking for occupations, almost missed her.
• One source is rarely enough. This is why the chapter puts the Sutta Nipāta beside the Ṛigveda, and the Mandsaur and Karitalai inscriptions beside both. Independent sources pointing the same way turn a possible reading into a reliable conclusion.
• Honest disagreement is normal in history. The chapter itself models this: the date of the Ṛigveda remains debated among historians, with estimates ranging from the fifth to the second millennium BCE, and the chapter reports the disagreement instead of hiding it.