The Birth of the rājanya

This talk will excavate the complex semantic history of the terms rājanya and kṣatriya to gain insight into the Vedic political imagination, as well as challenge a century of scholarship that has retrojected a much later conception of varṇa onto the past, creating the illusion that caste is a timeless and immutable feature of South Asia. On the contrary, varṇa is a concept with a surprising history, and there was nothing inevitable about its final development.

Host or Publisher The Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs