Not Manusmriti, British—caste system in medieval Tamil Nadu solidified after Cholas fell

As always with India’s historical debates, the ideological extremes of the Right and Left don’t capture the realities of caste in the past. Every region, every group, had its own version of caste and faced discrimination—or used it to rise in the world. Caste was not just a religious system, it was a sociopolitical one. Anirudh Kanisetti explains using temple inscriptions from medieval South India.

Primary Sources (in order of appearance):
South Indian Inscriptions (SII) volume II, nos. 4 & 5
SII volume VIII, no. 178
SII volume VIII, no. 106
SII volume XVII, no. 603
Annual Reports of South Indian Epigraphy 1918, no. 538

Secondary Sources:
Karashima, Noboru. Ancient to medieval: South Indian society in transition. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Karashima, Noboru, and Y. Subbarayalu. "the emergence of the Periyanadu assembly in south India during the Chola and Pandyan periods." International Journal of Asian Studies 1, no. 1 (2004): 87-103.
Subbarayalu, Y. South India Under the Cholas. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012.




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