Brahmanical Institutions without Retrospective Caste Projection

Detailed chapter description

This chapter reconstructs Brahmanical institutions in medieval Mithila, Vajji and Aṅga through land grants, learned credentials, ritual and juristic expertise, household transmission, migration and patronage. Its governing method is chronological: early-medieval Brahman identities are described in the categories actually attested in their sources, while the later corporate organisation of Maithil Brahmans is reserved for the evidence that documents it. In particular, the Sanskrit qualification śrotriya is not treated as proof of the later Mithila Śrotriya sub-caste. Brahmanical power in medieval Mithila, Vajji and Aṅga cannot be reconstructed by taking a later caste list and moving it backward in time. The early and early-medieval evidence shows institutions: learned households, ritual specialists, teachers, juristic authorities, land grantees, advisers and networks of patronage. These institutions could generate durable status and reproduce privilege across generations, but their documentary form is not identical to the later corporate organisation of Maithil Brahmans. The first task is therefore to identify what an inscription or text actually makes visible. A grant may identify a beneficiary by gotra, pravara, Vedic affiliation and learning; a legal text may define an ideal qualification; a later genealogy may regulate marriage. Each belongs to a different institutional layer. This chapter reconstructs those layers without assuming that they had already fused into the later caste structure.