Caste relations in Mithila, Vajji and Anga were neither an unchanged survival from an ancient textual order nor a purely modern political invention. They were historical institutions repeatedly remade through marriage rules, genealogy, settlement, landholding, tenancy, labour, religious service, literacy, state employment, colonial enumeration, law, education and electoral representation. The same caste name could therefore occupy different economic positions in different districts or even in neighbouring villages, while families within a single caste could diverge sharply in property, education and political influence. A history of caste must reconstruct these changing relations instead of treating ranked labels as sufficient explanation. This chapter provides that longue-durée framework for PART X. It does not replace the focused histories that follow: Dalit experience is treated in Chapter 88; Adivasi and forest-connected populations in Chapter 89; Muslims in Chapter 90; gendered household relations in Chapters 91–93; education and mobility in Chapter 94; reservation and new middle classes in Chapter 95; and rural elites and changing landed power in Chapter 96. Here the task is narrower but foundational: to show how caste became attached to kinship, work, land and state categories, how those attachments changed, and why modern democratic caste identities cannot simply be projected backward into medieval society. 87.1 Caste relations must be reconstructed historically, not assumed as a timeless social essence The most important methodological rule is to distinguish persistence from immobility. Endogamy, inherited occupation, ranked commensality and ideas of purity could be durable, but the groups participating in these relations changed their names, boundaries, internal divisions, property positions and political strategies. A caste that appears in a colonial census as a single line in a table may have contained regional sections and status differences that mattered more locally than the census label. Conversely, separate local names could later be aggregated for political or administrative purposes. Social history therefore begins with dated evidence: inscriptions and texts for specific periods, genealogical manuscripts where their provenance is known, revenue records for land and tenancy, censuses for the classificatory practices of the colonial state, and post-independence legal and survey categories for the modern state. The aim is not to deny caste’s historical depth but to explain the institutions through which it acquired particular forms. 87.2 Varna and jati are related vocabularies but not interchangeable social maps Normative Sanskrit texts offered the four-varna scheme as a language of social order, but lived society was organised through many jatis, lineages, occupational groups, territorial identities and sectarian affiliations. In Mithila, Vajji and Anga, political authority, landholding, ritual standing and occupational specialisation did not line up in a single four-part grid. Kayastha and Karana service groups are an obvious example: their administrative roles were historically important even though textual attempts to place them within varna schemes varied. Cultivating communities could gain local dominance without acquiring the ritual status claimed by older elite groups. Fishing, boating, artisanal and service communities were shaped by riverine ecology and market demand as well as by inherited status. Using varna as if it were a census of the population therefore obscures precisely the historical relationships that require explanation. 877877 GAJENDRA THAKUR 87.3 Early and medieval evidence is uneven, so later caste maps cannot be projected backward without proof The evidence for social classification before the early modern period is fragmentary and genre-specific. Land grants may name Brahmins, officials, cultivators or service groups; legal and ritual texts prescribe idealised conduct; literary works deploy social stereotypes; genealogies preserve selected descent lines; and archaeology usually reveals material differentiation rather than named castes. None of these sources authorises a direct transfer of nineteenth- or twentieth-century caste lists into earlier centuries. A community’s later claim to antiquity may be culturally important without proving that its modern boundaries existed unchanged at the claimed date. This is especially important in a region with successive political centres, migrations across the Gangetic plain and Nepal Tarai, and changing languages of status. The correct historical question is not 'when did caste begin?' in the abstract, but when particular relations— endogamy, ranked service, hereditary office, exclusion from resources or corporate genealogy—became visible in recoverable evidence. Figure 344 — Caste relations changed as kinship, property, classification and representation changed 87.4 Settlement, specialised work and control over resources created local hierarchies long before modern administration Agrarian settlement produced interdependence as well as hierarchy. Cultivation required ploughing, cattle care, irrigation, harvesting, storage, transport, tool making, pottery, leather work and market exchange. Riverine settlements required ferrying, fishing and boat work; towns required scribes, traders and craft specialists; temples and courts supported ritual and clerical personnel. When these functions became associated with hereditary communities, occupation reinforced social boundaries, but the relationship was never perfectly fixed. Households shifted work, combined cultivation with specialised service and migrated to new markets. Local hierarchy was strongest when ritual claims were backed by control over land, credit, office or the right to demand labour. It weakened when alternative employers, markets, schools or migration allowed dependent households to bargain outside the village. Caste relations were therefore embedded in political economy from the beginning, not suspended above it. 87.5 Genealogy and marriage became unusually visible institutions in Mithila Mithila offers exceptionally rich evidence because genealogical regulation became institutionalised among important literate communities. Marriage was not only a domestic alliance; it linked lineages, villages, scholarly reputation, property and status. Panjikars preserved genealogical information and marriage eligibility could depend on proving acceptable descent distance. Such institutions transformed memory into HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II an administrative technology of kinship. They also reveal how a community could be made through record keeping: the archive did not merely describe a pre-existing group but helped stabilise its boundaries. Marriage circles, mula affiliations, settlement histories and genealogical authority therefore belong to the history of caste formation. They must still be used critically, because genealogies are selective records produced for particular social purposes rather than complete censuses of everyone inhabiting Mithila. 87.6 Panji prabandha helped consolidate corporate identities among Maithil Brahmins and Karna Kayasthas Research on Maithil Brahmin genealogies shows how registered lineages, territorial affiliation and rules of marriage were woven into a corporate Maithil identity. Karna Kayastha traditions likewise preserved Panji material concerned with lineages, original villages and subsequent places of residence. In both cases, the existence of genealogical archives demonstrates the role of scribal institutions in making descent socially actionable. Yet the systems should not be read as proof that every later internal rank or sub-caste existed in the same form from the beginning. What can be established more securely is a durable practice of recording lineages and regulating marriage among these communities, together with a wider regional culture in which scholarship, administration, court service and landed patronage could reinforce status. The Panjis are therefore strongest as evidence for the historical construction of corporate identities, not as warrants for an unchanging hierarchy. 87.7 The later Śrotriya category must not be projected backward as a fixed medieval Maithil Brahmin sub-caste This volume adopts a specific source-critical caution. The existence of medieval and early-modern Maithil Brahmin genealogy does not justify treating Śrotriya/Srotriya as a timeless, already fixed sub-caste throughout that earlier period. The later status category is treated here as a historical crystallisation associated with the late eighteenth to around 1800 and thereafter, not as an automatic label for medieval actors. This distinction matters because backward projection converts a later ordering into an ancient essence and then uses that essence to explain the very process that produced it. Medieval individuals should therefore be identified by the categories actually supported by contemporary or securely dated genealogical evidence. Later social gradations can be discussed in their proper period, when changes in patronage, learning, marriage ranking and regional elite culture made them socially consequential. 87.8 Scribal, clerical and courtly service complicated any simple ritual hierarchy Karna Kayasthas and other literate service groups demonstrate that access to writing and administration could generate authority that did not fit neatly into ritual models. Revenue accounting, correspondence, judicial paperwork and estate management required specialised literacy. Under regional courts, Mughal and successor administrations, zamindari estates and colonial offices, these skills could become hereditary family assets. Service connections produced salaries, land grants, urban residence and educational opportunities that differentiated households within and across castes. The same was true, in different forms, for pandits, priests and scholars whose intellectual capital linked them to courts and patrons. Caste rank therefore interacted with what might be called institutional capital: knowledge of scripts, law, accounts, ritual or bureaucracy. Modern educational mobility later widened access to these resources, but its effects were shaped by this older unequal distribution of literacy and office. 879879 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 345 — Four institutional mechanisms repeatedly remade caste relations 87.9 Cultivating communities converted agrarian skill and demographic weight into changing forms of local power Ahir/Yadav, Koeri/Kushwaha, Kurmi and numerous other cultivating communities occupied heterogeneous positions across Bihar. Some households were substantial raiyats or tenants with cattle, marketable surpluses and strong village networks; others held little land or combined cultivation with wage work. Their importance cannot be reduced to a single ritual rank. Intensive vegetable cultivation, dairy cattle, grain production and access to tenancy could create forms of economic competence that became increasingly valuable as markets expanded. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, prosperous sections invested in education, caste associations and status claims, while demographic strength became politically important under representative institutions. The resulting rise of 'backward caste' politics was not a sudden discovery of identities that had been socially dormant. It was the political reorganisation of communities whose agrarian roles and local solidarities had long existed but whose access to state office had been much more limited. 87.10 River, craft and service economies produced caste relations different from those of plough agriculture The floodplains of Mithila and Vajji and the Ganga corridor of Anga supported communities associated with fishing, ferrying, boating, basketry, pottery, metal work, weaving, barbering, washing, oil pressing and many other services. Colonial administrators often treated such occupations as caste identifiers, but work and identity were not perfectly congruent. A household might cultivate part of the year, migrate seasonally, fish during floods or enter urban wage labour. Market integration could increase the value of a specialised skill while also weakening hereditary patronage. Railways and bridges reduced some ferry-based livelihoods; industrial cloth affected weaving; modern transport changed carting and animal services. These transformations show why caste history must include technological and ecological change. An occupational label that looked permanent in an ethnographic table could be living through rapid economic reorganisation on the ground. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 87.11 Land ownership and caste rank overlapped strongly in many places, but they were never identical North Bihar’s agrarian history shows a pronounced concentration of land and rent-receiving rights among socially advantaged groups, yet village-level studies caution against treating every member of an 'upper' caste as a landlord or every member of a 'backward' caste as landless. There were poor households within prestigious groups, substantial tenants and proprietors among cultivating castes, and large differences among Scheduled Caste and Extremely Backward Caste households. What made land central was its multiplier effect. Ownership or secure tenancy supported food security, credit, cattle, education, litigation and the ability to hire labour; landlessness increased dependence on employers and patrons. Caste hierarchy became materially durable where access to land, irrigation, common resources and local office followed caste boundaries. When these resources shifted, the social balance could shift as well, even if marriage boundaries remained. 87.12 The Permanent Settlement of 1793 reworked caste through a new property and rent regime The Permanent Settlement did not invent social hierarchy, but it changed the legal environment in which hierarchy operated. Zamindars were recognised as revenue-responsible proprietors, while layers of tenure- holders, raiyats, under-raiyats and labourers developed beneath them. In north Bihar, large estates and intermediary rights could connect elite status to rent extraction and judicial influence. The structure was not simply 'upper caste landlord versus lower caste peasant': estate ownership, tenancy and sub-tenancy were internally differentiated, and commercialisation created new opportunities for moneylenders and substantial cultivators. Even so, the system gave property and legal leverage to a narrow set of actors and often made the village poor vulnerable to rent enhancement, eviction and indebtedness. Caste relations were thereby channelled through the colonial law of property and tenancy, making agrarian class indispensable to understanding social rank. 87.13 Large estates such as Darbhanga Raj magnified the relationship between status, bureaucracy and agrarian dependence The Darbhanga Raj became one of the most important landed institutions of colonial north Bihar. Its significance for caste history lies not simply in the identity of its ruling family but in the bureaucratic ecosystem of estate management: revenue offices, agents, legal specialists, village intermediaries, tenants and labourers. Such estates linked rural hierarchy to urban centres of education, patronage and politics. They could sponsor Sanskrit learning, religious institutions and public works while simultaneously depending on rent extraction from a highly stratified countryside. This duality is important. Elite cultural patronage and agrarian inequality were not separate histories; they were financed through overlapping systems of land and service. After independence, zamindari abolition dismantled the legal core of estate power, but networks of education, property, profession and local prestige did not disappear overnight. 87.14 Vajji and the Tirhut market zone combined dense tenancy with commercial and political mobility The Muzaffarpur–Vaishali–Hajipur zone linked fertile agriculture to market towns, transport routes and, in adjoining Tirhut, plantation and cash-crop histories. Such settings produced a more mobile social field than the image of a self-contained caste village suggests. Tenants sold produce, borrowed money, travelled to bazaars and interacted with officials and lawyers. Migration and military or urban employment 881881 GAJENDRA THAKUR introduced alternative sources of income. Caste still structured marriage and local status, but market participation could differentiate households within the same community. The growth of district boards, schools and electoral institutions created additional arenas in which numerically significant cultivating groups could organise. Vajji’s later prominence in backward-caste politics should therefore be understood against this longer history of agrarian density, market access and expanding public institutions. 87.15 Anga’s Gangetic corridor produced a distinct mixture of agrarian, artisanal and urban caste relations Bhagalpur and Munger connected river transport, silk and textile production, agriculture, trade, military- administrative institutions and later railways. Nineteenth-century descriptions of Bhagalpur already recorded a socially diverse population in which large cultivating communities coexisted with artisans, traders, boatmen, labouring groups and urban service castes. The point is not to reproduce colonial rankings, many of which carried ethnographic prejudice, but to recover the economic heterogeneity behind them. In Anga, caste relations were shaped by the possibility of combining village agriculture with town-based craft, transport and wage work. Industrial and railway employment later expanded those alternatives. The region thus illustrates how urbanisation and commodity production could loosen some forms of village dependence while preserving marriage boundaries and unequal access to capital. 87.16 Labour obligations made caste hierarchy tangible in everyday time and bodily service Hierarchy was experienced not only through abstract rank but through claims on labour. Begar or unpaid service, attached agricultural labour, hereditary village duties and expectations of deference could convert caste subordination into control over another household’s time. The severity and form of such obligations varied greatly, and they should not be homogenised into a single 'jajmani system'. Some services involved customary payments in grain or access to plots; others were coercive; many changed with cash wages and labour migration. What matters historically is the bargaining structure. When a household lacked land, credit and alternative employment, refusal was costly. When roads, cities, military service, plantations or migration opened new labour markets, the ability of patrons to enforce hereditary service could weaken. The detailed histories of Dalit labour and resistance belong to Chapter 88, but the broader formation of caste relations cannot be understood without this labour dimension. 87.17 Colonial censuses transformed caste by making names, numbers and ranked categories administratively comparable From the late nineteenth century, census operations required officials to convert locally variable identities into tabulated categories. This process did not create caste out of nothing, but it privileged standardised names and encouraged communities to petition for preferred classifications. Ethnographic surveys and district gazetteers added descriptions of origin, occupation, marriage and rank, often filtered through colonial theories of race and social evolution. The resulting archive is invaluable and hazardous at the same time. It provides population and occupational evidence unavailable elsewhere, yet it can make fluid or disputed identities look settled. The 1931 Bihar and Orissa census became especially consequential because later backward-class policy frequently used its demographic world as a reference point. Historians must therefore read census categories as evidence of both society and state classification. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Table 87.1 — Historical layers through which caste relations were institutionalised Historical layer Key institution How caste relations Source caution changed Medieval / early genealogy, marriage, corporate lineages do not project later modern court and service and marriage sub-caste ranks boundaries became backward recorded and enforceable c. 1793–1850 Permanent property and rent caste and class Settlement and estate rights strengthened overlap but are not administration some elite networks identical and dependencies 1872–1931 census, gazetteer and local identities were colonial categories ethnographic standardised, reflect administrative classification counted and theories as well as compared across society districts c. 1900–47 associations, petitions status claims became organisations often and peasant politics organised demands represented upwardly for education, jobs mobile sections first and representation 1950–78 Constitution, land formal inequality lost legal change was reform and adult legal legitimacy; local faster than franchise dominance became redistribution of electorally assets contestable 1978–90s BC/EBC reservation administrative large categories and Mandal politics backwardness contain substantial categories became internal inequality major political identities 2022–23 state caste-based all-caste population population share does survey data again became an not itself measure official planning and wealth or power representation resource 87.18 Caste associations converted local status disputes into province-wide programmes Print, rail travel, urban meetings and expanding education allowed caste organisations to operate beyond the village. Associations sponsored hostels, scholarships, genealogies, histories, conferences and campaigns for preferred names or higher social status. Some promoted sacred-thread wearing or Kshatriya claims; others concentrated on education and government employment. These movements are sometimes described simply as Sanskritisation, but their institutional importance was broader. They created executive committees, membership rolls, newspapers and fundraising networks that trained communities in modern associational politics. They also shifted the audience for status claims: recognition was sought not only from neighbouring castes but from census officials, political parties and the provincial state. Caste thus became simultaneously more 'modern' in organisation and more explicit as a public identity. 883883 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 346 — From ranked locality to enumerated and represented categories 87.19 The Triveni Sangh marked a decisive transition from status reform to political representation In the early 1930s, Yadav, Kurmi and Koeri/Kushwaha activists in Bihar created the Triveni Sangh, building on earlier cooperation and caste-association networks. Its importance exceeded its limited electoral success. The Sangh articulated the idea that numerically large cultivating communities required independent representation against a political order dominated by established elites. It campaigned against social humiliation and begar and demanded access to government employment. The movement also revealed the difficulties of coalition: the allied castes were internally unequal and did not always agree on leadership or rank. Congress co-option and competing peasant organisations further limited the Sangh. Yet the institutional innovation endured. It demonstrated that caste solidarity could be recast as a language of backward-class politics rather than as a claim to a higher position within an inherited ritual hierarchy. 87.20 Peasant movements show that caste and class overlapped without becoming the same thing The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha and other agrarian movements mobilised tenants and cultivators against landlord power, rent and insecurity. Their social composition crossed caste boundaries, and some prominent leaders came from communities that also included major landlords. This contradiction is historically instructive. Class position could divide a caste, while caste ties could divide a class. A substantial tenant might share an anti-zamindar interest with poorer cultivators but still employ landless labourers from subordinated communities. Conversely, elite leaders could oppose landlords from their own caste. The relationship between caste and class was therefore contingent rather than mechanical. Part X requires both categories because rural power operated through their intersection: property shaped dependence, while caste shaped marriage, honour, networks and access to institutions. Later electoral coalitions would repeatedly reorganise these cross-cutting interests. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 87.21 Independence changed the legal constitution of caste more quickly than everyday relations The Constitution of India established equality before law, prohibited discrimination on specified grounds and abolished untouchability. Zamindari abolition and tenancy reform attacked the legal foundations of landlordism. Universal adult franchise made every adult voter formally equal in electoral weight. These were profound institutional breaks. Yet law did not instantly redistribute land, education, social respect or control over village institutions. Older elites retained professional networks and property, while subordinated groups faced continuing barriers in schools, temples, wells, employment and housing in many localities. The historical significance of 1950 therefore lies in the creation of new legal and political resources through which hierarchy could be challenged. Caste relations moved from an order partly sanctioned by custom and inherited authority into a constitutional arena where discrimination could be contested and representation claimed. 87.22 Land reform weakened zamindari but produced uneven changes in caste power Abolition removed intermediary rent-receiving rights, yet the redistribution of actual cultivated land was much less sweeping. Ceiling laws, tenancy protection and homestead rights changed some relations, while evasion, litigation and administrative weakness limited others. In many parts of Bihar, substantial cultivating castes gained relative strength as landlord authority receded and agricultural markets expanded. This did not automatically benefit landless Scheduled Caste or Extremely Backward Caste households to the same degree. The result was not a simple transfer from 'upper' to 'lower' castes but a more complex differentiation: some middle peasant groups became local employers and political brokers; older elite families shifted toward professions and urban property; and agricultural labour remained highly unequal. The caste-class map was being redrawn rather than erased. 87.23 Education, migration and state employment multiplied routes of mobility after the 1950s School expansion, colleges, railways, public employment and migration to eastern and northern Indian cities reduced the village’s monopoly over opportunity. A salary from the army, railway, school system or government office could support land purchase and children’s education; migrant remittances could free households from local creditors; urban residence could weaken some rules of commensality while preserving endogamy. These gains were uneven because families entered the new economy with different levels of literacy, land and social networks. Communities with older traditions of schooling or clerical service were initially advantaged, while first-generation learners faced higher costs. Over time, however, education and migration created new middle strata within OBC, EBC, Scheduled Caste and minority communities. Caste remained important, but the assets through which caste power operated expanded beyond land. 87.24 Bihar’s 1978 reservation formula made internal differentiation within the backward classes a state principle The reservation measures associated with Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur in 1978 were historically significant because they recognised that the 'backward classes' were not a socially uniform bloc. Bihar’s policy distinguished more backward groups from other backward groups and included separate provisions for women and economically weaker sections in the state framework of the time. Whatever later revisions in percentages and legal form, the conceptual move endured: social justice policy required classification within 885885 GAJENDRA THAKUR the backward population, not merely a binary division between 'forward' and 'backward'. This state taxonomy interacted with older caste identities but did not simply reproduce them. Communities now had incentives to demonstrate educational and social disadvantage, while political organisations competed over the distribution of reserved opportunities. 87.25 The Mandal Commission shifted caste politics toward measured disadvantage and representation The Second Backward Classes Commission, chaired by B. P. Mandal, submitted its report in 1980 after using social, educational and economic indicators to identify Other Backward Classes. Its recommendation of 27 per cent reservation in central services for OBCs was implemented by the Union government in 1990, generating a major reorganisation of north Indian politics. Bihar was especially important because backward- caste mobilisation already had a long institutional history. Mandal did not introduce caste into politics; it changed the stakes by connecting caste classification to representation in the modern state. The language of public debate increasingly concerned share, access and historical exclusion rather than only ritual honour. The later constitutional and judicial history of reservation belongs to Chapter 95, but its effect on caste formation is already clear: administrative categories became powerful collective identities. 87.26 Lower-caste political ascendancy transformed public authority but did not make hierarchy disappear From the late 1980s and especially the 1990s, Bihar saw a dramatic expansion of political representation by groups earlier marginal to high office. Scholars have described this as a 'silent revolution' or lower-caste empowerment. In villages, the symbolic effect could be as important as policy: older expectations of automatic deference were challenged, police stations and block offices became contested arenas, and political speech emphasised dignity. Yet political representation did not eliminate inequality within the newly empowered categories. Some groups benefited more than others; local dominance could shift from older landholding elites to prosperous middle-peasant castes; and landless households could remain dependent. Democratic caste politics therefore needs to be read as a redistribution of voice and state access, not as the disappearance of class or intra-caste inequality. 87.27 The rise of an Extremely Backward Class category made visible the limits of a single backward-caste narrative Bihar’s distinction between Backward Classes and Extremely Backward Classes reflects a long-standing problem: communities grouped together for administrative purposes often differ sharply in landholding, literacy, numbers and political organisation. Many EBC communities historically depended on small cultivation, artisanal or service work and had less capacity to build province-wide associations than the larger Yadav, Kurmi or Koeri/Kushwaha networks. As OBC politics gained power, EBC claims increasingly stressed under-representation within the broader backward coalition. This history warns against treating 'lower caste' as a homogeneous social actor. Caste democratisation has repeatedly created new questions of internal distribution, leading to sub-quotas, revised lists and competing claims to disadvantage. These dynamics are central to Chapters 94–96, but they originate in the unequal social formation traced here. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 87.28 The 2022–23 Bihar caste-based survey shows how contemporary caste is also a data regime Bihar’s state caste-based survey counted 130.7 million people and reported broad shares of 27.1286 per cent Backward Class, 36.0148 per cent Extremely Backward Class, 19.6518 per cent Scheduled Caste, 1.6824 per cent Scheduled Tribe and 15.5224 per cent General/other reported categories. These figures do not describe the historical population of Mithila, Vajji or Anga at earlier dates, and they should not be used for backward projection. Their significance for this chapter is institutional: after decades in which independent India did not publish a full all-caste census comparable to 1931, the Bihar state again made caste numerically visible across the whole population. Enumeration can support welfare analysis and representation claims, but numbers do not directly measure wealth, local dominance or discrimination. A demographic share is one layer of social structure, not its explanation. 87.29 Nepal-side Mithila shares cross-border kinship but developed under a different state history of caste classification Mithila extends into Nepal’s Madhesh, where marriage, pilgrimage, language and market networks cross the international border. Yet the legal history of caste differs. Nepal’s Muluki Ain of 1854 encoded a state hierarchy that grouped peoples through categories of purity, commensality and legal status; later legal reform and the constitutional order rejected caste discrimination and developed a different official vocabulary of caste and ethnicity. The 2021 Nepal census records Madhesh as highly plural, with Yadav, Muslim, Teli, Tharu, Koiri/Kushwaha, Chamar/Ram and many other categories among its population. These categories cannot be mechanically matched to Bihar’s BC/EBC/SC framework. Cross-border families may recognise related jati identities while encountering different reservation, citizenship and administrative regimes on the two sides. The region is therefore socially connected but institutionally non-identical. Figure 347 — Regional emphases in caste formation across Mithila, Vajji, Anga and Nepal-side Mithila 887887 GAJENDRA THAKUR 87.30 Caste history is the history of changing relationships among kinship, property, work and the state Across the long duration, caste relations in Mithila, Vajji and Anga were repeatedly reconstructed. Genealogical institutions stabilised some marriage communities; land and labour made rank materially consequential; colonial censuses turned local identities into enumerable categories; associations and peasant movements made them political; constitutional equality delegitimised inherited exclusion; reservation and surveys converted disadvantage and representation into administrative questions; and migration, education and markets produced new inequalities within old names. The result is neither the disappearance of caste nor the survival of an unchanged ancient system. It is a layered modern formation in which old boundaries, new assets and state categories interact. That framework is necessary for the chapters that follow, which examine Dalit histories, Adivasi and forest-connected populations, Muslims, gender, education, reservation, class formation and the changing rural elite in much greater depth.