आगमे विश्वासटिप्पन्यः

The model for traditional Indian society
was as a collection of endogamous subgroups (i.e., groups in which marriages
occurred only between members of the
same group) known as jatis (“birth”).
These jatis were organized (and their
social status determined) by the group’s
hereditary occupation, over which each
group had a monopoly. Although it
sounds bizarre, this specialization
extended to all occupations, and there
were hereditary occupational groups
whose profession was thievery and banditry. The most famous individual from
these was Tirumangai (9th c.), by far the
most picturesque of the Alvars, a group
of twelve poet-saints who lived in southern India between the seventh and tenth
centuries. In the nineteenth century the
British composed a list of several hundred such groups, who were subject to
relentless scrutiny, opposition, and in
many cases resettlement.