Vratya

In the Atharva Veda, one of the earliest
Hindu religious texts, the vratyas were a
particular class of vagrant ascetics who
were priests of a non-Vedic fertility cult.
Not much is known about them because
there are no other sources, but they were
clearly outside the Vedic cult and thus
looked down upon. In later times, the
word is used to designate a person who
has lost caste through nonobservance of
one of the necessary samskaras (lifecycle ceremonies).