caste A term claimed to be derived from the Portuguese ‘casta’ (‘pure’), and widely adopted to designate the principle on which traditional Indian society is perceived to be organized (the caste sys-tem’). The Sanskrit equivalents are varna (‘class’ (lit. ‘colour’)) and, more accurately, *jati (‘[position assigned by) birth’), the former indicating a *Brah-manically established, idealized hierarchy based on social function, the latter a complex social reality composed of ‘castes’, ‘subcastes’, and ‘sub-subcastes’ (Johnson 80).
Johnson, W. J.. “caste.” A Dictionary of Hinduism. OUP Oxford, 2009, p. 80-81.