varna and jati

[Stephens]

After this training they officiated as priests known as "Kamma
> Brahmalu" (Kamma Brahmins) at the births, marriages and deaths of those
> kamma families which chose to use their services - not all kamma families
> made this choice. <<

This reminds me of a maestri who used to work for Bayer in Salem, Tamilnadu
many years ago. I believe he belonged to the so called "scheduled caste" and
was in charge of bringing labourers from his village to the warehouse. He
was called gounder by his fellow villagers, but he did not belong to the
actual "gounder" community of coimbatore/salem area. He used to officiate in
his village temple and ceremonies, he was also called poojari by his peers.
I know this because his job also included taking me to school everyday and
we used to chat enroute.

I had earlier posted a question asking for the earliest reference of
Caucasians as "whites" in English/European literature. The reason for that
question was if this is a recent development  of say 1000 years or so, then
arriving at the conclusion that the Vedas attributed "white" to the Aryans
would seem far fetched. In fact, the day I realised that the Caucasians were
called "white", I was stupefied because I couldn't relate the colour white
to the skin colour of Caucasians, it was more like pink or some other
colour.

Sujatha :)