The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (504 page)

 
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Caryatantra
(division of tantric texts)
:

see
TRIPI
AKA
.

 
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(
c.
360–435).
Christian monk. He came from the East to Marseilles, where
c.
415 he founded two monasteries and where he wrote his two main books. The
Institutes
sets out the ordinary rules for the monastic life. It was the basis of many W. rules, being drawn on e.g. by
Benedict
. The
Conferences
record his conversations with monastic leaders of the East.

 
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(
c.
485–
c.
580).
Roman author and Christian monk. He retired from public affairs in 540 to a monastery of his own foundation at Vivarium. He made it a kind of academy of secular and religious learning, which, by its example, did much to protect and continue classical learning and culture through the so-called ‘Dark Ages’.

 
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Cassock
.

Ankle-length garment worn by Christian clergy (and, in church, by vergers, choristers, etc.).

 
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(Portuguese,
casta
, ‘breed kind’). Term which indicates the unique hierarchical structure of S. Asian society, which, although originating from Hindu belief, has permeated all religions and communities of the subcontinent, having as its bases and sanctions religious as well as secular tenets. In modern India, the more common word for caste is the indigenous term
j
ti
(Skt.,
j
ta
, ‘race’).
The castes (and sub-castes), numbering many thousands, fit into the divinely originated
varna
framework, though their origin is later and usually based on secular criteria relating to occupation and area of origin.
Criteria of caste maintenance such as pollution, hereditary occupation, and commensality are necessarily gradually disappearing in public places in urban, industrialized India, but in the countryside (where
c.
80 per cent of the populace still lives), and in home life, such beliefs and the discriminatory practices related to them still prevail.
Caste has long been the target of reforming groups, both within Hinduism and from the outside. Gur
N
nak
and successive Sikh Gur
s declared caste irrelevant to salvation. However, intercaste marriage has always been rare among Sikhs, and at least at that level, caste is far from being eradicated among Sikhs: see
B
LM
K
;
BH
;
JA
;
KAB
R