What happened to the original "vaishyas"?

[Guest guest]

As an example of the problems encountered if one assumes that the

varna system has existed continuously, let us consider the vaishyas.

 

There exist several lists of 84 nyats of vaishyas. Quite a few of

these nyats have history that goes back to 11th-12th century, which

can be constucted using inscriptions and literary mentions. To the

best of my knowledge, there is no mention to any of them prior to the

8th century [1].

 

If one looks at the traditional accounts of the origin of several of

these nyats (for example Agrawals, Khandelwals, Oswals, Maheshwaris

etc.) their origin is derived from kshatriyas.

 

Question is then what happened to the ancient vaishyas?

 

Yashwant

 

[1] However most of them are named after cities, some of which are

quite ancient. Some of the nyats may have existed prior to 8th

century, but it is not possible prove that with hard evidence.

 

There is one remarkable exception. In central India, there is one

trading nyat "Gahoi" i.e. Grahapati in Sanskrit, which was the

standard term in Buddhist and Jain texts for merchants.