Ambedkar inherited a millennia-deep anticaste tradition spanning Buddhists, Veerashaivas, and Bhakti saints

Evidence

Their debate was not a new one. Both men were their generation’s emissaries of a profound social, political and philosophical conflict that had begun long ago and has still by no means ended. Ambedkar, the Untouchable, was heir to the anticaste intellectual tradition that goes back to 200–100 BCE. The practice of caste, which is believed to have its genesis in the Purusha Sukta hymn51 in the Rig Veda (1200–900 BCE), faced its first challenge only a thousand years later, when the Buddhists broke with caste by creating sanghas that admitted everybody, regardless of which caste they belonged to. Yet caste endured and evolved. In the mid-twelfth century, the Veerashaivas led by Basava challenged caste in South India, and were crushed. From the fourteenth century onwards, the beloved Bhakti poet-saints—Cokhamela, Ravidas, Kabir, Tukaram, Mira, Janabai—became, and still remain, the poets of the anticaste tradition. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 84

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s general knowledge of Indian history and the Bhakti movement poets.
• DEFINE: Establishes the Purusha Sukta as the believed textual genesis of caste practice.