Words of the Rigveda to describe different classes or categories of the people:

• There are several ways of describing people—in the terms of the work they do, the language they speak, the place they belong to, their family, their communities and cultural practices.
• Broadly speaking, we can confess that there are two groups (of people) who are described in terms of their work—the priests, sometimes called brahmins, who performed various rituals for the rajas. These rajas were not like the ones you will be learning about later (in coming chapters). They did not have capital cities or armies, nor did they collect taxes. Generally, sons did not succeed fathers automatically.
• Two words were used (in the Rigveda) to describe people or the community as a whole. One was the word jana, which we still use in Hindi and other languages. The other was Vish. The word Vaishya comes from Vish.