Bengali Kayastha

Bengali Kayastha denotes a Bengali Hindu who is a member of the Kayastha caste. In Bengal, Kayasthas represent the region's surrogate Kshatriya or warrior caste.

According to Tej Ram Sharma, an Indian historian, the office of Kayastha in Bengal was instituted before the Gupta period (c. 320 to 550 CE), although there is no reference to Kayastha as a caste at that time. He says some scholars have noted that, "originally the professions of Kayastha (scribe) and Vaidya (physician) were not restricted and could be followed by people from different varnas including the brahmanas. So there is every probability that a number of brahmana families were mixed up with members of other varnas in forming the present Kayastha and Vaidya communities of Bengal."

Historians P. C. Choudhuri, K. R. Medhi and K. L. Barua state that "the Brahmins noted in the Nidhanpur and Dubi inscriptions of king Bhaskaravarman" bore surnames "which are at present used by Kayasthas of Bengal and Nagara Brahmins of Gujarat," and "were either of the Alpine origin or pre-Vedic Aryans." Similarly, the Kayasthas and Kalitas of Assam "are also supposed to be descendants of extra-Vedic Aryans".

According to André Wink, another historian, the caste is first referred to around the 5th-6th century CE, and may well have become so identified during the period of the Sena dynasty. Between that time and the 11th-12th century, this category of officials or scribes was composed of "putative" Kshatriyas and, "for the larger majority", Brahmins, who retained their caste identity or became Buddhists. As in South India, Bengal had lacked a clearly defined Kshatriya caste. The Pala, Sena, Chandra, and Varman dynasties and their descendants, who claimed the status of Kshatriya, "almost imperceptibly merged" with the Kayastha caste, which in this way became "the region's surrogate Kshatriya or warrior class".

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