What was the condition of the caste system in the late Vedic period?

Loose division of society into varnas, movement between these varnas were comparatively easy. Society was divided into thousands of castes, which then got crystallized into more homogenous units in the post-Vedic period. There was no caste in the Vedic period. Varna and caste had similar features even in the Vedic period.

Loose division of society into varnas, movement between these varnas were comparatively easy.

The varna classification is roughly three thousand years old. However, the ‘caste system’ stood for different things in different time periods, so that it is misleading to think of the same system continuing for three thousand years. In its earliest phase, in the late Vedic period roughly between 900 — 500 BC, the caste system was really a varna system and consisted of only four major divisions. These divisions were not very elaborate or very rigid, and they were not determined by birth. Movement across the categories seems to have been not only possible but quite common.