Baidya

Baidya or Vaidya is a Bengali Hindu community located in the Bengal region of Indian subcontinent. A caste (jāti) of Ayurvedic physicians, the Baidyas have long had pre-eminence in society alongside Brahmins and Kayasthas. In the colonial era, the Bhadraloks were drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from these three upper castes, who continue to maintain a collective hegemony in West Bengal.

The terms Baidya means a physician in the Bengali and Sanskrit languages. Bengal is the only place where they formed a caste or rather, a jati.

The origins of Baidyas remain surrounded by a wide variety of overlapping and sometimes contradictory myths, and are heavily contested. Aside from Upapuranas and two genealogies (Kulajis), premodern Bengali literature does not discuss details of the caste's origins, nor do any old and authentic Smritis. The community claims a descent from the semi-legendary Ambashthas, mostly believed to be of Kshatriya origin in Hindu scriptures, but such connections are tenuous.

It is plausible the Baidyas had some link with Vaidyas of South India; inscriptions of the Sena dynasty mention migrations from Karnat and other places. The Talamanchi plates of Vikramaditya I (c. 660 CE) were drafted by one Vajravarman, described as an "illustrious Vaidya"; besides, three South Indian inscriptions of the Pandyas (c. late 8th century) note the Vaidya-kula (trans. "Vaidya clan" /"Vaidya family") to be Brahmins, famed for expertise in music and Sastras, and one of them was noted to have served in the dual roles of War-General and Prime Minister.

The Upapuranas played a significant role in the history of Bengal: they propagated and established Brahminic ideals in the hitherto-impure fringes of Aryavarta and accommodated elements of the vernacular culture to gain acceptance among masses. In the process, they became evidence of sociocultural negotiations that transpired in late-medieval Bengal.

Brihaddharma Purana (Brh. P.; c. 13th century) was the earliest document to chronicle a hierarchy of castes in Bengal and it became the standard text for popular negotiations of caste status. It mentioned the Baidyas as an occupational caste, equivalent to the Ambasthas, deriving from a well-known mythical episode where Brahmins had them ordained to be the highest of Shudras and conferred a monopoly to practice Ayurveda. In contrast, the Brahma Vaivarta Purana (Bv. P.) —notable for a very late Bengali recension (c. 14th/15th centuries)— treats the Baidyas as separate to Ambasthas but notes both to be Satsudras.

According to Ryosuke Furui, the Varnasamkara myth and the subsequent ordaining of Samkaras in Brh. P. reflected and reinforced the existing social hierarchy of ancient Bengal — that is, even in pre-Brahminized Bengal, the Baidyas had an eminent position and practiced medicine — while allowing the Brahmin authors to conform an alien society to orthodoxic standards, and establish themselves at the top. According to Sircar, the Baidya community mentioned in the Bv. P. was a group of degraded Brahmins called Vaidya or Pandita, who resided in the Ganjam district of Odisha and may have served as a link between the Vaidyas of South India and the Baidyas of Bengal.

Kulajis — a form of literature endemic to Bengal — were essentially immutable genealogical registers but actually, texts in flux, reflecting the needs and anxieties of contemporary society; they primarily served to establish social hierarchy vis à vis others. Of the two extant pre-modern Baidya genealogies, Chandraprabha (CP; c. late 17th century) constructs a descent from the semi-legendary Ambasthas whereas the slightly older Sadvaidyakulapnjika (SV) did not. Further, both of them hold Adi Sura and Ballāla Sena to be among their ancestors; this is agreed upon by some Brahmin kulanjis but rejected by Kayastha ones.