Casteing Race: Enlightenment Encounters with the Brahmin.

This article examines the role of caste, particularly the figure of the Brahmin and the notion of "caste antiquity," in shaping eighteenth-century European Enlightenment thought through the case study of Voltaire's engagement with India. Voltaire relied on Brahminical authority and forged texts like the Ezourvedam to assert the ancient origins of caste, using this to challenge biblical teleology and Christian orthodoxy while simultaneously contributing to racial and colonial hierarchies. The article highlights how European thinkers appropriated and transformed Indian caste concepts, which in turn influenced the codification of Hinduism and intersected with emerging racial taxonomies within colonial contexts. It argues that Asia, and caste specifically, was not merely the Enlightenment's Other but integral to its intellectual foundations, revealing complex global entanglements of knowledge, power, and difference in the long eighteenth century.