DVIJA

(Sanskrit: twice-born), in the Hindu social system, members of the three upper varnas, or social classesthe Brahmans (priests and teachers), Kshatriya (warriors), and Vaisya (merchants)whose sacrament of initiation is regarded as a second or spiritual birth. The initiation ceremony (/a>upanayana; q.v.) invests the male caste members with a sacred thread, a loop worn next to the skin over the left shoulder and across the right hip. The lowest Hindu varna, the Sudra (the artisan and labouring class), has no initiation ceremony, and its members are considered to be non-Aryan in origin. Theoretically they are not allowed to study or even to listen to the Vedas, the sacred revealed scriptures of the Indo-Aryans.