A collection of endogamous subgroups known as jatis ("birth") served as the basis for old Indian society.
The group's hereditary occupation structured the jatis (and defined their social standing).
- The Banjaras were a jati whose ancestral profession was driving pack animals, either as peddlers selling retail items to people in more distant areas or as transporters transporting commodities from one vendor to another, in old northern Indian culture.
- They occur as a symbol of human heedlessness or as a person who never stops traveling to reflect on where he has been in poetry by several of the bhakti (devotional) poets, especially Ravidas.
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