Vaishya

Vaishya is the third of the four varnas of the Vedic Hindu social order in India, ranked below the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas, whom it traditionally had the duty to sustain or patronise. Hindu texts, among them the Bhagavad Gita, assigned Vaishyas agriculture, the care of cattle and trade, but over time they came to be landowners, traders and money-lenders. With the Brahmins and Kshatriyas they claim dvija, "twice-born", status after the sacrament of initiation. The historian Ram Sharan Sharma described the Gupta Empire as a Vaishya dynasty.