The caste system in Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

differed from that found in the rest of India. While the Indian caste system generally modelled the four-fold division of society into Brahmin

Brahmin

Brahmin Brahman, Brahma and Brahmin.Brahman, Brahmin and Brahma have different meanings. Brahman refers to the Supreme Self...

s, Kshatriya

Kshatriya

*For the Bollywood film of the same name see Kshatriya Kshatriya or Kashtriya, meaning warrior, is one of the four varnas in Hinduism...

s, Vaisyas and Shudra

Shudra

Shudra is the fourth Varna, as prescribed in the Purusha Sukta of the Rig veda, which constitutes society into four varnas or Chaturvarna. The other three varnas are Brahmans - priests, Kshatriya - those with governing functions, Vaishya - agriculturalists, cattle rearers and traders...

s, in Kerala the Nambudiri Brahmins formed the priestly class and only rarely recognized anyone else as being other than Shudra. Thus, the Kerala caste system was ritualised but it was not the varna model found elsewhere.
A theory has been proposed for the origins of the caste system in the Kerala region based on the actions of the Aryan Jains introducing such distinctions prior to the 8th-century AD.