The sages gave each of these types a name.
< Kashatriyas : motivated by power
< vaishyas : motivated by material objects
< Brahmins : motivated by knowledge
< Shudras : unmotivated people
The kshatriyas are your kings and queens. They're your top-level executives and administrators. They're also your military and police personnel, the ones who use force to keep order. For most of its history, India was a patchwork of numberless little kingdoms. So the kshatriyas were primarily your maharajahs and maharanis, your princesses and dukes and their families, and the warriors they retained to help protect those they ruled and conquer those they didn't.
Vaishyas are your business people, traders people, artisans, farmers. Your skilled labor. Brahmins are priests, counselors, educators, philosophers. In India until fairly recently, brahmins were primarily responsible for preserving the Veda and were valued as ritual specialists. Today more brahmins are moving into other fields, such as politics, administration, and medicine. Shudras are your unskilled laborers.
Originally the varnas, or four castes as these groups are called, were somewhat fast and loose designations. But in India as in much of the rest of the world, children learned their trade from their parents.
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