Correct Option: A

The English word “caste” derives from the Spanish and Portuguese casta, which the Oxford English Dictionary quotes John Minsheu’s Spanish dictionary (1599) to mean, “race, lineage, or breed.” When the Spanish colonized the New World, they used the word to mean a “clan or lineage.” However, it was the Portuguese who employed casta in the primary modern sense when they applied it to the many inmarrying hereditary Hindu social groups they encountered upon their arrival in India in 1498. The use of the spelling “caste,” with this latter meaning, is first attested to in English in 1613.