 For example, for some early European documenters it was thought to correspond with the endogamous "varnas" referred to in ancient Indian scripts, and its meaning corresponds in the sense of "estates".To later Europeans of the Raj era it was endogamous "jatis", rather than "varnas", that represented "caste", such as the 2378 "jatis" that colonial administrators classified by occupation in the early 20th century.Arvind Sharma, a professor of comparative religion, notes that "caste" has been used synonymously to refer to both "varna" and "jati" but that "serious Indologists now observe considerable caution in this respect" because, while related, the concepts are considered to be distinct.