Within the Smṛti corpus, and especially in the Manusmṛti, social order is envisioned as fundamentally hereditary. Varṇa is treated as something determined by birth, not as a status to be acquired through later effort or merit. The texts lay out detailed rules for occupation, marriage, and ritual privileges that are all tied to this birth-based identity. Mixed unions are said to generate mixed castes rather than a legitimate change of varṇa, and there is no regular, sanctioned pathway for someone born in a lower varṇa to assume the duties or honors of a higher one within a single lifetime. In this sense, the normative social vision is quite rigid.

At the same time, these texts do recognize movement of a different kind, but it is largely one-directional and restrictive. Downward mobility is explicitly acknowledged: a person of higher varṇa can fall to a lower social status, even to something akin to outcaste status, through serious misconduct, improper marriages, or neglect of prescribed duties. There are also provisions for times of distress, in which higher varṇas may temporarily take up the occupations of lower ones for survival, though this does not amount to a true change of varṇa. Some passages and later interpretations speak of the possibility that, over multiple births, a soul might be reborn into a higher varṇa through accumulated virtue, but this is framed as a result of past karma rather than a right to change one’s social position here and now.

A further nuance appears when distinguishing social status from spiritual possibility. On the social plane, the Smṛtis strongly favor an endogamous, birth-based order and prescribe punishments or censure for those who attempt to assume the roles of higher varṇas without authorization. On the spiritual plane, however, some strands of the tradition admit that liberation is not absolutely barred by birth, and that knowledge or devotion can, in principle, be accessible across social boundaries. Yet this spiritual openness does not translate into a doctrine of social equality or formal varṇa mobility in the present life. The overall picture is that the Smṛtis largely forbid upward social mobility within a lifetime, while allowing for degradation and limited, exceptional flexibility that does not fundamentally challenge the hereditary framework.