Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.20.2

c48.s2.20.2

It appears that in this part of India the artisans used formerly to be excluded from the main village site, and forced, like the leather-workers and scavengers, to live in hamlets of their own, detached from the rest of the community. As their work grew in importance, their origin, which was probably amongst the servile classes, tended to be forgotten or ignored, and they were admitted within the walls, and allowed certain privileges in the way of social display which had before been reserved for the higher classes. Then followed the great Southern schism of the Right and the Left-handed castes, in which the artisans arrayed themselves en masse against the Brāhmans and few others. It is now generally held that this movement arose out of the levelling doctrines of the Buddhists or Jains of the south, which had been largely adopted by the lower classes; but whether the artisans, thus encouraged, led a revolt against Brāhmanical authority, or whether, on the decline of Buddhism, the Brāhmans took this means of setting the schismatics back into their place, is not certain. In the present day, the differences between the two factions, which are acrimonious and often turbulent, arise, not out of doctrinal questions, but on points of what may be termed processional privileges, such as the right to have the marriage-escort preceded by drums and trumpets, to have a mounted convoy in attendance, to carry certain emblems of a quasi-religious signification;