The Rashtrakutas and their Times c21.112

c21.112

A number of earlier writers like Gautama, (87) Āpastamba, (88) and Baudhāyana (Dharma-Sūtrakāra) (89) permit freely intercaste dinners; the custom had begun to fall into disrepute in our period, for a number of later Smritis either restrict or condemn it. Angiras (90) prohibits the dinner with a Sudra and permits one with a Kshatriya only on days of religious festivity and with a Vaishya when in distress. (91) Yama and Vyāsa (92) declare that a Brahmana should beg cooked food only in the houses of the members of his own caste. That these writers faithfully reflect the feeling of our period, to which in all probability they belonged, is proved by the statement of Alberuni that a Brahmana was permanently expelled from his caste, if he was found guilty of having eaten the food of a Sudra for a certain number of days. (93) Alberuni does not attest to the cessation of interdining among the three higher castes, but the Smritis of our period, as shown above, had begun to frown upon the practice. The cessation of the intercaste marriages, and the difference in diet that soon manifested itself, were further making interdining impracticable. Brahmanas of an earlier age were non-vegetarians, but from Al Masudi and Al Idrisi we learn that in Western India they had become thorough vegetarians during our period. Kshatriyas on the other hand, were then as now non-vegetarians, and were besides, not total abstainers from wine like the Brahmanas; they were permitted in theory three cups of wine.⁹⁴ This disparity in diet and drink must have made interdining between the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas an impracticable and, therefore, an unpopular practice. This difficulty need not have stood in the way of the intercaste dinners between the Vaishyas and the Brahmanas of the Deccan during our periods, for the influence of Jainism had weaned away a large mass of the traders and agriculturists from non-vegetarianism.⁹⁵ But the Vaishyas had by this time degenerated to the position of the Sudras as shown already, and this fact was making interdining between them and the Brahmanas impracticable.