The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c10.5

c10.5

The *khattiyas* are the representatives of political power; they symbolise the idea of a community which stands above the family, above the caste, the idea, namely of the State. If, however, this is so, the question naturally arises: Are we justified in combining all *khattiyas* into a unity, to which the word "caste" can be applied? In no way, if we take the word in its modern sense. The conflicting political interests of the different ruling families would alone prevent their union into an organised body; they must render absolutely illusory the exercise of judicial rights by which offences against caste prescriptions were punished by excommunication from the caste or in other ways. But even a caste in the sense of the Brahmanical theory we cannot properly see in the *khattiya* of the Pali texts as it lacks, for reasons just mentioned, the compactness of it. Certain customs, especially, those relating to connubium and the prohibition of all impurity, may be noticed in certain ruling families which led to separation from the rest of the population; but these customs—for whose existence, moreover, only isolated evidence can be found in the Jātakas—do not seem to have the authority of laws the observance of which was enjoined upon the *khattiyas* and whose transgression was made punishable. The king, however, according to the Brahmanical lawbooks, stands above the caste for this reason, that the prescriptions relating to impurity do not apply to him. Probably, the remaining non-ruling members of the ruling houses were more subject to rules relating to marriage and prohibition of impurity than the king himself; instances which show the actual occurrence of cases in which the transgression of caste-rules was visited with some form of punishment, especially, with excommunication from the caste, are very rare in the Jātakas.