The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c15.9

c15.9

This passage, where the raṭṭhikas (=Skr. râshtrika, inhabitant of a kingdom, subject) are mentioned along with the gahapatis, shows that the concept gahapati is in no way identical with what, according to the Brahmanical caste-theory, is to be understood by Vaiśya; for to this caste, which embraces all Aryan Indians with the exception of Kshatriyas and Brâhmaṇas, the raṭṭhikas would have to be looked upon as belonging, as well as the citizens (negamas) and farmers (jânapadas), who in another place (in the Nigrodhamiga Jâtaka I. 152) are counted among the "householders" as subjects of the king. For the Indians, subject to the influence of the (Brahmanical) theory and inclined to schematise, the gahapatis appear nevertheless as a caste, as, in fact, the third caste, corresponding to the Vaiśyas of the Brahmanical system, as in the enumeration¹ of castes they very often appear in the third place after the khattiyakulas and the brâhmaṇakulas. A justification of such a schematism lay in this, that this class also through the value it attached to pure descent and through the prohibition of unequal marriages, liked to form a close body and showed a faint resemblance with the Brâhmaṇa caste in this, that the jâti of a gahapati was hereditary, that a gahapati who through the loss of his fortune was ruined and was forced to maintain himself by following lower occupations, still remained always a gahapati. We read of one such gahapati who deals in vegetables (pannikagahapati, III. 21;