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The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c18: Chapter XII. The Despised Castes

The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c18

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Chapter XII. The Despised Castes

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We have hitherto repeatedly moved in our accounts within the limits of a province which comprises, according to the Brahmanical theory, the aboriginal population and is enclosed by the barrier of non-Aryan birth and separated by this from the rest of the society. In vain do we look in the bright light which the Jâtakas throw upon the true life of ancient India for a line of demarcation separating the entire Aryan from the entire non-Aryan population ; if we leave out of account the occurrence of the word Śudda (=Skr. Śûdra) in theoretical discussions, nothing points to the real existence of a fourth caste, the Śûdra. Probably we have to suppose for the first period following the Aryan migration a separation of the dark-coloured aborigines from the bright-coloured conquerors : it is exhibited by the contrast between the *árya varṇa* and *dása varṇa* in the Vedas. But already in very early times—and indeed, the further from the borders of the Aryan culture-sphere, the more pronouncedly—a mixture with the native population took place; nay, it seems to me in no way certain, in the lands lying farthest east, especially, in the provinces in which Buddhism first made its appearance, in the Kosala and Magadha land, that the distinction between the Aryan conquerors and the conquered who were employed in slavish work was not abolished altogether: many of the non-Aryan stems seem to have preserved their political independence and to have come under the higher Aryan culture by adopting its language and customs. Under the influence of the Brahmanical theory we are extremely accustomed to see in the aborigines of ancient India a great mass, namely, the conquered Śûdras. Surely, this name, applicable in the Brahmanical system to all non-Aryan Indians, is taken from the name of one particular stem out of the innumerable aboriginal stems, which from the ethnical and cultural point of view were no less different from one another than the bearers of the new culture who spread from the north-west to the Gangetic plain.

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Among these numerous races some manifestly stood on a specially low culture-stage. Just as the wild hunting races of the Himâlaya must have distinguished themselves by their external appearance, by their undeveloped language, their customs relating to food, from the more advanced population of the plains, so their low position later prevented a mixture with the higher developed Aryans and preserved their racial peculiarity up to this day. Even to-day they have not gone beyond the first beginnings of culture: incapable of lasting work, they lead a wandering life and feed mostly on animals, roots and fruits which Nature has given them freely¹; where they set up their residences among the cultivated population, they are compelled to live in isolation outside the city and maintain their livelihood by the meanest kinds of work. These are the races of whom it is said in Manu (X. 50):

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¹ Nesfield, Caste System, p, 6; Peschel, Völkerkunde, 5th Edn., p. 444.

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“Under well-known trees and in the cremation-ground, on mountains and in the woods should they live, recognised (by fixed marks) and living by work proper to them.”

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These races were and are even to-day looked upon by the Indians as castes, and indeed, they are classed in the Brahmanical theory with the lowest mixed castes. What gives them in fact in ancient times the appearance of a caste is their local isolation, their living together outside the rest of the society which avoids contact with them, on account of their low position, and their despised profession which is hereditary. From the higher castes they are distinguished by this, that their isolation is not a voluntary one; the barriers which surround them and which prevent their straying from their narrowly circumscribed profession as well as all mixture through marriage with those standing higher, are not erected by them but are forced upon them by their conquerors.

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Of these low races we meet with a number even in the Jâtakas. Above all, we meet with the Caṇḍâla, a race which we come across in great numbers even to-day in north-east India, the scene of our narratives, and in Bengal.¹ In the eyes of the Indians the Caṇḍâla has always been the symbol of lowness and subjection.

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¹ Schlagintweit, *Indien in Wort und Bild*, Vol. I, p. 216: “Over a million of these people are to the east of Calcutta running up to the borders of Burma.”

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“But the residences of the Caṇḍâlas ”—so it is said in Manu (X. 51 sq.)—“should be outside the village, their dress should consist of garments of the dead : they must eat their food out of broken pots ; black iron should be their ornament and always they must wander from place to place. A man who fulfils a religious duty should not seek intercourse with them ; their business they should conduct among themselves and their marriages they must contract with their equals.

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“Their food must be given them by somebody other than an Aryan in a broken vessel; at night they shall not go about in the villages or in the towns.

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"In the day-time they may do the work assigned to them by order of the king; the corpse of anybody who has no relations, they must carry out of the house—such is the standing rule.

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"Criminals they shall kill, according to the law, by order of the king; the clothes of the criminal, their beds or other ornamental articles they may keep to themselves."

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The contempt with which the authors of the lawbooks who were Brâhmaṇas looked upon the lower classes of people, and the attempt to confirm them in their low position by legal prescriptions may have caused them to select purposively dark colours for the sketch they made of the Caṇḍâla, whilst the Jâtakas show that the reality was not far different from the priestly theory.

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The Caṇḍâlas of our text live outside the town (bahinagare, IV. 376) in a village (caṇḍâ-lagâmaka, IV. 200, 390) by themselves.¹ Two Caṇḍâla brothers who know how to blow a Caṇḍâla flute must show their art outside the city gate; the one plays at the northern, the other at the eastern gate.

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¹ The Caṇḍâla village placed in the Citta Sambhûta Jâtaka in front of the gate of Ujjain and thus to the west of India, may have probably existed only in the imagination of the narrator who carried the narrow conditions of his home over to the whole of India.

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For the despised position of the Caṇḍāla we have already given examples in an earlier chapter (p. 26 sq.); we have seen how the eating of the food left by them (caṇḍālucchiṭṭhabhatta) had as its consequence, for the members of the Brāhmaṇa caste, exclusion from their caste¹; we have seen further how the wind which had touched the body of a Caṇḍāla was considered impure and how the very look of such a miserable creature sufficed to call up the feeling of impurity in those occupying a higher rank. "Contemptuous as a Caṇḍāla" has become a proverbial expression. Into the mouth of the young lioness to whom a jackal had made a proposal of marriage the words are put: "This jackal is considered low and wretched among the four-footed animals, similar to a Caṇḍāla (hino patikuṭṭho caṇḍālasadiso. II. 6); we are, however, esteemed members of the highest royal family. This one addresses me indecent and improper words; what shall I do with life after I have listened to such words? I will hold my breath and die." The name Caṇḍāla stands for a word of contempt by which a Brâhmaṇa, for example, designates his adulterous wife (pâpacaṇḍâlî IV. 246).

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¹ That the food left by a Caṇḍāla is impure, is not a purely Brahmanical view. In the introduction to the Satadhamma Jātaka (II. 82), Buddha explains to the monks that for the followers of his doctrine the eating of food obtained in an unlawful manner is like eating the table leavings of a Caṇḍāla.

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Of the "marks by order of the king" mentioned in Manu, we know nothing from our text. Still even according to the Jâtakas, the Caṇḍâlas appear to be known outwardly as such by their dress: "clad in a bad under-garment of a red colour round which a belt is tied: above this a dirty upper garment, an earthen pot in hand"—so in Mâtaṅga Jâtaka (IV. 379) the exterior of a Caṇḍâla is described.

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Also by their speech the Caṇḍâlas apparently were distinguished from the rest of the population. To their isolation, their complete separation, is to be ascribed the fact that in the midst of a population speaking an Aryan dialect they preserved even in linguistic matters their racial individuality. In the Citta-Sambhûta Jâtaka it is narrated how two Caṇḍâlas dressed as Brâhmaṇas go to Takkasilâ and study there; later, however, as one of them, on the occasion of a Brâhmaṇavâcanaka, burns his face with a heated lamp, they forget themselves and are detected by their language (caṇḍâlabhâsâ IV. 391).

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With the exception of the account of the two flute-players mentioned above, the Jâtakas contain no detailed account of the professional work of the Caṇḍâla. According to the commentary on the Sīlavīmaṃsa Jātaka, there are people who are engaged in carrying corpses (chavachaḍḍaka III. 195); still it is doubtful whether this work which was also indicated for them in the Brahmanical theory, was in reality their only occupation, although their low stage of culture debarred them from practising any higher profession, even that of an artisan.

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Along with the Caṇḍālas there are mentioned in the Jātakas, in the enumeration of the castes, the Pukkusas, who are the Pukkasas or Pulkasas of the Brahmanical system where they are called descendants of a Niṣāda by a Śūdra wife. These Pukkasas were also most probably a non-Aryan caste occupying a very low position in society. According to the commentary on the Sīlavīmaṃsa Jātaka, by this are meant men who have for their profession the plucking of flowers (pupphachaḍḍaka III. 195): as, however, in Manu the catching and killing of cave-dwelling animals is given as their work, I don't believe that the Pukkasas were a special professional class but a race that lived generally by hunting and only occasionally by dirty work, like cleaning temples and palaces.¹

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¹ To these Pukkusas belonged manifestly also the elder Sunīta before his adoption of monkhood, who says in the Theragāthā of himself: "Of low family am I, I was poor and needy. Low was the work which I did, namely, that of removing faded flowers (from temples and palaces). I was despised by men, held in low esteem and reproved." Cf. Oldenberg, Buddha p. 159, Remark.

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Undoubtedly we have to see in the Nesâda, the Nishâda or Naishâda of the Brahmanical caste-theory a non-Aryan race in a barbarous condition. They are regarded in the system as descendants of a Brâhmaṇa by a Sûdrâ; their work consists, according to Manu (X. 48), in killing fish. As, according to the Jâtakas, the Nesâdas lived by hunting, we can suppose that fishing and hunting formed their exclusive sources of earning. Through this their professional work they fell into contempt, for the occupation of a fisherman or hunter which represents in itself the earliest and lowest stage of evolution of human culture, could not in India come to be held in respect, for this reason, that it necessarily presupposed the killing of a living being. In various ways the despised position of the hunter is indicated in the Jâtakas; it is narrated that a Brâhmaṇa youth adopts the occupation of a hunter when he cannot maintain himself by following any other art (II. 200). Also the words of the king, in which he asks the hunter in the Rohantamiga Jâtaka (IV. 422) to give up his occupation and recommends other means of earning money, such as agriculture, trade, lending money, point to the despised position of the hunter. For the same reason, the son of the seṭṭhi also causes the luddaka, whom he keeps with him along with his family and with whom he remains on friendly terms to the end of his life, to give up his profession (luddakakammato apanetvâ III. 51).

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We have enumerated above (p. 193 sq.) the occupation of hunters and fishermen among the professions which from their very nature resist a castelike organisation; if, however, this in-itself despised profession is followed by an entire branch of a low race, then such a group, held together by unity of profession or race and separated from the rest of the population, takes the appearance of a caste and is regarded in all such cases as such by the Indians. This is the case also with the Nesâdas; along with the Caṇḍâlas, Veṇas, Rathakâras and Pukkusas they are introduced in the Assalâyana Sutta¹ as a low caste. Despised and avoided, they must, like the Caṇḍâlas, live outside the town. A Nesâda lives not far from the town of Sakuḷa in the Mahimsaka kingdom in a Nesâda village (nagarato avidûre ekasmim nesâdagâmake V. 337); he sells the birds which he caught with a noose in the city and in this way maintains himself.

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¹ Ed. Pischel, Chemnitz, 1880, pp. 13, 14. So also in the Suttavibhaṅga Pâcittiya II. 2.1, it is said : hînâ nâma jâti caṇḍâlajâti veṇajâti nesâdajâti rathakârajâti pukkusajâti, esâ hînâ nâma jâti.

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The Nesâda of the Mora Jâtaka also who is ordered by the king to catch a golden peacock practises the profession of a hunter in a Nesâda village lying near Benares (Bârâṇasiyâ avidûre nesâdagâmavâsî nesâdo II. 36). Likewise, in a village inhabited by members of his race and lying not far from Benares, lives the Nesâda of the Rohantamiga Jâtaka; he captures a deer, while he sets up with a stick a sling fitted with leather straps.

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Besides these wild peoples whom I might call "ethnical castes," as they were held together by a common race, we meet other groups reckoned likewise by the Indians among the despised castes, in which their mean work seems to have been the separating line which in course of time has stamped them into a caste; they can be characterised, in contrast with the "ethnical castes," as "low professional castes." Originally these despised professional castes were nothing else than non-Aryan races who, although they stood on a higher culture-level than the hunting and fishing races, engaged in branches of profession the practice of which presupposed no acquaintance with metals and their employment and were therefore held in low esteem by the Aryans who worked with iron instruments. To this class belong such occupations as form even to-day the exclusive occupation of people standing on a low level, such as that of making baskets from willows and bamboos, plaiting and weaving, the manufacture of leather and earthen vessels. Not a bias against handicraft in general¹ but against a profession which they found was followed by low races, originally made the Aryans avoid such means of earning a livelihood and leave them to the aboriginal races. Later the stain of impurity was attached to the occupation, even when, owing to the mixture of races, this ceased to be reserved for particular races, and in course of time this stain spread to all possible handicrafts and professions, the more so, as with advancing civilization the higher classes became exempted from manual occupations.

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¹ Senart, *Les Castes dans l'Inde*, p. 236 : "Nowhere have the Aryans shown any great preference for handicraft. The Greeks and Romans left it to slaves or the middle class, to those that have been set free or the retainers. As the Aryans in India settled in villages where originally agriculture was followed, they were less inclined than in other countries to take to manual work. This must generally have fallen to the lot either of the primitive population or those portions of the population whom their bastard origin or their despised descent placed upon the same level. Opposed to the view stated here, of a disinclination of the Aryans for manual work, stands the fact that the age of Homeric and Hesiodic poetry showed no trace of a contempt of professional work. In Homer a number of occupations which were later followed professionally, fall completely to the share of free men, nay, even the aristocrats were not ashamed of them. *Cf.* K. F. Hermann's *Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiquitäten*, Vol. 4, 3rd Edn., p. 389 sq.

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Such despised professional castes we have in the Veṇas and Rathakâras who are reckoned in the already-quoted passages of the Assalāyana Sutta and the Suttavibhaṅga among the low castes (hīnajāti) : these are the castes of the "bamboo-worker" and "carriage-builder." Precisely in the example of the Veṇas we can get, in my opinion, a view of the probable origin of the despised professional castes and a proof of the theory that originally they were nothing else than low races. For when the Aryans pushed to the Gangetic plains and found peoples unacquainted with agriculture or metal work occupied solely with bamboo work or similar things, nothing was more natural than that they should give them names after the material with which they worked. Thus they named those who worked with bamboo (veṇu) bamboo-workers (veṇa or vaiṇa). In a similar manner they must have named another race which possessed special skill in making carriages, carriage builders, after its principal industrial product.

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That these two branches of profession, the manufacture of bamboo products and the building of carriages, were assigned, even long after Buddha's time, to special races, seems to me to appear from the passage of the Suttavibhaṅga (Pācittiya II. 2.1) already quoted, where the Veṇas and Rathakāras, along with the Caṇḍālas, Nesādas and Pukkusas are called "castes" (jāti)

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and are not enumerated among the low professions (hīnasippa) which are named as such after these in the following manner: the occupation of the basketmaker, the potter, the weaver, the cobbler, the barber (hīnaṃ nāma sippaṃ naḷakārasippaṃ kumbhakārasippaṃ pesakārasippaṃ cammakārasippaṃ nahāpitasippaṃ). This distinction between castes (jāti) and occupations (sippa) has gradually been obliterated and in modern times has been almost wholly abolished.

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Individual castes among the low professional ones already mentioned are even represented in the Jātakas; such, for example, is the Veṇa which in the Kusa Jātaka (II. 306) is placed on the same level with the Caṇḍāla on account of its low character. The queen reproaches her daughter-in-law with the words: "You are a Veṇī or a Caṇḍālā, a disgrace to your family: how can you, born in the house of Madda, bring your husband down to the rank of a slave?" The commentator explains veṇī by tacchikā,¹ "widow of a carpenter," and thus explains the despised caste of bamboo-workers by means of another low caste, namely, tacchika or "carpenter." All the artisans whose occupation consists in working with wood, the carriage-builder (rathakâra), the joiner and the carpenter (vaddaki, tacchika), were considered low in the Buddhistic age, so that the guess hazarded above (p. 160), that their living in isolation in a village in front of the city gate is to be ascribed to the lowness of their profession, seems justified. Always, however, as their work is not conceivable without the use of implements, they will have attained even then¹ a higher place in the social scale, than, for instance, the bamboo-workers, who employed their material as they found it without working much upon it.

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¹ Skr. takshakā. In the commentary of Mahidhara on the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā (I. 13) the takshan is called impure (aśuddha) and of a low caste (nīcajāti).

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¹ Now-a-days the caste of joiner or Barhai occupies almost the same social rank as the agricultural caste Kurmi. Nesfield, Caste System, p. 28.

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Akin to the veṇas, so far as their work is concerned, and treated as contemptuously as these, are the two artisans appearing in the Takkâriya Jâtaka (IV. 251), namely, the basket-maker (naḷakâra) and the flute-maker (veḷukâra); the latter, the veḷukâra or veṇukâra, is, as we saw above (p. 86, Footnote), reckoned in the Lalita Vistara among the castes in which a Bodhisatta is not re-born.

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As the work of the weaver (pesakârasippa) which represents a process similar to the twisting of bamboo and straw, so as to make mats and baskets,¹ was originally principally carried on by the aborigines, the weaver also occupied a low position in the society of ancient India: in the Bhîmasena Jâtaka, the Brahmanical archer calls the work of a weaver (tantavâya) a miserable, low work (lâmakakamma I. 356).

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¹ Nesfield, Caste System, p. 22 sq.

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As the last of the despised professions the occupation of a barber (nahâpitasippa) is mentioned in the Suttavibhaṅga. In this business, we do not look for the reason of its lowness to any ethnical relations: the duties connected with it and which are to some extent dirty show the barber *ipso facto* as occupying a low position and place him almost in the same line with the temple-cleaning Pukkusas.²

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² The modern barber or *nâpit* occupies a higher position, as he plays a great part in all family events, such as birth, marriage and funeral. He serves as a marriage negotiator among the respectable castes and in the marriage ceremony assists the Brâhmaṇa or takes up himself, probably among the lower castes who cannot pay a Brâhmaṇa, the office of the priest. *Ibid*, p. 42.

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In the introduction to the Sigâla Jâtaka, it is narrated how the son of a barber living in Vesâli (nahâpitaputta II. 5) falls in love with a Licchavi princess and explains to his father that he would die if he did not get her for wife. The father replies to him, "My son, don't fix your desires upon impossible things; you are the son of a barber and of low caste (hînajacca), the Licchavi princess is of high birth (jâtisampanna) as the daughter of a Khattiya and no possible party for you. I will seek another girl for you who will suit you in caste and family."

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A further example of the low esteem in which the barber was held is afforded by another instance: the mother of King Brahmadatta calls the ascetic Gaṅgamâla, a former barber, "the son of a filth-cleaning barber born of a low caste" (hînajacco malamajjano nahâpita-putto II. 452) and adds the verse:

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Through asceticism they give up their bad occupation, through asceticism (they give up) their position as barber or potter; conquering through asceticism, you now call my son by his name Brahmadatta."

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