The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c18.2

c18.2

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.