The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c18.23

c18.23

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).