The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c18.28

c18.28

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.