The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c18.32

c18.32

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.