The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c19.4

c19.4

So far as they are described in the Jâtakas, the social conditions remained probably unchanged even long after Buddha's time. When about two hundred years after Buddha's death the Greek messenger Megasthenes lived in the court of Candragupta in Pâtaliputra, he manifestly found similar conditions. The Greek reports which are traceable to him contain a description of the Indian society of that time which, it is true, does not wholly agree with facts which we can gather from our source, but can be brought much more into agreement with these than with the Brahmanical system. They give the number of játis or classes (γένη or μέρη) as seven; as the first γένος they mention the σοφισταί or φιλόσοφοι who, as we have seen, correspond to the Samaṇas and partly to the Brâhmaṇas of our source; the second γένος, the farmers or γεωργοί, can be placed in the same class with the gahapati or kuṭumbika of the Pali Texts. By the herdsmen and hunters named in the third place, we have probably to understand the low non-Aryan races of the Jâtakas, whilst the fourth γένος, that of the τεχνίται or the γένος δημιουργικόν, agrees with the artisans of our text. The remaining three γένη, the γένος of the warriors (πολεμισταί), that of the supervisor (ἐπίσκοποι or ἔφοροι) and that of the king’s councillor (σύμβολοι or σύνεδροι) belong to the category of râjabhogga, the officers in the king’s employ. After the enumeration of the seven γένη the Greek sources point out as their characteristic feature the fact that they did not allow any inter-marriage and that it was not permissible to pass from one γένος to another or to follow the profession of two classes at one and the same time.