Caste and Race in India c7.32

c7.32

Four names occurring in the Vedic literature, viz. Āyogava, Caṇḍāla, Niṣāda, and Paulkasa, deserve more than passing notice. A king, named Marutta Āvikshita, is called the Āyogava. The meaning of the word is doubtful, but it must be pointed out that in the literature of the next period it is regularly given as the name of one of the mixed castes. The references to the Caṇḍālas in the Yajurveda clearly show them to be a degraded people. In the next period, it will be seen, Caṇḍālas are invariably described as the offspring of a Śūdra father and a Brahmin mother. Whether their degraded position in the Vedic period was due to such mixed descent is more than can be ascertained. At the same time the possibility of such an explanation must not be wholly overlooked, inasmuch as illicit connection between a Śūdra male and an Aryan female is sometimes hinted at. But the more plausible explanation would be that the Caṇḍālas were a degraded group of aborigines. In the first place, it is difficult to see how a whole race of people could be the outcome of illicit unions between Aryan females and Śūdra males. Secondly, they are not the only group described as degraded people in the Vedic literature. The Paulkasas are described as a despised race of men in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad. This use of a derivative noun from Pulkasa shows the fixity of the group. The term also occurs in later literature as the name of the offspring of a Niṣāda or Śūdra by a Kshatriya woman. Such a connection of Kshatriya females, as a regular feature, is much more than can be believed. It is more reasonable to hold that both these groups, Caṇḍāla and Paulkasa, were sections of the aborigines that were, for some reason or another, despised by the Aryans. The Niṣādas, on the other hand, seem to have been a section liked by the Aryans, probably because they were amenable to their civilized notions. The Vedic expression "pañcajanaḥ" is explained by tradition, belonging to the latter part of this period, to mean the four varṇas and the Niṣādas, a fact which shows that these people had, by this time, become quite acceptable to the Aryans. This conclusion is also borne out by a text of the Kaushītaki Brāhmaṇa requiring the sacrificer in a particular rite to reside temporarily with the Niṣādas. It seems that the Vedic Dāsa, by constant association and slow assimilation, had been partially turned into the Śūdra and partially into the Niṣāda, while the refractory and incorrigible elements were despised and styled Paulkasa and Caṇḍāla.