Caste and Race in India c8.65

c8.65

In the Buddhistic literature many of the occupations are represented as having been hereditary, and some of the classes like that of the Brahmin and the Gahapati, the representative of the Vaiśya, had definitely come to be regarded as such rigid castes that, though their members followed other occupations than those customary for their classes, they remained the members of their castes.¹ The Jātakas mention villages each of which consisted wholly of the followers of one occupation. Thus there were smiths' villages and potters' villages.² Some of the crafts are spoken of as low, e.g. that of the barber, who is also referred to as of inferior caste.³ Though the Buddhistic evidence as regards the actual professions taken up by the contemporary Brahmins must be taken with some discount—it was but natural for the Buddhist writers to hold up to ridicule their opponents by depicting them as violators of their own precepts—yet it must be pointed out that the cultivating and cattle-rearing Brahmin is an oft-recurring figure in the Pāli texts and once even a Brahmin carpenter is mentioned.⁴