History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c19.361

v2.c19.361

*Śvapaca* or *Śvapāka*. He is one of the *antyajas* enumerated by Veda-Vyāsa (I. 12-13). Vide note 173 above. He occurs in the gaṇa kulālādi (Pāṇ. IV. 3. 118). According to Baud. Dh. S. (I. 9. 12), Kauṭ. (III. 7), he is the offspring of an ugra male from a female of the kṣatṛ sub-caste, while according to Manu X. 19 he is the offspring of a kṣatṛ male from an ugra female. Vaik. (X. 15) and Sūtasaṁhitā say that he is the offspring of a cāṇḍāla male and a brāhmaṇa female, while Uśanas (11) holds that he is the offspring of a cāṇḍāla male from a vaiśya woman. According to Manu X. 51-56 cāṇḍālas and śvapacas follow the same avocation and are governed by the same rules (vide p. 81 under cāṇḍāla). Uśanas (12) says that they eat the flesh of dogs and that dogs are their wealth, while Vaik. says that they wear the same marks that cāṇḍālas have to wear (under the king's order, as Manu says in X. 55), that they remove the filth of towns etc., stay near cemeteries, have to dispose of corpses of men that leave no relatives, have to act as hangmen for offenders sentenced to death and to take their clothes etc., have to take food in broken pots and to eat dogs' flesh and to deal in hides and armour (or in armour made of hides). The Bhagavadgītā (5. 18) puts him on the same level with dogs. In the Mārkaṇḍeya-purāṇa (8. 81-83, 86, 96) a caṇḍāla is called śvapāka (i. e. no distinction is made between the two). In the Jātiviveka he is identified with the *Mahar* and with the *Mang* of the Deccan.