History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c20.236

v2.c20.236

If the śūdra laboured under certain grave disabilities, he had certain compensating advantages. He could follow almost any profession except the few specially reserved for brāhmaṇas and kṣatriyas. Even as to the latter many śūdras became kings and Kauṭ. in his Arthaśāstra (IX. 2) speaks of armies of śūdras (vide note 266 above). The śūdra was free from the round of countless daily rites. He was compelled to undergo no *saṁskāra* (except marriage), he could indulge in any kind of food and drink wine, he had to undergo no penances for lapses from the rules of the śāstras, he had to observe no restrictions of gotra and pravara in marriage. Those western writers who turn up their nose at the position of the śūdras in ancient and medieval India conveniently forget what atrocious crimes were perpetrated by their people in the institution of slavery and in their dealings with the Red Indians and other backward coloured races; how nations of Europe out of false pride of race have passed in the 20th century laws prohibiting marriages between the so-called Aryans and non-Aryans and preventing the latter from holding state offices and carrying on several occupations and how discrimination is made against coloured men on railways, in hotels and other places of public resort and how even in India separate third class compartments were reserved on railways for Europeans, for entering which Indians were prosecuted and sentenced in their own country. Vide *Emperor vs Narayan* 25 Bom. L. R. 26 for such a case.