Local Government in Ancient India c9.55

c9.55

There were, however, certain notable exceptions to this principle of the equality of social status of various crafts. Thus there were recognized certain low tribes or castes (*hīna-jātiyo*) and low trades or crafts (*hīna-sippa*). As instances of low castes are mentioned the Nesādas, hunters or trappers (*Ab.* 518. 1038; *Pāt.* 83⁷) the Caṇḍālas who are called ‘the lowest race that go upon two feet—meanest men on earth' (*Jāt.* IV. 397), contact with whom was pollution (*Jāt.* II. 83; III. 233; IV. 376), who lived apart in their own settlements (*Jāt.* IV. 200. 376) by hunting and were sometimes employed for street-sweeping, (*Jāt.* IV. 390) and policing towns by night (*Jāt.* III. 30); and the Pukkusas¹ whose occupation is said to be that of throwing away dead flowers (*Ab.* 508; *Jāt.* IV. 205²). As examples of low crafts are mentioned those of the Veṇas, workers in bamboo or wicker-work (*Ab.* 509; *Pāt.* 83²), wheel-wrights and carriage-builders (*ratha-kāras*), basket-makers, potters, weavers, leather-workers, and barbers, all called *hīna sippa* in the list given in the *Sutta-Vibhaṅga* (see *Vin.* IV. 6–10³ (M. II. 152; A. II. 85 = P.P. 51); *Jāt.* IV. 413⁴; V. 337⁵). It should, however, be noted that the social stigma resting on these 'low trades' was due sometimes to their very nature (as in the case of butchering, for example) but chiefly to their association with the aboriginal non-Aryan tribes who followed them as their hereditary occupations. It is also a significant fact that the same stigma attached to the ‘hireling’ working with another man’s capital and for his profits, for in a list of callings given in the Buddhist books he ranks along with the mere hewers of wood and flower-gatherers and below the slave (D. I. 51; *Mil.* 331). The slave was indeed better treated; the only case of slave-beating is that of a slave-girl let out to work for hire but returning home without her wage (*Jāt.* I. 402. 403). In *Jāt.* I. 390 the conversion of free peasant proprietors into hirelings, toiling on the estates of the royal capitalist,¹ with ‘their own empty barns at home’ is taken to be a sure symptom of social decadence.