The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s4.14

c9.s4.14

In much later works like the *Manu Saṁhitā* (X, 5) Māgadha and Vaideha are to be found among the "mixed castes," and described as owing their origin to *apasāda* or low birth, e.g., the union of a higher caste woman with a relatively lower caste man. Now Māgadha literally denotes an inhabitant of Magadha and Vaideha an inhabitant of Videha. One can easily suspect, therefore, that in the tradition represented by Manu these regions of Eastern India are treated with contempt as being extra-Vedic or extra-Brāhmaṇic, perhaps semi-Vedic and semi-Brāhmaṇic. In Manu's ethnology, again, the Lichchhavis of Vesāli and the Mallas of Kusinārā are Kṣatriya-Vrātyas. Now Kṣatriya-Vrātyas are Kṣatriyas who became Vrātyas, i.e., lost the genuine Kṣatriyahood on account of neglecting to perform the initiation (*upanayana*) ceremony. In this instance, also, the suspicion is strong that these "republican" races of Eastern India, well-known in the Jātaka stories relating to Sākya the Buddha's contemporaries, are treated in the hundred-percent Vedic tradition as somewhat inferior in social status.¹⁶