Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s4.27

c7.s4.27

As people inferior to the *Āryan* tribes and as their constant adversaries the hymns only know the *Dāsa varṇa*, the enemy race, whom they call also *Dasyus*. The *Śūdras* are unknown to them. The name *Dasyus* has, on the contrary, been taken into literature and applied to the lowest strata of the population—to those who, having no regular place in the Brahmanic organization, are sometimes even to-day called *outcasts*. In the Vedic epoch there existed no stratum of population corresponding to the *Śūdras*, at once excluded from the Āryan community and attached to it by certain loose bonds in order to secure its dependence without detrimental compromise; or, if it did exist, the poets whose songs have come down to us have made no efforts to assign it a place apart, outside the mass of the *Dasyus*. This is a further proof that the system is something quite other than the normal development of the Vedic situation.