Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c10.299

c10.299

The idea that the food touched by the śūdra is defiled and cannot be taken by a brāhmaṇa is first expressed in the Dharmasūtras. According to Āpastamba the food touched by an impure brāhmaṇa or a higher caste person becomes impure, but is not unfit for eating.⁷ But if it is brought by an impure śūdra, it cannot be taken.⁸ The same is the case with the food which is looked at by a dog or an apapātra, to whose class belong the patita (outcaste) and caṇḍāla.⁹ Another rule states that if a śūdra touches a brāhmaṇa while the latter is eating, he should leave off eating, because the śūdra’s touch defiles him.¹ Āpastamba appears to be more conservative when he says that it is not permissible to take the food offered by a śūdra even if he follows the prescribed laws.² But the word *śūdravarjam*, which is taken as prohibiting receiving the food of a śūdra, does not occur in an older manuscript of Āpastamba.³ This shows that such a view did not prevail in the earlier stage, when only the food of an impure śūdra was to be avoided. Nevertheless, the Dharmasūtras unanimously enjoin the brāhmaṇa to shun the food given by a śūdra.⁴ A passage of the *Āpastamba Dharmasūtra*⁵ read with the commentary of Haradatta allows him to accept the food of a śūdra in times of distress, provided it is purified by contact with gold and fire and abandoned as soon as the brāhmaṇa gets an alternative source of livelihood.⁶ No such condition is attached by Gautama, who, while permitting a brāhmaṇa to accept a śūdra’s food in the case of his loss of livelihood,⁷ allows him to accept food from a herdsman, a labourer in tillage, an acquaintance of the family, and a servant.⁸ But Gautama does not permit him to support himself by following the occupations of a śūdra.⁹ Moreover, he is alone in laying down the rule that a snātaka (i.e. a brāhmaṇa or a kṣatriya according to Haradatta) should not sip the water of a śūdra.¹⁰ In some cases the rules regarding the brāhmaṇa’s boycott of the śūdra’s food were sought to be enforced by various threats and penances. According to Vasiṣṭha, the most deserving brāhmaṇa was one whose stomach did not contain the food of a śūdra.¹¹ Such a rule would naturally deprive the guilty brāhmaṇa of the sacrificial gifts, which constituted the main source of his income. It was further declared by the same authority that, if a brāhmaṇa died with the food of a śūdra in his stomach, he would be born either as a village pig or in the family of that śūdra.¹ Further, a brāhmaṇa whose body is nourished by the essence of a śūdra's food may daily recite the Veda, may offer prayers, but cannot find the path that leads upwards. Again, if, after eating the food of a śūdra, he has conjugal intercourse, even his sons would belong to the śūdra caste and he would not ascend to heaven.² Baudhāyana lays down that, if a person commits the offence of eating the food of a śūdra or of cohabiting with a śūdra woman, his sin can be expiated by performing seven prāṇāyāmas (suppressions of breath) daily for a week.³ For the same purpose he also provides the penance of performing the ceremony of taking boiled barley grain.⁴ These penances, however, should not be taken as representing the state of affairs in this period. The first occurs in the fourth praśna, which according to one view is as late as the 10th century A.D.,⁵ and the second occurs in the third praśna, which according to Bühler, is a later addition to the original work.⁶