Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c10.468

c10.468

At least some of the despised castes of the Pāli texts, particularly the niṣādas and the caṇḍālas, were treated as untouchables. Collectively the untouchables were known as the antyas or the bāhyas, i.e. people living outside villages and towns. Gautama condemns an antya as the vilest person⁸ (pāpiṣṭhaḥ). Vasiṣṭha distinguishes between the good śūdras and the antyayonis, who can appear as witness only in their own cases.⁹ In the Āpastamba *Dharmasūtra* the word *antaḥ* is used in relation to the caṇḍālas and shows that he lived at the end of the village.¹ In the same text the *bāhyas*, among whom the recitation of the Veda is forbidden, are explained by Haradatta as the ugras and the niṣādas.² The *antāvasāyins* are described by Vasiṣṭha as a caste begotten by a śūdra on a vaiśya woman.³ It is said that a brāhmaṇa father who dwells with the *antāvasāyins* or cohabits with one of their women should be rejected.⁴ Generally the untouchables lived at the end of villages or towns or in their own settlements. Their segregation was not the result of any deliberate policy of expulsion from old āryan settlements. It seems rather that the whole population of tribal villages were condemned to the position of untouchables by the brāhmaṇas.