Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c10.544

c10.544

The Dharmasūtras, especially of Vasiṣṭha and Gautama, display a strong tendency to reduce the vaiśyas to the position of śūdras in matters of purity, food and marriage—a process which has its parallel in the Buddhist texts. The Buddha declares that in the way they are addressed, received, approached and treated, the kṣatriyas and the brāhmaṇas take precedence over the vaiśyas and the śūdras.⁴ In a Buddhist text gotras are associated only with the kṣatriyas and the brāhmaṇas.¹ In an introductory passage of a Jātaka it is claimed that the Buddhas are never born in the vaiśya or the śūdra caste but they are born in the two other higher castes.² This passage, however, does not form part of the Jātaka proper, and may be ascribed to a later period. A similar idea is expressed with regard to the birth of the Jain teachers, who are supposed to be never born in low, mean, degraded, poor, indigent or brāhmaṇical families.³ Apparently the brāhmaṇas are included in this list because of heretical hostility to them. But the remaining members of the list may be roughly assigned to the lower orders. The tendency to approximate the vaiśyas to the position of śūdras probably gained ground towards the end of our period. It may have swelled the numbers of the śūdras by throwing into their ranks impoverished sections of the vaiśyas, but this does not seem to have affected their status during this period. Similarly the reforming religions did not effect any significant change in the existing social system, and in the main the economic and politico-legal disabilities of the śūdras continued as ever.