Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c12.465

c12.465

These signs of change in the position of the śūdra permit us to conjecture that the old society which treated him as a helot saddled with numerous disabilities had begun to decline and was being partly replaced by a new society which gave him a better position—a process that was carried further in the Gupta period. The repeated mention of the end of an age (*yugānta*) suggests the destruction of values on which the old society was based. Thus for some time the idea of birth, which was seen as the basis of varṇa society, was completely undermined. While describing the conduct of the foreign invaders the *Viṣṇu Purāṇa* prophesises that during their rule property alone will confer rank, wealth alone will be the source of dharma, and liberality will constitute dharma.¹ These new values possibly also infected the kingdoms of indigenous rulers, and were as much the outcome of foreign conquests as of internal crisis in the varṇa system. The nature of social crisis as known from the descriptions of the Kali age in the *Mahābhārata* and Purāṇas and some signs of change in the position of the śūdras suggest that the social formation which treated him as a helot and saddled him with numerous disabilities was in the throes of dissolution. Society was faced with a state of *varṇasaṃkara* or the collapse of the varṇa system, which disorder really implied non-payment of taxes and refusal of religious gifts by the vaiśyas and non-performance of serving functions by the śūdras. It also may have meant the changed outlook of śūdra artisans. To meet the situation it was necessary to devise measures of both coercion and concession, and more importantly, to think of new ways of collecting surplus produce and surplus labour for maintaining the religious and administrative apparatus, Manu's general attitude of intense hostility towards the śūdras and even the vaiśyas is therefore understandable; so is the emphasis on the central importance of *daṇḍa* or coercive power found in both the law-book of Manu² and in the *Śānti Parvan*.³ Some religious concessions were made to the śūdras even by Manu, and in order to pay the religious functionaries and fiscal authorities a few land grants were made even in the first two Christian centuries. But it was only in Gupta times that these two processes assumed significant dimensions.