Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c16.16

c16.16

It is difficult to identify all the twenty-eight *jātis* ethnically, linguistically, geographically and occupationally. The Āvantya (*people of* Avanti), and Vāṭadhāna (mentioned as a people in the *Mahābhārata*) definitely belong to the category of tribes and peoples, and at least the former lived in the Malwa area. The Sātvata tribe also belonged to western India, and if we identify the Maitra with the Maitraka, which is grammatically a diminutive of the former, the Maitra belonged to Valabhī situated in the Kathiawar region of Gujarat. The Mallas lived in earlier times in the foothills of the Himalayas, and in Gupta times the Licchavis had set up their rule in Nepal, where they made land grants to the brāhmaṇas. The Jhallas may have been their neighbours, and were probably the remnants of a tribe. The title *jhalla* is still prevalent, and we have a district called Jhalawar in Rajasthan. The Pauṇḍrakas belonged to north Bengal, the Auḍras to Orissa, and the Draviḍas to south India, and all the three are mentioned by Manu in the same geographical order. Similarly a set of foreign peoples – the Yavana, Śaka, Pārada and Pahlava – is mentioned in a neat geographical and chronological order which also includes the borderline Kāmbojas; they all belonged to north-western India. We have another group of local and foreign peoples belonging to northern and eastern India. They are mixed together as Cīna, Kirāta, Darada and Khasa; many of these find place in the *Mahābhārata*, and the Khasas are also mentioned as a people in Pāla inscriptions along with the Hūṇa and Kulika. Karūṣa can be identified as a people of the forested area of Bihar covering the districts of Sasaram and Palamau. All told nineteen out of the twenty mixed castes of Manu appear to be indigenous or foreign tribes, mostly living in the periphery of the Āryāvarta or Brahmāvarta which was the area of the Aryan culture according to Manu. Thus the myth of the vrātyahood or the status resulting from the loss of ritual was invented to facilitate the admission of local and foreign tribes as non-dvija members of society. However these members enjoyed varying degrees of respectability as degraded brāhmaṇas, kṣatriyas, vaiśyas and śūdras.