Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c8.195

c8.195

Who were the Dāsas? They have been generally confused with the Dasyus. But the absence of the word dāsa-hatyā (slaughter of the Dāsas), in contrast to dasyu-hatyā (slaughter of the Dasyus), the appearance of Dāsas as auxiliaries in the inter-tribal wars of the Aryans,⁸ the absence of their description as apa-vrata, anya-vrata, etc., the mention of dāsa viśas (clans) at three places,⁹ and above all their identification with the Iranian Dahae,¹ a Scythian tribe, sharply distinguish the Dāsas from the Dasyus, who seem to have had hardly anything in common with the Āryans.² There is no common word for Dasyu in Indo-European languages. We have the term dahyu in the Old Persian and Avestan languages, but it means a place of habitation of peoples, the ‘district, counry, land’;³ this is in contrast to the Old Indian dasyu which is used of persons, not of a place.⁴ On the other hand several languages share a common term for Dāsa. Thus the Greek doulos ‘servus’, now attested in Mycenaean doero, may belong with the Iranian daha,⁵ and points to an Indo-European dos.⁶ In all these languages the term means man or hero, which eventually came to have ethnic significance. The Greeks knew a people called variously as Daai, Daoi, Doai.⁷ It is held by H. W. Bailey that the term dāsa is hardly a proper name in the Indian texts.⁸ But numerous references in the Rg Veda speak of the Dāsa as those opposed to the Āryans or as their allies. The term dāsa is derived in old India from the base das, which means ‘to treat violently.’⁹ They may not have been a homogenous racial stock, but they were undoubtedly a group of peoples in Vedic times. Professor Bailey himself points out the existence of a people called by the ethnic name Iranian daha, later found in Old Persian dahā placed before saka in an inscription of Xerxes.¹⁰ It has been rightly suggested that in Old Indian the base das became pejorative on account of later environment.¹¹