Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c8.2

c8.2

The modern study of the ancient Indian social order owed its inception to the efforts of the East India Company, which could not govern an alien people without some knowledge of their institutions. The preface to *A Code of Gentoo Laws* (1776), one of the first English works which have some bearing on the early social history of India, states that "the importance of the commerce of India and the advantages of a territorial establishment in Bengal" could be maintained only by "an adoption of such original institutes of the country, as do not intimately clash with the laws or interests of the conquerors."¹ In his preface to the translation of the *Manu Smṛti* (1794) Sir William Jones, the father of modern Indology, adds that, if this policy is pursued, "the well-directed industry" of "many millions of Hindu subjects" "would largely add to the wealth of Britain."² Four years later, on the basis of these sources, Colebrooke wrote an essay on the "Enumeration of Indian classes",³ which appeared to him among the most remarkable institutions of India.⁴ Soon after, in 1818 these sources were utilised by Mill to describe the caste system in his *History of India*. Discussing the disabilities of the śūdras he came to the conclusion that the vices of caste subordination were carried to a more destructive height among the Hindus than among any other people,⁵ and remarked that the hideous society of the Hindus continued in his times. But from the same sources Elphinstone (1841) deduced that the condition of the śūdras “was much better than that of the public slaves under some ancient republics, and, indeed, than that of the villains of the middle ages, or any other servile class with which we are acquainted”.¹ He also perceived that such a servile class did not exist any longer in his time.²