Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c8.243

c8.243

The earliest speculation regarding the origin of the four varṇas is to be found in the mythical story of creation embodied in the *Puruṣasūkta* (hymn of man) of the *Ṛg Veda*. This is considered as an interpolation in the tenth book of that collection. But it is reproduced with slight changes in the later Vedic literature,⁶ and in the traditions of the epic,⁷ Purāṇas⁸ and Dharmaśāstras.⁹ It states that the brāhmaṇa emanated from the mouth of the primeval man, the kṣatriya from his arms, the vaiśya from his thighs and the śūdra from his feet.¹⁰ Either it shows that the śūdras were supposed to belong to the same stock, and hence were a section of the Āryan community, or else it represents an attempt to find a common mythical origin for the heterogenous brāhmaṇical society. In point of time the *Puruṣasūkta* version may be ascribed to the end of the period of the *Atharva Veda*,¹ in which it occurs in the latest portion which may be as late as 800 B.C.² It seems to provide a theoretical justification for the disintegration of tribal society into classes. Already in the *Rg* Vedic period division of labour had gone a long way. But although members of the same family worked as poet, physician and grinder,³ this did not involve any social differentiation. Towards the end of the period of the *Atharva Veda*, however, differentiations of functions tended to develop into differentiations of rank, and tribes and clans gradually disintegrated into social classes. It appears that the Śūdra tribe, or sections of the Āryans employed in servile work, were given the position of the fourth varṇa, and in this sense the tradition of the common origin of the four varṇas may have an element of truth. But it does not represent the whole truth. It is possible that in subsequent times the descendants of the Āryan śudras went on multiplying in the new fertile Gangetic settlements, but from the Vedic period onwards large numbers of aborigines of varying stocks were successively incorporated in the śudra varṇa.⁴ Obviously the old tradition of the common origin of the varṇas could not explain the accession of the non-Āryan tribes to the brāhmaṇical fold, but it could serve as a useful fiction. It could help to assimilate and keep the hetrogenous elements together, and, in so far as the śudras were supposed to have been born from the feet of the first man, it could justify their servile position in brāhmaṇical society.