Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c8.252

c8.252

When do the śudras first appear as a social class charged with the service of the three higher varṇas? *Rg* Vedic society had some men and women slaves who acted as domestic servants, but they were not so considerable as to constitute the servile varṇa of the śudras. The first and the only reference to the śudras as a social class in the *Rg Veda* is to be found in the *Puruṣasūkta* passage already referred to, which recurs in the nineteenth book of the *Atharva Veda*.⁵ In the same book there are two other passages, which also seem to refer to the existence of four varṇas. In one of them prayer is made to the darbha (grass) to make the worshipper dear to brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, śūdra and ārya.¹ Here, ārya probably stands for vaiśya. In the second passage is expressed a desire to become dear to gods, to kings and to both śūdra and ārya.² It appears that here gods stand for brāhmaṇas and āryas for vaiśyas.³ We have to bear in mind that all these passages occur in the nineteenth book, which, along with the twentieth, forms a supplement to the main collection of the Atharva Veda.⁴ An earlier passage mentions a charm made by brāhmaṇa, rājanya or śūdra and includes a spell that it may recoil on the maker.⁵ This belongs to the second grand division (Book VIII-XII) of the Atharva Veda, which, according to Whitney, is ‘palpably of hieratic origin.’⁶ This suggests that the ideology of the varṇa system developed under priestly influence. The only other reference relevant to our purpose, which, on the basis of Whitney, can be assigned to the early period of the Atharva Veda, mentions brāhmaṇa, rājanya and vaiśya,⁷ but leaves out the śūdra. It is evident then that the śūdras appear as a social class only towards the end of the period of the Atharva Veda, when the Puruṣasūkta version of their origin may have been inserted into the tenth book of the Ṛg Veda.