Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c8.278

c8.278

Coupled with the Ābhīras the Śūdras are repeatedly mentioned as a tribe in the *Mahābhārata*, which contains traditions that may look back to the 10th century B.C. This epic makes a clear distinction between the śūdra kula which is mentioned along with the kulas of kṣatriya and vaiśya,¹ and the śūdra tribe, which is mentioned with the Ābhīras, Daradas Tukhāras, Pahlavas etc.² As a tribe the Śūdras find place in the list of peoples conquered by Nakula in the course of his all round victorious march (dig-vijaya),³ and in that of those sending presents to Yudhiṣṭhira on the occasion of his great coronation sacrifice (rājasūya).⁴ They are bracketed with the Ābhīras in many references, and both of them seem to have existed in India earlier than the Śakas, Tukhāras, Pahlavas, Romakas, Chīnas and Hūṇas, whose names were later⁵ interpolated into the list of the peoples mentioned in the Sabhā Parvas. Non-Indian sources of the first few centuries preceding or succeeding the Christian era give no indication of the foreign connections of the Śūdras and Ābhīras. There is hardly anything to support the view that the Ābhīras came to India in the early centuries of the Christian era. It appears that they existed as a tribe at the time of the Bhārata war⁶ and in the period of chaos, which followed the aftermath of the great war, they spread themselves over the Panjāb.⁷ The repeated mention of the Śūdras along with the Ābhīras would suggest that they were an old tribe flourishing at the time of the war. This fits in well with the interpretation of the term śūdra in the sense of tribe in the earliest part of the Atharva Veda.