Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c8.295

c8.295

Reference has already been made to the *Dahae*, the Iranian parallel to Indian *Dāsa*, but it is difficult to establish such an equation in the case of *Śūdra*. It has been doubtfully suggested that *Śūdra* may be equated with the Greek word *kūdros*,¹ which is used by Homer (*circa* 10th cen.-9th cen. B.C.) in the sense of great, and is applied as an epithet generally to divine beings and rarely to mortals.² In later times in India *śūdra* was a term of opprobrium applied to people disliked by the *brāhmaṇas*; on the contrary it was a term of approbation in Homeric Greece. This may be explained very tentatively by suggesting that members of a hypothetical Indo-European Kudra tribe became important among the leaders of the tribes which later invaded Greece, while those of this tribe who entered India were subjected by their fellow invaders. That the same term carries inverted meanings in different contexts is clear from the example of *asura*. While Asura was associated with evil in India, his prototype Ahura was a god in Iran. The analogy may apply to the use of the term *śūdra* in India and Greece but cannot be regarded as definitive unless it is proved that the *kūdroi* were a tribe in Greece. Nevertheless, on the basis of all that has been said above, it is probable that the *Śūdras*, like the *Dāsas*, were a people allied to the indo-Aryan stock.