Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c8.306

c8.306

Thirdly, it is wrong to think that in the beginning the loss of the upanayana was the decisive test of being a śūdra. In this case modern court decisions² cannot serve as a guide for conditions at the time when the śūdra class came into being. Loss of the upanayana in the case of the śūdra, as will be shown later, is to be found only from the end of the later Vedic period, and even so, it was not the only disability imposed on him as a mark of his servility but one of several. As will be noticed later, the loss of the upanayana was not the cause of the conversion of Āryans into śūdras but the consequence of their having sunk to the lower orders as a result of the rise of economic and social inequalities.