Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c8.334

c8.334

This discussion on the origin of the śūdra varṇa may be summed up by stating that large sections of people, Āryans and pre-Āryans, were reduced to that position, partly through external and partly through internal conflicts.² Since the conflicts centred mainly round the possession of cattle, and perhaps latterly of land and its produce, those who were dispossessed of these and impoverished came to be reckoned as the fourth class in the new society. The view that the śūdra varṇa was made up of the pre-Āryans seems to be as one-sided and exaggerated as the view that they mainly consisted of the Āryan peoples.³ The sociological theory that a division into classes is always originally connected with ethnical dissimilarities⁴ only partly explains the origin of the śūdras and dāsas (slaves). It is more than likely that dāsas and śūdras were respectively named after tribes of these names having affinities with the Indo-Āryans, but in course of time they came to include large groups of the pre-Āryan and degraded Āryan populations, who had ethnic connections neither with the Dāsa nor with the Śūdra tribe. It seems fairly clear that the Ṛg Vedic society had no recognisable śūdra order. Since it was predominantly a tribal and pastoral society, its military chiefs and their priestly supporters could not exact so much surplus produce and labour from their tribal kinsmen and others so as to alter their status into that of a servile order. Whatever was exacted as tributes from tribesmen or collected as spoils of war was redistributed among the kinsmen in the tribal assemblies. The possession of horses, chariots and slaves by the chiefs emphasised their ranks rather than their social class. The process of the formation of a servile class was carried forward only in later Vedic times when pastoralism gave way to agriculture and seminomadism to large-scale settlements, as can be inferred from both Painted Grey Ware sites and later Vedic texts.