Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c9.173

c9.173

All these considerations, however, in no way disprove the low status of the śūdra in later Vedic polity. Our object is to define it as precisely as we can. And it is abundantly clear that while the śūdra was associated with several ceremonies of the two important sacrifices of political nature, the *aśvamedha* and the *rājasūya*, there had already begun, possibly towards the end of the Vedic period, a definite tendency to exclude him from rituals connected with political life. In some cases the vaiśya was also condemned to the position of the śūdra and deprived of his old rights. But if we rely on the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* passage and place it around the middle of the first millennium B.C., it would appear that by that time society in the upper Gangā basin had become class-divided, and although the vaiśyas and śūdras formed the two lower orders, their respective positions were sharply defined. The vaiśyas represented the peasants, for PGW sites producing rice and other cereals, suggest numerous rural settlements. They were expected to pay regular tithes, and hence are described as those who were meant to be eaten and extorted for the collection of tribute by the kṣatra; on the other hand the śūdras had emerged as a class of domestics for serving the upper and controlling classes.