Studies in the Origins of Buddhism c13.65

c13.65

The early Vedic Aryans led a life of mixed pastoral and agricultural economy. The growth of the importance of agriculture was soon reflected in the sanctity which came to be attached to the cow who was declared ‘aghnyā’.⁵¹ Society was organised in villages or ‘grāmas’ and tribes or ‘janas’ ruled by kings with the assistance of the assemblies called ‘sabhās’ and ‘samitis’. As the tribes settled down, the first territorial states or ‘janapadas’ came into existence. Side by side with this economic and political development, there was a growing division of labour in society. The rulers and the priests⁵² were the two classes that first distinguished themselves from the mass of the people called ‘Viśaḥ’. In the later Vedic period, a fourth class, the Śūdras comes into view. The predominance of the non-Aryan element in their composition can hardly be doubted.⁵³ Economically, they were the most primitive class and yet their recognition as a distinct caste is seen to come last in the evolution of Vedic social order. This suggests that their emergence represents, not a growing division of labour which led to the rise of a yet newer and more specialised functional class, but the entrance into the fold of Vedic society of a new people or community.⁵⁴ In the older period, miscegenation had been freer but by now social organisation was tending to become rigid,⁵⁵ and so, with firmer lines of social demarcation, that part of the community which was predominantly non-Aryan, particularly in its cultural traits, tended now to be segregated, and served as the general receptacle for any new non-Aryan tribes which, in the course of the expansion and settlement of the Aryans, might be socially amalgamated with them. This would also elucidate the otherwise inexplicably low status which is assigned to the Śūdras.⁵⁶ It is not necessary in this connection to appeal exclusively or even principally, to the sense of racial discrimination. The feeling of cultural difference is sufficient to account for the peculiar rules governing the status of the Śūdras. For example, it seems fairly clear that the ‘Śvapākas’ were held in abhorrence because of their custom of cooking dogs, as their name implies.⁵⁷