V Jha Caste 2

Social Scientist
Social Stratification in Ancient India: Some Reflections

Author(s): Vivekanand Jha
Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 19, No. 3/4 (Mar. - Apr., 1991), pp. 19-40
Published by: Social Scientist
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VIVEKANAND JHA*
Social Stratification in Ancient India:

Some Reflections**
With the Indus script still undeciphered,1 in spite of nearly sixty years
of excavations and substantial evidence relating to varied aspects of
life, much of the reconstruction of the social organization of the Bronze
Age Indus Valley or Harappa Culture,2 covering parts of Punjab,
Haryana, Sindh, Baluchistan, Gujarat and fringes of western Uttar
Pradesh,3 during the third-second millennia BC,4 is hypothetical.
Though its exact relationship with the pre-existing cultures in the
Indo-Pakistan subcontinent has not been established so far,5 its
emergence as a result of a West Asian stimulus is being widely
discounted now,6 and it is regarded sui generis,7 an indigenous
development among peoples of mixed origin and diverse racial types,8
who had resided in the Indus Valley for centuries.
Scholars have distinguished Early, Mature and Late periods within
the chronological framework of the Harappa Culture,9 with
pronounced rural traits in its Early and Late periods,10 and a high
level of urbanism in its Mature period.11A wide agrarian base with
surplus foodgrains produced by the peasants in the countryside being
stored in the granaries at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro to feed the
sizeable non-food-producing urban population;12 and extensive long-
distance trade with West Asia,13 flourishing trade with Baluchistan,
Afghanistan and the Central Asian region,14 and a lively internal
trade, both regional and inter-regional, characterized this period.15
We also come across developed copper and bronze technology; a highly
professional blade industry; adequate use of objects of silver, gold,
precious stones and faience; crafts like bead making, shell working and
* Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi.

** This is a slightly modified version of the Presidential Address to the Ancient India
section of the 51st session of the Indian History Congress held in the University of
Calcutta in December 1990.
Social Scientist, Vol.19, Nos. 34, March-April
20 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
ivory carving; wheel-turned, well-fired pottery, generally plain, but

also often provided with a slip over which are painted designs in
black pigment; hand-modelled terracottas of graceful human and
animal figurines; brick laying and masonry on a vast scale; and the
manufacture of exquisite seals, cotton textiles, boats, carts, etc.16 A
large number of full-time city-based specialist artisans producing a
variety of articles of high artistic merit for the relatively affluent
privileged strata as well as for export, their rural counterparts also
engagin1 in crafts relating to stone, clay, shell, bone, metals and
textiles;1 and a substantial work force comprising wood-cutters, fuel
burners, grain-pounders, carters, street and drain cleaners, waste
removers and slaves18 are among the other distinct features of the
Mature urban phase of the Harappa Culture.
The overwhelming impression is that of a highly complex socio-
economic structure with the city holding a central and commanding
position vis-a-vis the countryside which it dominated and exploited,
and a definite stratification along class lines within the city itself
with the privileged ruling elite enjoying unequal wealth, power and
prestige in relation to the mass of common people.'9 There are no doubt
serious differences of opinion regarding the actual composition of the
ruling class. To take only a few examples, V. Gordon Childe thinks
that a 'ruler' dwelt in the citadels at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro;
includes among the ruling class princes, priests, merchants, officials
and scribes; and maintains that superstitions must have played an
enormous role in consolidating and maintaining social institutions and
economic arrangements.20 Stuart Piggott, A.L. Basham, D.D. Kosambi,
Bridget and Raymond Allchin, Ildiko Puskas and Irfan Habib are
inclined to agree. Thus Piggott speaks of a state ruled by priest kings,
wielding autocratic and absolute power, controlling production and
distribution, and levying tolls and customs.21 Basham refers to a single
centralized theocratic state and continuity of government throughout
the life of the civilisation.22 Kosambi pinpoints the curiously weak
mechanism of violence and the use of religion as an ideology by the
dominant priests to extract tribute from the traders (who were allowed
freedom to amass considerable wealth on their own) and to
appropriate social surplus and maintain the class structure.23 Brid
and Raymond Allchin attest the presence of priest kings or a priestly
oligarchy who controlled the religious life, economy and civil
government and functioned as administrators as well.24 Puskas locates
supreme power in the priests' hands.25 Irfan Habib underlines a
combination of gods, superstitions and priests binding the rulers and the
ruled alike in an awesome dread of change.26 R.S. Sharma, on the
other hand, excludes the priests completely from the category of rulers
and gives the pride of place to the traders.27 Without categorically
refuting the likelihood of priests wielding power, K. Antonova, G.
Bongard-Levin and G. Kotovsky also visualize the possibility of
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION IN ANCIENT INDIA 21
power in the Harappan cities being of a republican, oligarchic

variety.28 There is disagreement about the actual position of urban
craftsmen as well. While Puskas29 and R.S. Sharma30 have no doubt
regarding urban craftsmen being a part of the ruling class, Childe
associates them with the modest urban dwellings of the lower strata,31
even though they were to a large extent producing 'for the market'.32 In
a recent article Massimo Vidale expresses the opinion that craft
production was under the political control of the urban elites of the
Harappa Culture.33 Antonova, Bongard-Levin and Kotovsky find the
presence of both impoverished and prosperous artisans within the
precincts of the cities.34 The class character of the Mature Harappa
Culture is, however, generally recognized.35
Stretching the evidence to make out the existence of caste and
untouchability as well in the Harappa Culture, on the other hand,
does not seem to have adequate basis. Iravati Karve, a sociologist, first
referred to the probability of 'something very like castes' at Harappa
and a street exclusively occupied by a 'caste-like group' which had
specialized in pounding rice there.36 She also loosely spoke of
untouchability as a characteristic of the caste structure from top to
bottom.37 Following her, S.C. Malik, another sociologist, imagined the
'roots' of caste and the 'perpetuation of caste status by birth' in
Harappan society.38 'Caste class patterns', in his opinion, developed in
the socio-economic organization at Harappa and the incoming Aryans
adopted them in the process of being Indianized.39 That Malik is not at
all serious about the use of the term 'class' here may be gauged from his
reference to 'the emergence of complex socio-economic classes'
comprising 'the rich and the poor' in the Harappa Culture along with
the clarification that 'this is not in the sense of class consciousness or an
interclass struggle'.40 And Malik's reference to caste in the Harappan
context evoked from A. Ghosh, a much more perceptive, mature and
balanced scholar, the apt comment that such hurling of institutions
from the known to the unknown to suggest their origin and bringing
them down from the unknown to the known to prove their persistence
does not carry conviction.41 Suvira Jaiswal, too, questioned the
propriety of Malik's tagging caste with the existence of class
differences reflected in the settlement pattern of the Harappan cities,
which survived even after the cities themselves had disappeared.42
The concentration of various crafts in specific quarters or streets being a
normal feature of the Oriental towns up to the present day has been
underscored by several scholars.43 Significantly in his edited work,
Determinants of Social Status in India,4 which is presumed to reflect
'a multi-faceted trans-disciplinary approach to the structure of society
from ancient history to contemporary times in the Indian
subcontinent',45 neither Malik in his Introductory parer 'Deter
of Social Status in India: Problems and Issues',F6 nor any
contributor makes a single reference to caste in the Harappan context.
22 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
That Malik's view of History as a discipline is singularly narrow-

almost myopic-is evident from his observation in the Introduction to
another edited work, Indian Civilization: The First Phase-Problems
of A Sourcebook,47 that historical generalizations are normally
arrived at by scrutinizing individual facts that are not amenable to
any rational systematic analysis and that historians formulate
general propositions, rather tentatively, citing a few instances.48
Among the serious and eminent historians Romila Thapar has
supported the hypothesis put forward by Karve and Malik regarding
caste and untouchability in some of her writings. Avowedly taking 'the
help of social anthropology'-not historical evidence-she notes the
probability of caste as a pre-Aryan system and part of the social
stratification in the Harappa Culture, where a small group may have
preserved itself through strict endogamous marriage, claimed ritual
purity and higher status, and also exercised authority in a
hierarchical social set-up based on a division of labour with the notion
of pollution attaching to certain groups of menial workers.49 She even
talks of 'service relationships' on the pattern of the hereditary jajmani
system and finds in caste the answer to the vexed question as to who
was in authority and how that authority was maintained in the
Harappa Culture.50 The detailcd reconstruction in the absence of
corresponding tangible data in the material finds to support it can only
be regarded as exceedingly speculative, for although the notion of
ritual impurity may be exemplified by the Great Bath at Mohenjo-
daro and the existence of separate quarters for grain-pounders (a non-
polluting vocation in itself) at Harappa is admitted, evidence of
division of labour and occupational groups on the basis of ritual purity
and impurity is wanting and there is no trace of the continuity of caste
and untouchability in either the Late Harappa period or their
transition to the Rigvedic period.51 The material culture in the post
Harappan Vedic period (c. 1500-500 BC), for which we have copious
literary evidence in the Samhitas, Brahmanas and Upanisads (they
represent a sort of transition from prehistory to history), is glaringly
different and comparatively much less advanced. This long period, too,
can be divided into two distinct phases-Rigvedic (c. 1500-1000 BC)
and Later Vedic (c. 1000-500 BC). The Rigveda, comprising ten
mandalas (books), is widely accepted as containing two broad strata of
historical layers, the earlier represented by Books II-VII and the later
by Books I and VIII-X.
The hymns portray the Aryans as first and foremost a warlike
people driving horse-drawn chariots and using weapons of ayas
(copper or bronze) effectively against their non-Aryan foes in the land
of the seven rivers. Professional fighters organized in separate tribal
groups, they continuously fought internecine wars as well. Booty or
spoils of war (lotra)52 formed an important means of their livelihood.
They also engaged in primarily pastoral53 and subsidiary agricultural
pursuits, their agriculture being subsistence-oriented. Using ox-yoked

plough (langala, sira) with wooden ploughshare (phala) and such
other implements as hoe (khanitra), axe (parasu, vrikna), sickle
(datra, srini), etc., they produced yava (barley).54 Leather strap for
the plough (varatra), furrow (sita, sunu), terms for field (ksetra,
urvara) and ploughman (kinasa) are mentioned. Since most of the
references to agriculture are found in the admittedly late Books I and
VIII-X and a hymn in Book IV (57.1-8), which is considered an
interpolation, agrarian economy obviously stabilized towards the close
of the Rigvedic period.
The absence of evidence for the sale, transfer, mortgage or gift of
land or its disposal in any other way makes individual ownership of
land at this stage doubtful. The kin-based tribe, Rigvedic vis or jana,55
whose members were normally on the move and temporarily dwelt at
one particular place, appears to have collectively owned both the
cattle and the land and worked together in the fields. Iron being
unknown at this stage and tilling the virgin land being by all means an
arduous task, the whole tribe toiled to produce barley.
Scholars differ seriously about the use of hired extra-tribal labour,
especially slaves, in these limited agricultural operations. R.S.
Sharma firmly and consistently argues in his writings that slavery in
the Rigveda was purely domestic, that slaves, mostly women captured
in wars, were used for replenishing the depleting Aryan ranks through
begetting children and for household chores, and that the Rigveda
does not have an term for wag e or wage-earners.56 A.A. Macdonell
and A.B. Keiths and Basham, on the other hand, assert that the
Dasas were in many cases reduced to slavery and hence the word dasa
has the sense of 'slave' in several passages of the Rigveda. P.V. Kane
in his monumental History of Dhrmasastra cites a Rigvedic passage
referring to the gift of a hundred dasas in the sense of slaves.59 In Dev
Raj Chanana's opinion the Aryans must have known debt slavery,
slavery as a result of defeat in gambling and war slavery before their
advent into this country and quite a few Dasas ma have been enslaved
and almost any service demanded from them.60 Kosambi holds the
view that just as cattle were herded in common and fields were tilled
in common, the dasa was also used as common tribal property in the
Rigveda.61 Romila Thapar presupposes the employment of non-kin
dasa labour in the householding economy of the Rigveda.62 According
to Irfan Habib, the dasas worked like cattle on the field and tended
the herds.63 R.N. Nandi, too, attests the use of non-kin dasa labourers
in barley fields.64
Only a few crafts were practised in the post-urban rural milieu of
the Rigveda, which mentions the karmara (metalsmith), the taksan
or tastri (carpenter), the carmamna (tanner) and the vaya (weaver).
The karmara smelted the metal ore in fire (hence the designation
dhmatri or smelter) and made household utensils, tools and weapons of
24 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
copper or bronze. The taksan or tastri built chariots for war,65 prepared
vessels, buckets, sacrificial ladles and bedsteads of wood and engaged
in carving. The carmamna tanned hide (carman) from which were
manufactured bowstrings, slings, reins and bags. Cotton being unknown,
the vaya (weaver) prepared woollen cloth. Common words for these
artisans in several Indo-European languages suggest that the Rigvedic
Aryans did not learn these crafts on the Indian soil. The Rigvedic word
for potter (kulala) has, however, no parallels in other Indo-European
languages; this may indicate the adoption of local traditions in
pottery.
The products of craftsmen's labour and skill do not appear to have
been meant for sale or collection in the form of taxes and in view of the
unavailability of surplus to support them they probably engaged in
food production as well. The evidence of a Rigvedic hymn composer
calling himself a poet, his father a physici.an and his mother a grinder
of corn66 suggests that the indispensable division of labour had not
advanced beyond a point and specialization had not become
hereditary. In view of the usefulness of their work, the artisans were
respected members of the Aryan vis. Characterizing their relationship
with other members of the tribe as jajmani67 is perhaps too bold. The
economy was not yet fully or even primarily agrarian; craftsmen and
peasants were not two compartmentalized categories; and their mutual
relationship in a semi-sedentary set-up was not hereditary, subsisting
from generation to generation.
Also the surplus produced in this predominantly pastoral Rigvedic
economy was not substantial enough to undermine the broadl
egalitarian tribal structure or to lead to the development of classes.28
The Rigvedic tribal chief had hardly any regular or fixed source of
income in the form of cereal or cattle on which he could flourish along
with his priests. The term bali occurs in the Rigveda in the sense of a
voluntary offering or present from tribesmen to their chief. Occasional
exaction of tributes from the conquered people and spoils of war were
the other sources of his income, but since resources were not adequate to
maintain a regular army, he had to share these in periodic communal
sacrifices with members of the tribe who formed the militia. The
institution of mutual gifts also checked the growth of economic
disparity and there was no leisured class living off the surplus of
others. Differentiation within the tribe had, however, begun and the
tribal chiefs and priests were not only claiming and enjoying superior
ranks, they also received the major share of the spoils of war in the
form of slaves, animals, weapons and ornaments and enjoyed a
somewhat better economic position.
The term varna occurs in the Rigveda a number of times and is
initially used to distinguish Arya from Dasa and Dasyu. The
difference may initially have been both ethnic and cultural.69 The
words brahmana and ksatriya occur fifteen and nine times respectively
in the text, often in the sense of open and fluid functional catego
the word varna is never used in connection with them. Neither
kingship nor priesthood appears to have depended merely on birth or
heredity at this stage and there is no evidence of restrictions as regards
partaking of food or marriage. The sudra occurs only once in the
purusasukta70 in Book X and that also along with the brahmana, the
rajanya and the vaisya (the two latter too occur for the first time
here). Here the sudra is stated to have sprung from the feet of the
Purusa or Primeval Being, unlike the brahmana who sprang from the
mouth, the rajanya who sprang from the arms and the vaisya who
sprang from the thighs. Significantly the word varna is not used in this
context. Also there is a consensus among scholars that Book X belongs to
the latest stratum of the Rigveda and virtually synchronizes with the
Later Vedic texts. Evidently varna in the Rigveda did not have the
sense it came to acquire later. The fourfold varna system had
definitely not been brought to India by any group or wave of Aryans.
was an indigenous development and was not a reality in the Rigvedic
period.71 Certainly contact with peoples is not tabooed and there is not
even a semblance of untouchability in the text.72
The Later Vedic period (c. 1000-500 BC), information pertaining to
which is based not only on the post-Rigvedic texts, but also on the
archaeological finds of the Painted Grey Ware culture synchronizing
both in time and region with it,73 furnishes evidence of all-round
material progress. Victories in wars and penetration to new areas in
the east brought large tracts of Uttar Pradesh, north Bihar, parts of
Rajasthan, besides Punjab and Haryana, under the political and
cultural sway of the Aryans. Forests were extensively burnt and land
was cleared for cultivation to meet the needs of an expanding
population. Economy became primarily agrarian. Besides barley, rice,
wheat, millet, lentils, several kinds of pulses, sesamum and linseed
were produced. References to the use of large and heavy ploughs, to
which six, eight, twelve and even twenty-four oxen were yoked, and
paviravani or pavirava in the sense of metal ploughshare occur in
Later Vedic literature. The lone evidence of iron ploughshare from
Jakhera in Etah district of Uttar Pradesh has, however, been assigned
by R.S. Sharma74 to the close of the period. It seems that hard wood
(khadira, udumbara) ploughshares were used for deep digging to get
better yield. Intensive cultivation, application of manure (karisa,
sakrit and sakan), practice of irrigation and better knowledge of
seasons contributed to increase in production and sufficient surplus to
make possible the emergence of classes. Ownership of land devolved
from the tribe to families under patriarchal heads and the process of
disintegration of the Aryan tribes began.
Crafts, too, proliferated. The rathakara, distinct from the taksan,
appeared as a professional craftsman for the first time. The profession
of karmara became enormously important, for he began to manufacture
26 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
iron (syama or krisna ayas) artifacts on a modest scale about 900 BC or

a little later.75 Although the early use of iron was largely confined to
weapons of war such as spearheads, arrowheads, etc., found at the
excavated Painted Grey Ware sites, the role of iron axe in clearing
forests for cultivation in thick vegetation areas of the middle and
lower Ganga basin in the seventh century BC is incontrovertible.76
Ayastapa (heater of metal, iron or bronze) and kosakari are mentioned
in the texts; bellows appear to have been used at Atranjikhera; and
two fumaces for smelting iron and forging objects from it were found at
Suneri villa e in Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan towards the close of
the period. Increase in ksatriya or rajanya power and transformation
of the Rigvedic tribal chiefs into relatively strong monarchs ruling
over the first territorial kingdoms of the period may have been due to
their exclusive possession and use of iron weapons.78 Extensive use of
bows and arrows not only in wars but also in hunting led to the
development of the specialized crafts of the bowmaker
(dhanvakrit/dhanvakara), arrowmaker (isukrita, isukara) and the
maker of bowstring (jyakara). The jeweller (manikara) and worker in
gold (hiranyakara), too, make their appearance. The texts furnish
more details about leather work (carmanya). Predominance of women
in weaving, dyeing, embroidery, basket making and thorn working is
reflected in terms like vayitri, rajayitri, pesakari, bidalakari and
kantakikari respectively. Washing, too, had given rise to a
professional category in which both men (malaga) and women
(vasahpalpuli) participated. Some of the craftsmen and craftswomen
apparently belonged to non-Aryan segments. The rathakara, the
taksan and the karmara were treated with utmost esteem and
consideration owing to the immense value of their crafts for wars,
agriculture and general social comforts in a predominantly rural
setting. The king visited their houses to perform certain ceremonies in
course of sacrifices to show them respect and ensure their support.
There is definitely no trace of any stigma attaching to any craft. Some
of these crafts may have tended to become hereditary, though there is
no textual reference to occupational jatis at this stage.
Division of labour and specialization of functions evidently made
definite headway during the period. Agriculture became the primary
concern of the vaisyas, the most numerous of the four varnas which
developed during the period. Cattle-rearing was a secondary
occupation for them. Some craftsmen, too, may have belonged to th
category. The period also saw the rise of the fourth varna of sudras
from the conquered aborigines and the defeated and dispossessed
sections of the Aryans. Although occasionally wealthy cattle-
owners,79 the sudras were by and large less well-off than the vais
and engaged in the service of the upper classes. References to the sudra
being dedicated to toil (tapase) in the purusamedha (symbolic human
sacrifice) in the Vajasaneyi Samhita,80 Taittiriya Brahmana,81 and
Satapatha Brahmana82 point to his belonging to the class of labourers.

According to Kosambi, the new organization of society made available
for the first time a supply of labour whose surplus was easily
expropriated and the place of slave was taken by the sudra.83 In Irfan
Habib's opinion, the use of heavy ploughs without iron ploughshares
implied as its inevitable corollary the employment of servile
labourers.84 The brahmana as a professional priest and the
kastriya/rajanya as warrior/ruler had also emerged as specific
varnas, leading to the formation of the fourfold varna system during
the period.
Reflecting the emerging social stratification as a result of
progressive division of labour, specialization of functions and growth
of surplus, the varna system was from the beginning hierarchical.
With birth and heredity becoming increasingly important factors in
this division of labour and specialization of functions, jati (literally
caste) also developed during the period, the term first occurring in
Yaska's Nirukta85 and being applied to a woman of the sudra caste
(sudra-jatiya). Varna was in essence exploitative in nature and content.
There are crude statements to the effect that the vaisya and the sudra
are to be exploited for the advantage of the ruling class with the
brahmana priest's active cooperation and help. The Aitareya
Brahmana characterizes a vaisya as anyasya balikrit, 'tributary to
another', anyasyadya, 'to be eaten or lived upon by another', and
yathakamajyeya, 'to be oppressed at will', and a sudra as anyasya
presya, 'to be expelled at will', and yathakamavadhya, 'to be slain at
will'.86 Sacrifices are consciously designed to help rulers overcome
internal conflicts and to make the vaisya and the sudra submissive.87
Brahmana-ksatriya claims and counter-claims to supremacy
notwithstanding, their distance from the vaisya and the sudra in the
emerging class structure was growing. The former two joined hands to
repress and exploit the vaisya and the sudra. In fact, brahmana-
ksatriya collaboration is regarded as indispensable and vital for their
mutual well-being and prosperity in several texts. The crucial role of
the brahmanas, with more or less complete control over rituals and the
Vedic lore, in theoretical formulations facilitating the process of
tribal disintegration and class formation is transparent. Their
invaluable support to buttress the temporal authority entitled them to
gifts from the ruler, visamatta (eater of the vis) becomes one of whose
epithets. Taxes collected in kind through kinsmen (sajata) of the
monarch became now the primary source of extraction of the available
surplus. Varna division thus approximated to class division.88
Productivity in the pre-iron agriculture phase, however, not being
high, the material basis of this class division was weak. The tribal
bonds were, therefore, not completely sundered,89 and the vaisyas not
only formed part of the tribal militia, but also received an honourable
place in rituals, a Satapatha Brahmana passage even ordaining that
28 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
the ksatra and the vis should eat from the same vessel.90 A full-
fledged class society and state with substantial appropriable surplus,
regular taxation, army, administrative apparatus and monetary
economy developed only when the use of iron in agriculture and crafts
became common in the post-Vedic period.
III
Few historians have written more comprehensively and adequately on

the problem of social stratification in ancient India than my
distinguished teacher, Professor R.S. Sharma. D.D. Kosambi's
pioneering studies and brilliant insights touch the core of several
themes handled by him in his books and numerous articles.91 Romila
Thapar is full of fresh ideas and her writings show a remarkable
awareness of the latest trends and developments in disciplines like
sociology and social anthropology. B.N.S Yadava's masterly use of a
wide range of original sources in his book Society and Culture in
Northern India in the Twelfth Century92 and articles is worth
emulation by every young researcher in Indian history. B.P. Mazumdar,
Suvira Jaiswal, R.N. Nandi and a host of other historians including
those from the south have enriched our understanding of caste and class
in the ancient Indian context. Attempts to understand the patterns of
social development in different regions of the country in the past and
regional studies of the problem of social stratification are truly
commendable, though there is need and scope for much more work in
this area. Among the medieval Indian historians no one covered
various branches of ancient Indian history in as much detail as the
present Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research,
Professor Irfan Habib. The Anthropological Survey of India has under
its 'People of India' project in course of 1985-90 compiled and
computerized the latest data on 4,384 communities in all the States
Union Territories of India including 426 Scheduled Tribes, 443
Scheduled Castes (quite a few of these were neither in the past nor at
present are regarded untouchables in different parts of the country) and
1,051 Backward Classes in 120 volumes which will prove invaluable to
researchers in history. Dr K.S. Singh, the present Director-General of
the Survey, and the scholars who have assisted him in this major
academic endeavour deserve all compliments. Historians in this
country need to look up more carefully the good work done by
sociologists like M.N. Srinivas, Andre Beteille and G.S. Ghurye as
well as their Western counterparts to have a few useful insights for
their own researches in history. I have myself written a few lengthy
articles on some untouchable groups and the despicable phenomenon of
untouchability in the ancient period. I shall not attempt to cover the
entire gamut of social stratification in post-Vedic times up to AD 1200
in this brief article and I shall draw your attention to only a few
aspects of this problem in a general way.
One major development in the Later Vedic period was the beginning
of the process of assimilation of forest-dwelling tribes on the
periphery of the immigrant Aryan settlements. Quite a few such tribes
are mentioned in the texts. Among these are the Nisadas,93 the
Candalas, the Paulkasas, the Andhras and the Kiratas. It is not that
all these tribes and many others who are referred to in later texts came
into eqully close contact with the Aryans. But some of those who did
and had poor material background fared badly in the unequal
encounter. In fact they were among the first peoples who became
tabooed and were subsequently damned as untouchables. It is a
historical fact that when untouchability first appeared in the full-
fledged class and caste society of the pre-Mauryan post-Vedic times,
they were the first victims to be relegated to the ritually lowest social
position. I have in mind the well-known-rather notorious-cases of
the Candalas, Mritapas, Matangas and later Svapakas, Dombas and
others. These were the original inhabitants of the country who are
known to have belonged to the Munda-speaking Proto-Australoid
ethnic type.94 One theory about the origin of caste and untouchability
is that these were pre-Aryan institutions95 which the Aryans
themselves imbibed from them. This is simply not true.
Sinmlarly there is no basis to suggest that the caste system in our
country first originated among the Dravidians in the south and then
percolated to the north.96 The south developed the phenomenon only
as a result of the impact of north Indian cultural and political
contact.97 From what we know of the Harappans and the Aryans it is
clear that they cannot be equated so far as their contribution to caste
and untouchability in this country is concerned. There is no positive
evidence for untouchability at Harappa and the Aryans did not bring
the institution but developed it on Indian soil a few centuries after
their advent.
Ideology and force were both systematically employed to slowly
develop caste and untouchability in this country. The notion of
pollution in relation to certain social groups was first elaborated in the
Dharmasutras of Apastamba, Gautama, Baudhayana and Vasistha,
then in the Smritis of Manti, Visnu, Yajnavalkya, Narada, Brihaspati
and Katyayana, and still later in the early medieval Dharmasastra
and Nibandha texts.98 Even secular texts (by ancient Indian standards)
like the Arthasastra of Kautilya fell in line. Detailed rules and norms
were prescribed regarding marriage, food, association and contact and
those who violated them-unless of course they were materially and
politically strong-were in for serious trouble. One careful look at the
institution of outcastes (patita-they differed from the untouchables
in not being permanent or hereditary-in Dharmasastra literature
would show that they were to be no less severely punished for
violation of prescribed norms and intimate contact with the
untouchables than the untouchable segments till they relented and
30 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
observed the rituals of penitence and redemption. They were to lose

inheritance; even their wife and children were expected to disown
them; and of course for the society they would simply cease to matter.
The king's danda (coercive authority) was to be applied for the
observance of caste rules99 and several inscriptions bear out royal
claims to follow the Dharmasastra directive in this regard. In their
own way the epics and the Puranas lent support to caste norms, whose
essence lay in its institutionalized inequality.100 The brahmanas and
the ksatriyas and all those who could by virtue of their power,
resources and position join the elite group and had no role in primary
productive activities benefited from the system; for its apparent
rigidity notwithstanding, caste always retained the requisite amount
of flexibility and an attitude of accommodation. Many foreign
invading hordes were assimilated as higher caste groups. Even when
indigenous tribes broke up, the best among them could be accommodated
as priests or even as rulers.
The Dharmasastra writers employed new theoretical concepts to
explain the social phenomenon. One such concept was the theory of
varnasamkara,l?l which was used to explain the status of several
emerging groups and the untouchability of sections like the Candalas,
the latter being simply regarded as the lowest pratiloma caste-
offspring of a hypogamous union between the fourth varna of sudra and
a brahmana woman.
The notion of jatyupakarsa (upward mobility of a caste) owing to
marriage in a higher varna or pursuit of an occupation prescribed for a
higher varna continuously for five to seven generations102 does not
appear to have been valid with respect to the Candala. Downward
mobility (jatyapakarsa) was, however, possible in the case of other
theoretically pratiloma categories through marriage in a lower varna
or pursuit of an occupation prescribed for a lower varna continuously for
five to seven generations. As M.N. Srinivas points out, the
untouchables differ from the other low castes in that, unlike the latter,
the former have no means of pushing themselves up in the caste
hierarchy and even Sanskritization does not help.
It is significant that the Sanskrit term asprisya for untouchability
was first used in the Visnusmriti,103 a text of the third century AD, and
the phenomenon existed for long with terms like anta, antya, antyaja,
antyayoni, antyavasayin, apapatra, abhisasta, etc.
The classical varna theory did not have any place for a fifth varna,
though in his commentary to the Brahmasutra, I. 4.12, Samkaracarya
(early eighth century) shows awareness of a school of thinkers who
regarded the Nisada as a fifth varna and the Samba Purana, 66. 10
(sixth-eighth centuries) mentions the fifth varna. Untouchability was
evidently considered an integral part of the varna system.
It is not true that Buddhism tried to confront the caste system
squarely or sought to destroy it.104 Caste was denounced; brahmanical
superiority was challenged; divine sanction behind it was questioned;

it was not permitted within the Samgha (Order of monks); but Buddha
did not seek to weed it out from the society. Caste was part and parcel
of the prevailing mode of production which benefited the haves at the
cost of the have-nots and Lord Buddha was perceptive enough to
broadly accepts this social reality. Mahavira and Jainism, too, went
along a similar line.
Beef-eating had nothing to do with the origin of untouchability.105
It was not prohibited in the Dharmasastra texts until the early
medieval period.
Bhakti succeeded in relaxing the rigours of caste to some extent.106
Lokayata, Tantra and the Sahajiyas were openly hostile to caste and
did not determinate against the low order but they failed to dislodge
caste from its entrenched position in organized society.107
That the practice of untouchability was immediately connected
with excessive and abnormal notions of purity and pollution cannot be
denied, but then this is also true that caste did not develop in
primitive societies where these notions are found. Varna in India
provided a framework for their growth and systematization and
projected through them the dominant material relations in ritual
terms. The ideology of purity/pollution was surely used to assign low
position, segregate and hereditarily exploit a large segment of
population.
That there was periodically stiff resistance to caste oppression is
reflected in the accounts of the Kali age in the epics and the Puranas,
which show the discomfiture of the upper castes and an unusual
aggressiveness on the part of the lower orders, ? but the tempo does not
appear to have been sustained and continuous enough to disrupt the
system.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. Despite numerous attempts and more than forty claims to success, the
decipherment of the Indus script (the unilingual inscriptions, mostly on seals and
some on amulet tablets or even as scratches on potsherds with never more than
twenty and usually not more than ten symbols, are too short) remains an
unresolved issue and does not shed light on the available archaeological
material. In 'The Study of Society in Ancient India: A Reorientation of
Perspectives', Presidential Address to the Ancient India section of the 31st session
of the Indian History Congress, Romila Thapar argued that the decipherment
must conform to a grammatical and linguistic system and the reading of the
inscriptions must make sense in terms of the context of the culture; see Proceedings
of the Indian History Congress (hereafter PIHC), Varanasi, 1969, p. 26. According
to Asko Parpola, who with his Finnish colleague, Kimmo Koskenniemi, has on
the basis of computer-aided analysis of the Indus script produced an impressive
concordance of the known inscriptions, A Concordance to the Texts in the Indus
Script (University of Helsinki, 1982), and with Simo Parpola, Seppo Koskenniemi
and Pentti Aalto as co-authors written The Decipherment of the Proto-Dravidian
Inscriptions of the Indus Civilization (hereafter Decipherment; The
Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, 1969), the Indus scipt is
32 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
full of challenging problems; see 'Interpreting the Indus Script', in B.B. Lal and
S.P. Gupta (eds.), Frontiers of the Indus Civilization, Sir Mortimer Wheeler
Commemoration Volume (hereafter Frontiers), Indian Archaeological Society and
Books & Books, New Delhi, 1984, p. 191. Iravatham Mahadevan, author of the
Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables (Archaeological Survey of India, New
Delhi, 1977), regards the Indus script as one of the seven pictographic scripts
developed in the ancient Orient during the Bronze Age (c. 3000-1500 BC), the
other six being Sumerian, Egyptian, Proto-Elamite, Cretan, Hittite and Chinese,
generally written from the right, only about 7 per cent being written from the left,
having 425?25 distinctive signs and being an independent invention; see What Do
We Know About the Indus Script? Neti Neti ('Not This Nor That')', Presidential
Address to the Historical Archaeology, Epigraphy and Numismatics section of
the 49th session of the Indian History Congress, PIHC, Dharwad, 1988, pp. 600,
604-5, 614. On the basis of his structural and analytical study of the script,
Mahadevan, like Parpola and his team and a group of Soviet philologists,
ethnologists and mathematicians (G.V. Alekseev, M.A. Probst, A.M. Kondratov,
I.K. Fedorova, B.Ya. Volcok and N.V. Gurov) led by Yu. V. Knorozov, who too
have used the computer to bring out 7he Soviet Decipherment of the Indus Valley
Script: Translation and Critique (hereafter Soviet Decipherment), edited by
Arlene R.K. Zide and Kamil V. Zvelebil (Mouton, The Hague/Paris, 1976),
maintains that the language was Proto-Dravidian and refutes S.R. Rao's theory
put forward in his The Decipherment of the Indus Script (Asia Publishing House,
Bombay, 1982) that the language was an archaic branch of the Old Indo-Aryan
and the script evolved in two stages, the early or mature script comprising 62 basic
signs during 2500-1900 BC and the late script containing only 20 basic signs during
1900-1200 BC, the change-over being from a logographic-syllabic to a syllabic-
alphabetic script; see Mahadevan's review article in Vivekanand Jha (ed.), The
Indian Historical Review (hereafter IHR), Vol. VIII, Nos 1-2, Indian Council of
Historical Research, New Delhi, July 1981 and January 1982, pp. 59-60, 64-66.
2. Culture, observes V. Gordon Childe in Social Ewlution (Watts & Co., London,
1951, p. 26), is an organic whole, not a mechanical aggregate of traits. Of the two
most important and best known sites of the Indus Valley (both in Pakistan now),
Harappa in Punjab, though smaller in size than Mohenjo-daro in Sindh, being
discovered in 1921, one year earlier than Mohenjo-daro, gave its name to this
culture. There are still wide gaps in the archaeological material, notes A.H.
Dani; see Recent Archaeological D)iscoveries in Pakistan, Unesco, Paris, and the
Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, Tokyo, 1988, p. 1.
3. In the post-Independence period Indian archaeologists have identified more than
700 sites of this culture inside the country and excavated to a varying degree as
many as 40 of them; see B.K. Thapar, Recent Archaeological Discoveries in India,
Unesco, Paris, and the Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, Tokyo, 1985, p. 52.
4. Sir John Marshall first estimated the duration of the Harappa Culture from 3250
to 2750 BC; see Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization (hereafter Mohenjo-
daro), Vol. I, Arthur Probsthain, London, 1931, pp. 104,106. Sir Mortimer Wheeler
dated this culture in 2500-1500 BC; see 'Harappa, 1946: The Defences and
Cemetery R 37', Ancient India, Bulletin of the Archaeological Survey of India,
No. 3, New Delhi, January 1947, p. 82. In The Indus Civilization (3rd edn.,
Cambridge University Press, 1968, p. 125; first published in 1953), however,
Wheeler modified his position and postulated the founding of the nuclear cities
some time before 2400 BC and their enduring in some shape in the eighteenth
century BC, these time brackets not fitting closely and mechanically to the Indus
towns and villages of all sizes and in all locations. Asko Parpola et al have dated
the Harappa Culture in c. 2500-c. 1800 BC (Decipherment, p. 3), while Knorozov
et al have dated its outer limits in c. 2200-c. 1750 BC (Soviet Decipherment,
Preface, p. 5). D.P. Agrawal plotted some two dozen radiocarbon dates, including
those for Kot Diji, Kalibangan and Lothal, and, based on uncalibrated dates,
concluded c. 2300-1750 BC as the maximum date bracket of this culture, though at
the individual sites the duration of this culture might have been still smaller
('Harappa Culture: New Evidence for A Shorter Chronology', Science, Vol. 143,
No. 3609, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington,
1964, pp. 950-51); cf. 'Harappan Chronology: A Re-examination of the Evidence',
in D. Sen and A.K. Ghosh (eds.), Studies in Prehistory, Firma K.L.

Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta, 1966, pp. 139, 147.
5. A. Ghosh (ed.), An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology (hereafter
Encyclopaedia), Vol. I, ICHR and Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1989 (a
posthumously published two-volume monumental work which contains the major
findings of Indian archaeology in prehistory, protohistory and ancient historical
period during the last one 150 years and encompasses information available up to
1978), p. 75.
6. A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India (hereafter Wonder), 3rd revised edn.,
Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1967; first published in 1954, p. 15; Glyn Daniel's
Preface to Childe, Man Makes Himself, Watts & Co., London, 1965; first
published in 1936, p. xii.
7. A. Ghosh, The City in Early Historical India (hereafter City), Indian Institute of
Advanced Study, Shimla, 1973, p. 2.
8. Childe, New Light on the Most Ancient East (hereafter New Light), reprint,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1963, first published under this title in 1934 and
as The Most Ancient East in 1928, p. 175; Man Makes Himself, p. 169; What
Happened in History (hereafter What Happened), reprint, Penguin, 1972, first
published in 1942, p. 132; Stuart Piggott, Prehistoric India, Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, 1950, p. 140; A.D. Pusalker, 'The Indus Valley Civilization', in R.C.
Majumdar (ed.), The Vedic Age, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1951, pp.
176, 196; Wheeler, The Indus Civilization, p. 136; Bridget and Raymond Allchin,
The Birth of Indian Civilization: India and Pakistan Before 500 B.C (hereafter
Birth), Penguin, 1968, p. 126; Raymond Allchin, 'The Legacy of the Indus
Civilization', in Gregory L. Possehl (ed.), Harappan Civilization: A
Contemporary Perspective (hereafter Harappan Civilization), American
Institute of Indian Studies and Oxford & IBH Publishing Co., New Delhi, 1982, p.
332; K. Antonova, G. Bongard-Levin and G. Kotovsky, A History of India, Book I,
Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1979, pp. 14-16; V.K. Thakur, Urbanization in
Ancient India, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1981, pp. 26-27; Dani, Recent
Archaeological Discoveries in Pakistan, pp. 2, 55.
9. A. Ghosh places the Early and Mature Harappa periods within c. 2700-1900 BC
and the Late Harappa period within c. 1700-1000 BC; see Encyclopaedia, Vol. I,
pp. 87, 90. The most recent radiocarbon dates (without MASCA correction) are c.
2900-2100 BC for the Early Harappa period, c. 2200-1800 BC for the Mature
Harappa period and c. 1800-1300 BC for the Late Harappa period. Applying
MASCA correction, the Early and Mature Harappa periods extend from c. 3200 to
2200 BC and from c. 2700 to 2100 BC respectively; see K.S. Ramchandran, 'Dating
the Indus Civilization' in B.B. Lal and S. P. Gupta (ed.), Frontiers, p. 539.
10. Gregory L. Possehl (ed.), Ancient Cities of the Indus (hereafter Ancient Cities),
Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1979, pp. x, 4748, 287. Though the Early
and Late periods were substantially rural, according to Jim G. Shaffer, urban
centres were not absent during the Late Harappa period; see 'Harappan Culture: A
Reconsideration', in Possehl (ed.), Harappan Civilization, p. 49.
11. The new cities are spatially larger and can accommodate a much denser
population than the agricultural villages that have been absorbed in them or
that still subsist beside them and urbanism on a vaster scale than on the Nile or
the Euphrates signified progress in terms of organic and cultural evolution; see
Childe, Man Makes Himself, pp. 14-15, 142. The Indus Civilization marked the
zenith of the first period of urbanization during the Bronze Age, maintains Dani;
see Recent Archaeological Discoveries in Pakistan, p. 1.
12. Vivekanand Jha, 'Agricultural Labour and Village Artisans in Early North
Indian History (up to c. 500 BC)' (hereafter 'Agricultural Labour and Village
Artisans'), Social Science Probings, Vol. I, No. 4, People's Publishing House, New
Delhi, 1984, pp. 544 46 (the article was first presented at the Indian History
Congress symposium at its 45th session held at Annamalai University, Tamil
Nadu, in 1984); cf. Childe, What Happened, p. 135; Progress and Archaeology,
Watts & Co., London, 1944, p. 49; Man Makes Himself, p. 131; Emest Mackay,
Early Indus Civilization, 2nd enlarged and revised edn., Luzac, London, 1948, first
published in 1935, pp. 132-33; Piggott, Prehistoric India, pp. 153, 155; Wheeler,
The Indus Civilization, pp. 72, 84; Basham, Wonder, p. 18; D.D. Kosambi, An
34 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
Introduction to the Study of Indian History (hereafter Introduction), Popular

Book Depot, Bombay, 1956, pp. 55, 62; The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient
India in Historical Outline (hereafter Culture), Routledge & Kegan Paul, London,
1965, p. 54; Bridget and Raymond Allchin, Birth, p. 126; R.S. Sharma, 'Stages in
Ancient Indian Economy I: Bronze Age Urbanism to Iron-based Agriculture'
(Section on 'Urban Experiment, c. 2600-1500 BC'), Perspectives in Social and
Economic History of Early India (hereafter Perspectives), Munshiram
Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1983, pp. 105-6; Ancient India, 3rd revised edn., NC
New Delhi, 1990, p. 48, first published in 1977; Irfan Habib, 'The Peasant in
Indian History', General President's Address to the 43rd Indian History Congress
session, PIHC, Kurukshetra, 1982, p. 6.
Some scholars have envisioned the existence of a peasant segment in the towns
also; cf. Childe, Progress and Archaeology, p. 49; idem, 'The Urban Revolution',
reprinted in Possehl (ed.), Ancient Cities, p. 15; Robert McAdams, 'The Natural
History of Urbanism', loc. cit., p. 20.
13. Shereen Ratnagar, Encounters: The Westerly Trade of the Harappa Civilization,
Oxford University Press, 1981, p. 232; Childe, New Light, p. 186; Man Makes
Himself, p. 150; What Happened, p. 134; Piggott, Prehistoric India, pp. 13340;
Wheeler, The Indus Civilization, pp. 81-82; Kosambi, Introduction, pp. 55-57;
Culture, pp. 59-60; R.S. Sharma, Perspectives, p. 107; Ancient India, pp. 49-50;
Bridget and Raymond Allchin, The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan
(hereafter Rise), pp. 219-20; A. Ghosh (ed.), Encyclopaedia, Vol. I, p. 85.
14. Dilip K. Chakrabarti, The External Trade of the Indus Civilization, Munshiram
Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1990, pp. 166, 169; Basham, Wonder, pp. 18-19; R.S.
Sharma, Perspectives, p. 107; Ancient India, p. 49; A. Ghosh (ed.), Encyclopaedia,
Vol. I, p. 85.
15. Kosambi, Introduction, pp. 57-58; Bridget and Raymond Allchin, Birth, p. 129 fn.;
S.P. Gupta, 'Internal Trade of the Harappans', in B.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta (ed.),
Frontiers, pp. 417, 424.
16. Bridget and Raymond Allchin, Rise, pp. 193-95, 197, 199, 201-2; A. Ghosh (ed.),
Encyclopaedia, Vol. I, pp. 83-84.
17. Vivekanand Jha, 'Agricultural Labour and Village Artisans', op. cit., p. 547.
18. Among the scholars who attest the existence of slaves are Mackay, Early Indus
Civilization, p. 39; Piggott, Prehistoric India, pp. 169-70; D.H. Gordon, The
Prehistoric Background of Indian Culture, Bhulabhai Memorial Institute and
N.M. Tripthi Pvt. Ltd, Bombay, 1958, pp. 71, 74; Basham, Wonder, p. 18; Kosambi,
Introduction, pp. 55, 62, and Culture, p. 54; Dev Raj Chanana, Slavery in Ancient
India as Depicted in Pali and Sanskrit Texts, People's Publishing House, New
Delhi, 1960, p. 170; and Antonova, Bongard-Levin and Kotovsky, A History of
India, Book I, pp. 20, 23. Unlike the Soviet scholar V.V. Struve and the German
scholar Walter Ruben, however, who regarded the Harappa Culture as a
specimen of a slave-based social formation, R.S. Sharma expresses doubts
regarding slave labour being a significant component of the Harappan economy;
see Perspectives, pp. 108-9; cf. Antonova, Bongard-Levin and Kotovsky, A History
of India, Book I, p. 23; Vivekanand Jha, 'Ancient Indian Political History:
Possibilities and Pitfalls', Social Scientist, Vol. XVIII, Nos 1-2 (200-201), New
Delhi, January-February 1990, p. 41 (in a slightly modified form the artide has
appeared in IHR, Vol. XIV, Nos 1-2, July 1987 and January 1988, published in
December 1990, see pp. 101-2, and an earlier version was first presented at the
50th Indian History Congress session at Gorakhpur University in 1989).
Even those scholars who do not consider the evidence regarding slavery in the
Harappa Culture as irrefutable, for example, G.K. Rai (Involuntary Labour in
Ancient India, Chaitanya Publishing House, Allahabad, 1981, p. 46) and Uma
Chakravarti ('Of Dasas and Karmakaras: Servile Labour in Ancient India', in
Utsa Patnaik and Manjari Dingwaney (eds.), Chains of Servitude: Bondage and
Slavery in India, Sangam Books, Madras, and Orient Longman, 1985, pp. 4243),
acknowledge the existence of 'a sort of organised labour, with a measure of
compulsion never far away' or 'regimented dependent labour' (see Rai, op. cit., pp.
4647), or 'a section which laboured' in this stratified society and resided in
barrack-like quarters near the granaries (see Uma Chakravarti, loc. cit.).
Wheeler, too, had referred much earlier to servile and semi-servile labour as a
familiar element of all ancient polities including the Harappan (The Indus
Civilization, p. 54).
19. Y.M. Chitalwala. 'The Problem of Class Structure in the Indus Civilization', in
B.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta (eds.), Frontiers, p. 211. In his opinion, the so-called
massacre at Mohenjo-daro may have been the result of an internal conflict rather
than an all-out external invasion (ibid., p. 215). Possehl, too, finds society
internally differentiated and structurally specialized ('Archaeological
Terminology and the Harappan Civilization', ibid., p. 30), and envisages peasant
revolts as one of the possible factors of the decline of the Harappa Culture
(Ancient Cities, p. 288). Antonova, Bongard-Levin and Kotovsky do not accept the
view that the Harappan society was pre-class in character and find unmistakable
evidence of class stratification here (A History of India, Book 1, p. 22). Amita
Ray, too, has no doubt about the hierarchical structure of the Harappan urban
society based upon the rule of the few over many ('Harappan Art and Life: Sketch
of A Social Analysis', hereafter 'Harappan Art', in Debiprasad
Chattopadhyaya (ed.), History and Society: Essays in Honour of Niharranjan
Ray, hereafter History and Society, K.P. Bagchi & Co., Calcutta, 1978, pp. 117,
119, 129). Cass societies, according to Childe, subsume a small minority that
annexes, concentrates and accumulates the social surplus and the masses who at
best retain just as much of the product of their labour as is required for domestic
consumption (Social Evolution, p. 37).
20. Childe, New Light, p. 174; Man Makes Himself, pp. 130, 142; Progress and
Archaeology, p. 22.
21. Piggott, Prehistoric India, pp. 136, 153.
22. Basham, Wonder, pp. 15-16.
23. Kosambi, Introduction, pp. 58-59, 61-62; Culture, pp. 64, 70.
24. Bridget and Raymond AUchin, Birth, p. 137; Rise, p. 182.
25. Puskas, 'Society and Religion in the Indus Valley Civilisation', in Bridget
Allchin (ed.), South Asian Archaeology, Cambridge University Press, 1981, p.
163.
26. Irfan Habib, General President's Address, op. cit., p. 6.
27. R.S. Sharma, Perspectives, p. 106; Ancient India, p. 50.
28. Antonova, Bongard-Levin and Kotovsky, A History of India, Book I, p. 53.
Pusalker, too, regards it a 'democratic bourgeois' polity; see 'The Indus Valley
Civilization', in Majumdar (ed.), The Vedic Age, p. 173.
29. Puskas, op. cit., p. 163.
30. R.S. Sharma, Perspectives, p. 106.
31. Childe, New Light, p. 175; What Happened, p. 135.
32. Childe, What Happened, p. 134.
33. J.M. Kenoyer, 'Specialized Producers and Urban Elites: On the Role of Craft
Industries in Mature Harappan Urban Contexts', in Kenoyer (ed.), Old Problems
and New Perspectives in the Archaeology of South Asia (hereafter N e w
Perspectives), University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1989, p. 180.
34. Antonova, Bongard-Levin and Kotovsky, A History of India, Book I, pp. 21, 23.
35. The rich-poor divide amounting to class division is indicated not only by the well-
to-do sections inhabiting large houses and the poor taking shelter in tiny
dwellings, but also by the burial practices showing the wealthy as being interred
with jewellery and decorated vessels and the poor with accoutrements on a far
more modest scale (ibid., p. 23). According to Amita Ray, the more conventional
and sophisticated potteries, the intaglio seals, the bearded busts and the dancing
Harappan male seem to reflect the ethos and psyche of the dominant minority,
while the terracotta female figurines and animals, the vegetal decorations and
narrative paintings, the Mohenjo-daro girl and the male torso reflect the ethos
and psyche of the working communities ('Harappan Art', op. cit., p. 129).
36. Iravati Karve, Hindu Society-An Interpretation, first published in 1961, 2nd
edn., Deshmukh Prakashan, Poona, 1968, pp. 54-64, and Introduction by W.
Norman Brown, p. vi.
37. Iravati Karve, Kinship Organization in India, first published in 1953, 3rd edn.,
Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1968, p. 7.
36 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
38. S.C. Malik, Indian Civilization: The Formative Period-A Study of Archaeology
as Anthropology, first published in 1968, reprint, Indian Institute of Advanced
Study, Shimla, and Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1987, p. 107.
39. S.C. Malik, Understanding Indian Civilization: A Framewrk of Enquiry, Indian
Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 1975, p. 76.
40. S.C. Malik, 'Harappan Social and Political Life', in B.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta
(eds.), Frontiers, pp. 204, 208. In a recent article, 'An Enquiry into the Concepts of
Technology, Surplus and Social Stratification' (in Dilip K. Chakrabarti (ed.),
Man and Environment, Vol. XII, Indian Society for Prehistoric and Quaternary
Studies, Deccan College, Pune, 1988, pp. 1-16), Makkhan Lal, too, has made an
elaborate, clumsy and facile attempt to deny any link of the appearance of surplus
and advance in technology with the emergence of social stratification in the
ancient period. His broadside on Childe in the names of all the supposed
celebrities on the other side of the fence that Makhan Lal could think of is
especially misplaced because Childe also maintained that 'man's progress from
savagery to civilization is intimately bound up with the advance of abstract
thinking' (The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins, hereafter Aryans,
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London, 1926, p. 3), and thirty-seven years
before Kosambi published his famous article, 'Combined Methods in Indology'
(Indo-Iranian journal, Vol. VI, Nos 3-4, Mouton, The Hague, 1963, pp. 177-202),
Childe advocated a coordination of literary evidence with archaeological and
anthropological data (Preface, p. xii) for the reconstruction of history.
41. A. Ghosh, City, p. 84.
42. Suvira Jaiswal, 'Caste in the Socio-Economic Framework of Early India',
Presidential Address to the Ancient India section of the 38th Indian History
Congress session, PIHC, Bhubaneswar, 1977, pp. 27-28; idem, 'Studies in the Early
Indian Social History: Trends and Possibilities', IHR, Vol. VI, Nos 1-2, July 1979
and January 1980, pp. 11-12.
43. Cf. Piggott, Prehistoric India, p. 170.
44. Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi,
1986.
45. Preface, p. ix.
46. Pp. 1-27.
47. Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 1971.
48. P. xv.
49. Romila Thapar, Presidential Address, op. cit., pp. 21, 36 fn.; idem, The Past and
Prejudice, National Book Trust, New Delhi, 1975, p. 29. In his Foreword to
Stephen Fuchs, The Children of Hari: A Study of the Nimar Balahis in Madhya
Pradesh, India (Verlag Herold, Vienna, and The New Order Book Co.,
Ahmedabad, 1949, p. viii), Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf no doubt tentatively
puts forward the hypothesis of an urban origin of untouchability, but does not
consider it possible to ascribe the growth of this social phenomenon to any definite
period in Indian history. Even so, the hypothesis is not well-founded in evidence,
for not only has the movement from villages to towns in recent times been a factor
in lessening the rigours of caste and untouchability, the 'second urbanization' in
the Ganga basin in the sixth century BC borrowed nothing from the Harappa
Culture (A. Ghosh, City, pp. 2, 30), and untouchability first appears prominently
in post-Vedic texts broadly reflecting a rural setting. The study of the socially and
culturally lowest segment of the Nimar Balahis by Fuchs himself does not even
remotely indicate that their untouchability was at any stage due to their habitat
in an urban milieu.
50. Romila Thapar, Presidential Address, loc. cit.; cf. J.M. Kenoyer, 'Socio-Economic
Structure of the Indus Civilization as Reflected in Specialized Crafts and the
Question of Ritual Segregation', in Kenoyer (ed.), New Perspectives, p. 189. In her
recent study, From Lineage to State: Social Formations in the First Millennium BC
in the Ganga Valley (hereafter Lineage) (Oxford University Press, 1984, p.53),
without specifically mentioning caste, she refers to the possibility of Harappan
society being ruled by an aristocracy claiming power through ritual and religion
and the notion of purity apd pollution prevailing there.
In her A History of Indza (Vol. I, first published in 196, reprint, Penguin, 1986,
p. 37), however, Romila Thapar does not recognise caste as a phenomenon of the
Harappa Culture and categorically states that there was no consciousness of caste
even when the Rigvedic Aryans first came to India. In her Ancient Indian Social
History: Some Interpretations (hereafter Interpretations) (Orient Longman, 1978)
also, where the Presidential Address has been reprinted in pages 211-39, she
maintains in the chapter 'Society and Law in the Hindu and Buddhist Traditions'
(pp. 26-39) that the order of castes emerged from a divine source in the Hindu
tradition (p. 29) and in the chapter 'Ethics, Religion and Social Protest in the
First Millennium BC in Northern India' (pp. 40-62) she assigns the growth of caste
to this period (p. 47). Although in her General President's Address to the 44th
Indian History Congress session she speaks of continuities between the Harappan
and post-Harappan societies, including the Vedic (PIHC, Burdwan, 1983, pp. 4,
18)-she had expressed her inability to identify any 'specifically Aryan
elements in the variety of post-FHarappan cultures in the Indus and Ganga valleys
in her Varanasi Presidential Address in 1969, PIHC, pp. 16-17-she refrains from
mentioning caste in the Harappan context.
51. Vivekanand Jha, 'Candala and the Origin of Untouchability' (hereafter
Candala), IHR, Vol. XIII, Nos 1-2, July 1986 and January 1987, pp. 33-34 fn. A
shorter version of the article was first presented at the International Seminar on
'New History' organised by the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, in collaboration with the India International Centre, New Delhi, in
February 1988; and a more elaborate version was presented at the National
Seminar on 'Untouchability in Ancient India' organised by the Department of
Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology, Banaras Hindu University,
Varanasi, in March 1989.
The Rigvedic Aryans are no longer regarded as the immediate successors of the
Mature Harappa Culture or the invading hordes which destroyed it, as had been
initially suggested by Childe (New Light, pp. 187-88) and Wheeler ('Harappa,
1946: The Defences and Cemetery R 37', Ancient India, No. 3, January 1947, p. 82)
and enthusiastically supported later, among others, by Kosambi (Introduction, pp.
6869; Culture, pp. 55, 71). Way back in 1931 Sir John Marshall thought that the
Harappa Culture could have been but 'a mere shadow of its former self' when the
Indo-Aryans entered Punjab about the middle of the second millennium BC, and
since no evidence of a large-scale armed confrontation had been found at the
excavated sites, they were not its destroyers (Mohenjo-daro, Vol. I, pp. 110-12).
Among the adherents to this view are Basham (Wonder, pp. 24, 28); Asko Parpola
et al (Decipherment, p. 5); K.A. Nilakanta Sastri (Aryans and Dravidians, P.C.
Manaktala & Sons, Bombay, 1979, pp. 8-9); George F. Dales ('The Mythical
Massacre at Mohenjo-daro', in Possehl (ed.), Ancient Cities, p. 294); Vishnu-
Mittre ('The Harappan Civilization and the Need of A New Approach', in
Possehl (ed.), Harappan Civilization, p. 37); Romila Thapar (Interpretations,
pp. 18, 152-53. 262); Antonova, Bongard-Levin and Kotovsky (A History of India,
Book I, pp. 27-29); R.S. Sharma (Perspectives, p. 110); and A. Ghosh (ed.,
Encyclopaedia, Vol. I, p. 89). As Dani points out, the Rigveda does not speak of a
great state against which the Aryans fought and their opponents may have been
those who lived in small territorial zones like that of Taxila; seeThe Historic
City of Taxila, Unesco, Paris; and the Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies,
Tokyo, 1986, p. 35.
52. Emile Benveniste, a well-known authority in comparative linguistics, has found
words corresponding to Sanskrit lotra in several Indo-European languages; see
Indo-European Language and Society, Faber & Faber, London, 1973, pp. 135-36.
53. R.S. Sharma has counted 176 references to gau (cattle) as against 21 references to
agricultural activities in the Rigveda. Cattle not only provided milk, meat and
hide, but as the primary source of energy were also used in ploughing fields and
drawing carts. Battles were fought for the sake of cattle, which also formed the
medium of exchange and were the very measure of wealth of the Rigvedic Aryans;
see 'Forms of Property in the Early Portions of the Rigveda', Essays in Honour of
Professor S.C. Sarkar, People's Publishing House, New Delhi, 1976, p. 40; cf.
Material Culture and Social Formations in Ancient India (hereafter Material
Culture), Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1987, pp. 38-39; Sudras in Ancient
India (hereafter Sudras), first published in 1958, 3rd edn., Motilal Banarsidass,
Delhi, 1990, pp. 10, 12, 21, 29; Kosambi, Introduction, p. 77.
38 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
54. No other grain is specified.

55. The traditional idea of vis being a subdivision of jana has been disputed by R.N.
Nandi, in whose opinion jana signified the earlier wandering group while vis
marked the beginning of household life; see 'Anthropology and the Study of the
Veda', Review Article on Romila Thapar's Lineage, IHR, Vol. XIII, Nos. 1-2, pp.
155-56. Romila Thapar's hypotheses regarding vis and lineage presented in her
book on Lineage have been disputed by A.M. Shah, R.N. Nandi and R.S. Sharma.
56. R.S. Sharma, 'Conflict, Distribution and Differentiation in Rigvedic Society'
IHR, Vol. IV, No. 1, July 1977, pp. 3, 4, 11; Perspectives, pp. 28, 113.
57. Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (hereafter Vedic Index), Vol. I, first published
in 1912, reprint, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1967, p. 357.
58. Basham, Wonder, p. 32.
59. VIII. 56.3; Kane, History of Dharmasastra (hereafter Dharmasastra), Vol. II, Pt.
1, first published in 1941, 2nd edn., Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute,
Poona, 1974, pp. 180-81.
60. Chanana, Slavery, pp. 19-20.
61. Kosambi, Introduction, pp. 92-93.
62. Romila Thapar, Lineage, pp. 3940.
64. R.N. Nandi, 'Anthropology and the Rigveda', op. cit., pp. 162-64.
65. In Nandi's opinion horse-yoked chariots were also used for gathering fruits,
honeycomb, soma plant and game; ibid., p. 164.
66. Rigveda, IX. 112.3.
67. Jaimal Rai, The Rural-Urban Economy and Social Change in Ancient India (300
BC-300 AD), Bharatiya Vidya Prakshan, Varanasi, 1974, pp. 99-100.
68. R.S. Sharma, Sudras, p, 30; Perspectives, pp. 27-28; 'Conflict, Distribution and
Differentiation in Rigvedic Society', op. cit., p. 11.
69. R.S. Sharma refers to the difference of colour and physiognomy as well as cultural
differences between the Aryans and their enemies; see Sudras, pp. 14-16. Basham
stresses the religious, social and cultural differences between the Aryans and the
non-Aryans, but concedes that the racial connotation of arya had not become quite
meaningless in the Rigvedic stage; see 'Aryan and Non-Aryan in India', in M.M.
Deshpande and P.E. Hook (eds.), Aryan and Non-Aryan in India, University of
Michigan, 1979, pp. 4-5.
70. Rigveda, X. 90. 12.
71. The view expressed in Vedic Index (Vol. II, p. 250), by Macdonell and Keith that
the caste system was already well on its way towards general acceptance in the
Rigveda is not correct. Childe rightly denies the existence of caste in this text
(Aryans, p. 32). Irfan Habib correctly points out that it is futile to expect the
social institution like caste to exist before the producers in society were able to
provide a 'surplus' and the varna initially presaged very little of the caste
system that was to grow later; see Caste and Money in Indian History, D.D.
Kosambi Memorial Lecture, 1985, University of Bombay, 1987, pp. 4-5.
72. Vivekanand Jha, 'Stages in the History of Untouchables' (hereafter 'Stages'),
IHR, Vol. II, No. 1, July 1975, p. 14; 'Candala', IHR, Vol. XIII, Nos. 1-2, p. 1.
73. R.S. Sharma, 'The Later Vedic Phase and the Painted Grey Ware Culture', in
Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (ed.), History and Society, pp. 131 43.
74. R.S. Sharma, Material Culture, p. 60.
75. Ibid., p. 58; 'Oass Formation and Its Material Basis in the Upper Gangetic Basin
(c. 1000-500 BC)' (hereafter 'Class Formation'), IHR, Vol. II, No. 1, p. 2; B.P.
Mazumdar, 'Changing Profile of Economic History', Presidential Address, Ancient
India section, 37th Indian History Congress session, PIHC, Calicut, 1976, p. 38.
76. R.S. Sharma, 'Class Formation', op. cit., pp. 2-3; 'Problems of Social Formations in.
Early India', General President's Address, 36th Indian History Congress session,
PIHC, Aligarh, 1975, p. 5.
77. R.S. Sharma, Material Culture, p. 59.
78. R.S. Sharma, 'Class Formation', op. cit., p.7.
79. Bahu-pasu, Pancavimsa Brahmana, VI. 1. II.
80. Vajasaneyi Samhita, XXX. 5.
81. Taittiriya Brahmana, III. 4. 1. 1.
82. Satapatha Brahmana, XIII, 6. 2. 10.
83. Kosambi, Introduction, p. 91; Culture, p. 24.

85. )(1. 13. The Nirukta is a commentary on the Nighantu, a Vedic glossary in five
chapters and is pre-Paninean.
86. Aitareya Brahmana, VII. 29.
87. Satapatha Brahmana, VI. 4. 1. 13.
88. Claude Meillassoux, 'Are There Castes in India?', Economy and Society, Vol. Il,
No. 1, London, February 1975, pp. 89-111.
89. Basham, Wonder, p. 41.
90. Satapatha Brahmana, IV. 3.3. 15.
91. It is unfortunate that a compilation of all his artides except those on coins (Indian
Numismatics, (ed.) B.D. Chattopadhyaya, Orient Longman, Delhi, 1981) is yet to
be published.
92. Central Book Depot, Allahabad, 1973.
93. See my artide, 'From Tribe to Untouchable: The Case of Nisadas', in R.S. Sharma
and Vivekanand Jha (eds.), Indian Society: Historical Probings (In Memory of
D.D. Kosambi), ICHR and People's Publishing House, New Delhi, 1974, pp. 67-84.
94. A.L. Basham, 'Aryan and Non-Aryan', in Deshpande and Hook (eds.), Aryan and
Non-Aryan in India, p. 2.
95. Cf. Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya, Social Life in Ancient India, Academic
Publishers, Calcutta, 1965, p. 151.
96. This hypothesis was put forward by N.K. Dutt, Origin of Caste in India, Vol. I, c.
2000-300 BC, London, 1931, pp. 106-7.
97. K.A.N. Sastri, Aryans and Dravidians, pp. 48-82. In his book entitled
Untouchability: A Historical Study (Koodal Publishers, Madurai, 1979, pp. 127,
13241, 144), K.R. Hanumanthan has shown that untouchability in the south has
a distinctly later origin than in the north and the earliest references to
untouchability can be found in Acarakkovai (fourth/fifth century AD) which
shows the Dharmasastra influence.
98. The obligatory nature of expiatory rites and penances, relatively simple or
complex, and the strong social sanction behind them is proved by elaborate
provisions regarding their strict enforcement in these texts.
99. The preservation of the varna order is ordained as the primary responsibility of
the monarch in the Dharmasutras of Gautama (XI. 9-10) and Vasistha (XIX. 7-8),
the Arthasastra of Kautilya (1. 3. 14-17), the Smritis of Manu (VII. 35), Visnu
(III. 1, 33), Narada (XII. 113) and Yajnavalkya (I. 363).
100. The Ramayana, for example, portrays Rama killing a sudra named Sambuka who
in violation of Dharmasastra norms was practising penance which had
purportedly resulted in the death of a brahmana's son (Uttara Kanda, LXXIII. 2
LXXVI. 15, Gita Press Edition.
101. See my article 'Varnasamkara in the Dharmasutras: Theory and Practice', Journal
of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. XIII, Pt. 3, Leiden, 1970, pp.
280, 287-8; G.C. Pande, Foundations of Indian Culture, Vol. II, Dimensions of
Ancient Indian Social History, Delhi, 1984, p. 229; S.J. Tambia, 'From Varna to
Caste Through Mixed Unions' in Jack Goody (ed.), Character of Kinship,
Cambridge, 1973, pp. 218, 223-24. The substantial increase in the number of mixed
castes in Manu (55 according to P.V. Kane, Dharmasastra, Vol. II, Pt. I, p. 59)
reflects the growing fusion and assimilation of various elements with the Aryan
population. Varnasamkara was presumed to be caused not only by marriage with
women unfit for marriage or promiscuity among the varnas, but also by
relinquishing one's obligatory duties (Manusmriti, X. 24).
102. Gautama Dharmasutra, IV. 22-24; Manusmriti, I. 96.
103. Visnusmriti, X. 37-38. Katyayana (AD 400-60) also uses the term asprisya twice
in the sense of untouchables (verses, 433, 783).
104. A useful recent study based on the Buddhist Canon is that by Uma Chakravarti,
The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism, Oxford University Press, New Delhi,
1987. It is significant that like the Upanisads, Dharmasastra and other
brahmanical texts, Buddha also expressed full faith in the theory of high and
low births and material position being connected with action in previous birth.
B.R. Ambedkar did not carefully go into all the evidence while propounding the
theory that Buddhism in a way effectively countered caste and untouchability in
40 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
the country. For a detailed exposition of my views in this regard, see my articles
'Stages', IHR, Vol. II, No. 1, pp. 21-23, and 'Candala', IHR, Vol. XIII, Nos 1-2,
pp. 24-31.
105. B.R. Ambedkar made untenable claims in this regard in his book The
Untouchables (Delhi, 1948, pp. 103, 155, 159); cf. Vivekanand Jha, 'Stages', op.
cit., p. 31.
106. See my article 'Social Content of the Bhagaradgita', IHR, Vol. XI, Nos. 1-2, July
1984 and January 1985, pp. 1-44 (first presented at the VIIth World Sanskrit
Conference held at the KernInstitute, Leiden, in August 1987). This IHR volume
was released in 1988. I have not found any evidence of the impact of feudalism on
bhakti (devotion) in this text.
107. Debiprasad Chttopadhyaya has in his book Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian
Materialism (People's Publishing House, New Delhi, 1959), and B.N.S. Yadava
has in his study Society in Northern India provided evidence for this.
108. R.S. Sharma, 'The Kali Age: A Period of Social Crisis' in S.N.Mukherjee (ed.),
History and Thought (Essays in Honour of A.L. Basham), Subarnarekha,
Calcutta, 1982, pp. 186-203; B.N.S. Yadava, 'The Accounts of the Kali Age and
the Social Transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages', IHR, Vol. V, Nos. 1-2,
July 1978 and January 1979, pp. 31-63; Vivekanand Jha, 'Candala', op. cit., pp. 21-
23.

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Social Scientist

Social Stratification in Ancient India: Some Reflections

Social Stratification in Ancient India:

* Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi.

Social Scientist, Vol.19, Nos. 34, March-April

ivory carving; wheel-turned, well-fired pottery, generally plain, but

power in the Harappan cities being of a republican, oligarchic

That Malik's view of History as a discipline is singularly narrow-

pursuits, their agriculture being subsistence-oriented. Using ox-yoked

iron (syama or krisna ayas) artifacts on a modest scale about 900 BC or

Satapatha Brahmana82 point to his belonging to the class of labourers.

Few historians have written more comprehensively and adequately on

observed the rituals of penitence and redemption. They were to lose

superiority was challenged; divine sanction behind it was questioned;

NOTES AND REFERENCES

in D. Sen and A.K. Ghosh (eds.), Studies in Prehistory, Firma K.L.

Introduction to the Study of Indian History (hereafter Introduction), Popular

54. No other grain is specified.

83. Kosambi, Introduction, p. 91; Culture, p. 24.

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