Buddhist Civilisation 133indeed shows a process of tribal communities being absorbed into
functional occupations, with some among them (their priests
and/or chieftains) being accepted into the higher varnas.
However, the process at the time was only beginning. The evidence
of the Pali literature shows that the society of the first millennium
BCE was not yet a caste society, that is a society where ordinary
people were habituated to the practices of intermarrying only
within their jati and following the professions of their fathers.
Most historians, including Marxist historians, treat the period as
one in which varnas were evolving into jatis; or rather, both varna
and jatis were beginning to be created. In other words, when the
Sanskrit literature, whether the dharmashastras, the epics, or any
other, refers to varna and caste, the attempt is not to realistically
describethe society but to prescribefor it. The references represent
projections; the Brahmanic texts are an attempt to delineate an
ideal model and impose it on the society. They are a manifesto for
a particular form of social inequality.
The surviving fragments of earliest ‘external’ report on Indian
caste is by Megasthenes, a Greek traveler who visited Pataliputta
(Pataliputra) around 300 BCE in the age of the Mauryas, who
describe a system unlike any of the Brahmanical versions.
Megasthenes lists seven groups, the ‘sophists’ who are the sages,
often naked (elsewhere these are described in a way that seems to
include both Brahmans and samanas); the tillers of the soil; herds-
men; handicraftsmen and retail-dealers; warriors; ‘superintendents’
who are spies; and ‘councillors of state’. These are said to marry
only within their own group, except forthe ‘sophists’ (summary in
Klass 1980: 23–25). These fragments of Megasthenes are often
taken as a kind of mis-description of an actually existing varna
system, but that is unlikely. Their relation to the social reality of
Mauryan society is problematic. Later travellers, for example the
Chinese pilgrims of the 5th century and after, describe the four
varnas much more according to Brahmanic texts, which indicates
that at least that was taken as normative.
Buddhism reflected, and propagated a casteless, open society. In
general there is not too much concern even for birth, in spite of
references to the nobility of a Khattiya origin. This can be also seen
in the Jatakas. While the misogyny regarding the ‘wicked’ lusts of
women is striking, the other side of it is that there is little concern
shown about adulterous relationships. Kings condone or forgivebhakti movements where in Brahman-recorded traditions,
untouchables are seen as humbly accepting their position.
In analysing the varna-jati situation at the time of the rise of
Buddhism, Uma Chakravarty makes an important point. She
points out that the Pali texts refer to the four-varna system only in
the abstract: no real person is ever identified as being of any specific
varna, or even with any of the more frequently mentioned cate-
gories of hina kulas(low-families): (Chakravarty 1996: 104–07).
In the Brahmanical texts the vessais associated with agriculture, cattle-
keeping and trade, and the suddawith service. But nowhere in the
Buddhist texts are people or groups occupied with agriculture, cattle-
keeping or trade referred to as vessas, or those associated with service
referred to as suddas. Instead, the Buddhist texts associate agriculture
with the gahapati, the cattle keeper is described as a gopaka, and the
term vannijjais used for the trader....Similarly while there are no
suddasthere are innumerable references to dasasand kammakaras
who are associated not with the service of the higher vannas but
with providing labour for their masters who are almost invariably
gahapatis....It is not just the suddaswho are missing but the hina jatis
or nica kulasof the Buddhist texts are not discernible in real situations.
Except for the lone example of Matanga...nesadas, ratthakaras, venas
and pukkusasdo not exist as real people. Instead, names were often
associated with a profession which had similarities with one
of these categories; but the terms themselves were never used. For
example, the bhikku Sunita is described as being of low origin and of
having performed the work of a puppachaddaka, but he is not called
a pukkusa....Similarly, there are references to specific hunting groups
like the sakunika(fowler) and kevatta(fisherman), but there are no
identifiable nesadas.In other words, the terms referring to birth and occupation are
never used to categorise any essential features of people or to
ascribe people, as a result of their occupation, to a particular birth-
defined status group. As we have seen in the Jatakas, while many
different occupations are described, there is no sense of an inherent
polluting quality or ‘bad’ quality linked to any of them. No real
‘castes’ or ‘varnas’ are shown there either. There are cases where
occupations seem almost caste-like, in the sense that entire villages
are shown to be following one occupation; there are potter villages,
carpenter villages, villages of iron-smiths, and in one Jataka story
(#475) there is a Brahman carpenter in a village of carpenters. This
132 Buddhism in India