310 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
religious system were on a par in the matter of status and dignity. The Shudra could never aspire to be a Brahmin in the Vedic regime but he could become a Bhikshu and occupy the same status and dignity as did the Brahmin. For, while the Vedic order of Bramhins was closed to the Shudra, the Buddhist order of Bhikshus was open to him and many Shudras who could not become Brahmins under the Vedic Regime had become their peers by becoming Bhikshus under Buddhism. Similar change is noticeable in the case of women. Under the Buddhist regime she became a free person. Marriage did not make her a slave. For marriage under the Buddhist rule was a contract. Under the Buddhist Regime she could acquire property, she could acquire learning and what was unique, she could become a member of the Buddhist order of Nuns and reach the same status and dignity as a Brahmin. The elevation of the status of the Shudras and women was so much the result of the gospel of Buddhism that Buddhism was called by its enemies as the Shudra religion (i.e. the religion of the low classes).
All this of course must have been very galling to the Brahmins. How very galling it must have been to them is shown by the vandallic fury with which Bramhanism after its triumph over Buddhism proceeded to bring about a complete demolition of the high status to which the Shudras and women had been elevated by the revolutionary changes effected by the vivifying gospel of Buddhism.
Starting with this background one shudders at the inhumanity and cruelty of the laws made by Manu against the Shudras. I quote a few of them assembling them under certain general heads.
Manu asks the householders of the Brahmana, Kshatriya and Vaishya Class :
IV. 61. Let him not dwell in a country where the rulers are Shudra………..
This cannot mean that Bramhana, Kashtriya and Vaishya should leave the country where Shudra is a ruler. It can only mean that if a Shudra becomes a king he should be killed. Not only a Shudra is not to be recognized as fit to be a king, he is not to be deemed as a respectable person. For Manu enacts that :—
XI. 24. A Bramhin shall never beg from a Shudra property for (performing) a sacrifice i.e. for religious purposes.
All marriage ties with the Shudra were proscribed. A marriage with a woman belonging to any of the three higher classes was forbidden. A Shudra was not to have any connection with a woman of the higher classes and an act of adultery committed by a Shudra with her was declared by Manu to be an offence involving capital punishment.