SHUDRAS AND THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION 425
“The selling or mortgaging by kinsmen of the life of a Sudra who is not a born slave, and has not attained majority, but is an Arya in birth shall be punished with a fine of 2 panas.”
“Deceiving a slave of his money or depriving him of the privileges he can exercise as an Arya (Aryabhava), shall be punished with half the fine (levied for enslaving the life of an Arya).”
“Failure to set a slave at liberty on the receipt of a required amount of ransom shall be punished with a fine of 12 panas; putting a slave under confinement for no reason (samrodhaschakaranat) shall likewise be punished.
“The offspring of a man who has sold himself off as a slave shall be an Arya. A slave shall be entitled without prejudice to his master’s work but also the inheritance he has received from his father.”
Why did Manu suppress the Shudra?
This riddle of the Shudra is not a simple riddle. It is a complex one. The Aryans were for ever attempting to Aryanize the Non-Aryans i.e. bringing them within the pale of the Aryan Culture. So keen were the Aryans on Aryanization that they had developed a religious ceremony for the mass conversion of the Non-Aryans. The ceremony was called Vratya-stoma. Speaking of the Vratya-Stoma Mahamahopadhyaya Haraprasad Shastri says:
“The ceremony by which these Vratyas were purified, and which is described in the Pancavimsa Brahmana differed at least in one particular from other great ceremonies of the Vedic times, namely, while other ceremonies had only one sacrificer and his wife in the hall of sacrifice, this ceremony had thousands of sacrificers. One of them, the wisest, the richest or the most powerful acted as Grahapati or Patriarch and the rest simply followed him. The Grahapati had to pay a higher Daksina or fee than the rest.”
“I consider this to be a device by which thousands and thousands of Vratyas were admitted to the society of the Rsis by one ceremony, and such ceremonies were of frequent occurrence, thus admitting hordes after hordes of nomadic Aryans into settled habits. The purified Vratyas were not allowed to bring their possessions in Vratya life with them in settled life. They had to leave them to those who remained Vratyas still or do the so-called Brahmins of the Magadha-desa, which, as I have elsewhere shown, was mostly inhabited by men whom the Rsis looked down upon.”
“But when the Vratyas were admitted to settled life, they were admitted as fully equals. The Rsis used to eat food cooked by them, and they used to eat food cooked by the Rsis. They were taught all