166 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
pretence for a period to acquire a vested right or contrariwise punishing a community by declaring that it had no de jure right to wear the thread merely because it has not been wearing it de facto. The real criterion is not the wearing of the sacred thread but the right to wear the sacred thread. Understood in its proper sense, it may be said without fear of contradiction that the right to Upanayana is the real and the only test of judging the status of a person whether he is a Shudra or a Kshatriya.
V
The second objection is quite untenable. To assume, as the objection does, that from the very beginning the Aryan Society treated its different classes differently in the matter of Upanayana is to my mind a very unnatural supposition. Primitive society does not begin with differentiation. It begins with uniformity and ends in diversity. The natural thing would be to suppose that in the matter of the Upanayana the ancient Aryan society treated all its classes on the same footing. It may however be argued, on the other side, that such an original tendency in favour of uniformity need not be accepted as being universal, that it may well be that in the ancient Aryan society the Shudras and the women were excluded from Upanayana. Fortunately for me, it is not necessary for me to rely on logic alone though I contend that logic is on my side. For there is ample evidence both circumstantial as well as direct to show that both Shudras as well as women had at one time the right to wear the sacred thread.
That the ancient Aryan society regarded Upanayana as essential for all will be evident if the following facts are borne in mind.
Upanayana was allowed for the deaf, the dumb, the idiot and even the impotent. A special procedure was prescribed for the Upanayana of the deaf and dumb and idiots. The principal points in which their Upanayana differs from that of others are that the offering of Samidh, treading on a stone, putting on a garment, the tying of mekhala, the giving of deer skin and staff are done silently, that the boy does not mention his name, it is the acharya himself who makes offering of cooked food or of clarified butter, all the mantras are muttered softly by the acharya himself. The same procedure is followed as to other persons who are impotent, blind, lunatic, suffering from such diseases as epilepsy, white leprosy or black leprosy, etc.