Note 23 — Chapter I

The Sûdra group. 20. As to the congeries of castes known to the early Hindus as Sûdras we find all the varying grades of social respectability from industrious artisans and cultivators down to vagrants like the Sânsya or Gandhîla and scavengers like the Dom or Bhangi. The word Sûdra has now no determinate meaning; it is merely used as a convenient term of abuse to designate persons who are, or are assumed to be, of degraded caste. It is probably a term derived from the languages of one of the inferior races.23 As has been already remarked, it is a comparatively modern word and appears only once in the Rig Veda. It may have been a synonym for Dasyu, “those of the black skin,” who represented the contrast between the aborigines and the conquering Aryans. The stress that is laid in the old hymns on the breadth of their noses would perhaps go to identify them with the broad-nosed Dravidians. But the accounts of their forts and cities show that when they came into contact with the writers of the Vedic hymns they had already attained a considerable degree of culture.