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The wily old watchman sensed what was passing in his master's mind, and he hazarded, diplomatically, "If the One is of high caste she will not eat what is brought by the bearer who is of the Sudra caste, but from the hands of a Meena none but the Brahmin pundits refuse food." Barlow laughed; indeed the grizzled one had perception he was an accomplice in the plot of secrecy. "Good!
Listen now to me as I tell thee who the Apasadas are. The son that a Sudra begets upon a Brahmana woman is called a Chandala. Begotten upon a Kshatriya woman by a person of the Sudra order, the son is called a Vratya. He who is born of a Vaisya woman by a Sudra father is called a Vaidya. These three kinds of sons are called Apasadas.
"The women of this sect here do not veil their faces as a rule." "They are quite good-looking," added the New York magnate. "What caste or class do they belong to?" "I should say they were in the Vaisya caste, agriculture and trade. They are well dressed, and therefore not Sudra. Probably they are the wife and daughter of a shopkeeper.
He may seize the goods of a Sudra, and whatever, beyond a certain amount, the latter acquires by labor or succession. If he slanders any of the other castes he pays only nominal fines graduated according to classes. Whatever crime he may commit his personal property cannot be injured, but whoever strikes a Brahman even with a blade of grass becomes an inferior quadruped for twenty-one generations.
The old division into Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, Sudra, and Mlechha, or outcast, who is below the Sudra, is but a division into the priest, the warrior, the husbandman, the artisan, and the menial.... William Priest, John King, Edward Farmer, and James Smith are but the survivals in England of the four varnas of Manu."
Almost all the citizens as well as the inhabitants of the country, young or old, O son of the Kuru race, praise thee, O Yudhishthira! This also, O Bharata, the people are saying amongst themselves, viz., that as milk in a bag of dog's hide, as the Vedas in a Sudra, as truth in a robber, as strength in a woman, so is sovereignty in Duryodhana.
Then desirous of having water in an unclean state, as he stood hopeless, he was slain by the vehement Rakshasa, carrying a spear in his hand." On hearing from the Sudra of this great calamity, Bharadwaja, sorely afflicted with grief, began to lament, embracing his dead son.
Amid the mass of trivialities and formalities in which every action is involved there breathes a grave humane and gentle spirit, and a sound practical morality, and the ordinary household of the Brahman may have been a scene of activity and cheerfulness. The Sudra, however, is spoken of everywhere as a being whose degradation can never be removed, and to touch whom is to be defiled.
He was right; and apparently the poor Sudra has been content with his strange lot, his insulting distinction, for ages and ages clear back to the beginning of things, so to speak. Manuel was a failure, poor old fellow. His age was against him. He was desperately slow and phenomenally forgetful.
'For a Sudra is like a cemetery, therefore the Veda must not be read in the vicinity of a Sudra; 'Therefore the Sudra is like a beast, unfit for sacrifices. And he who does not hear the Veda recited cannot learn it so as to understand and perform what the Veda enjoins. The prohibition of hearing thus implies the prohibition of understanding and whatever depends on it. And on account of Smriti.
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