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For, O son of Pritha, even they who may be of sinful birth, women, Vaisyas, and also Sudras, even they, resorting to me, attain to the supreme goal. Having come to this transient and miserable world, be engaged in my worship. Fix thy mind on me; be my devotee, my worshipper; bow to me; and thus making me thy refuge and applying thy self to abstraction, thou wilt certainly come to me."
And Brahmanas, and Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas, and Sudras by thousands followed the deceased king, loudly wailing in these accents, 'O prince, where dost thou go, leaving us behind, and making us forlorn and wretched for ever? And Bhishma, and Vidura, and the Pandavas, also all wept aloud. At last they came to a romantic wood on the banks of the Ganga.
They that are conversant with the Riches, the Yajuses and the Samans, and who are devoted to the practices of their order, are, O king, equal to the very gods. Those, however, amongst them that are not well-born and not devoted to the duties of their order, and are besides wedded to evil practices, are like Sudras.
Capable of oppressing all foes, they filled the earth having the ocean for its boundaries. And by their strength they began to oppress Brahmanas and Kshatriyas and Vaisyas and Sudras and all other creatures also. Terrifying and killing all creatures, they traversed the earth, O king, in bands of hundreds and thousands.
Professors of the healing art, mercenary soldiers, the priest who acts as warder of the house, and persons who devote a whole year to study without any profit, are all to be considered as Sudras. And those who impudently partake of food offered at ceremonials in a Sudra's house are afflicted with a terrible calamity.
Or, to go to India itself for an instance, though I fully believe that a mild penal code is better than a severe penal code, the worst of all systems was surely that of having a mild code for the Brahmins, who sprang from the head of the Creator, while there was a severe code for the Sudras, who sprang from his feet.
Thus have the Viswas, the gods and the Aswins, been enumerated. Amongst them, the Adityas are Kshatriyas, and the Maruts are Vaisyas. The two Aswins, engaged in severe penances, have been said to be Sudras. The deities sprung from Angirasa's line have been said to be Brahmanas. This is certain. Thus have I told thee about the fourfold order among the gods.
If the Sudras, or fourth-caste men, are excluded from the summum bonum of humanity absorption in the one great all how much more are Pariahs, or non-caste men, deprived of this great boon! Brahman is the material, as well as the efficient, cause of the world, which springs from him by way of modification, but is his manifested self and nothing more.
We must here point out that the non-qualification of Sudras for the cognition of Brahman can in no way be asserted by those who hold that a Brahman consisting of pure non-differenced intelligence constitutes the sole reality; that everything else is false; that all bondage is unreal; that such bondage may be put an end to by the mere cognition of the true nature of Reality such cognition resulting from the hearing of certain texts; and that the cessation of bondage thus effected constitutes final Release.
And, O son, the Brahmanas in that age also abstain from prayers and meditation while the Sudras betake themselves to these! The course of the world looketh contrary, and indeed, these are the signs that foreshadow the Universal Destruction. And, O lord of men, numerous Mleccha kings then rule over the earth!
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