Beef, Brahmins, and Broken Men: An Annotated Critical Selection from The Untouchables

1 Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) bears mentioning in the context of social psychology. In this work, he argues that any construction of an overarching social reality causes a feeling of discontentment in any subject who sees herself as belonging to that society. This, Freud said, was a result of the repression of certain primal desires that is necessitated by having to live in a community. For Lacan, this desire is non-sensical, it does not arise out of any innate or primal truth which is hidden in us, but is a contingent manifestation of particular signifiers that tie us to the communal life-world. He reads most performative acts of opposing societal systems as those which are already conditioned by the system itself, and the true radical act as that which rejects all interpellation to the system (Cho 2006). When Ambedkar maps out a genealogy of Untouchability in the proceeding section, he doesn’t attribute the logic of inequality of caste to any innate or primal tendency in humans, but deals with them as contingent appearances which are not necessary in themselves, and therefore as structures which can be rejected and overturned.

2 [Dharmasastras Vol. II Part I. p. 165]

3 Vivekanand Jha maps out the difference in social prestige faced by those involved in tanning as an occupation across different periods of time. In the Vedic period, for instance, there was a particular caste identity which could be applied to the particular group of people working with animal hides. They seemed to have been very much a part of Aryan society. Jha goes on to hypothesize that even with the rise of urban centres and consolidation of the Varna system, Carmamnas did not become ritually impure. However, as the powerful castes moved away from physical labour, increasingly considered undignified, the tanning community lost its position as a Vaishya caste. There was a pronounced difference in the economic strength of tanners in urban and rural areas, the former holding more wealth and power. Further, in the Brahmanas tanners are mentioned as separate from Sudras, and therefore it is hypothesized that they were not looked down upon as a caste but rather the occupation itself had stigma attached to it. It is only in the Manusmriti that one finds references to tanning communities as castes unto themselves; however, it is difficult to ascertain whether they were considered Untouchables as yet. References continue in the Anusana Parva and Amarakosa and also the Vinaya Pitaka. It is only after the Gupta era that the Carmamnas or Carmakaras begin to be referred to as Antyajas (Jha 1979).

4 VIII.5 is the longest hymn to the Asvins in the Rig Veda. It has little mythological material and no mention of the exploits of the Asvins. Rather the hymn is an exhortation to perform sacrifices and a prayer to the gods to fulfil desires of supplicants. The verse mentioned above is as follows; in it Kasu, the lord of the Cedis, is being praised for his generosity: ‘He who (previously) bestowed on me a king’s ten (horses?) of golden appearance—/ beneath the feet of the lord of the Cedis are (all) the communities, the “hide-tanning” men all around’ (Jamison and Brereton 2014, 1037).

5 In the Rig Veda only one reference to a barber is made. It can be found at X.143.4. The hymn X.143 is dedicated to Agni and it speaks of the dangerous nature of fire. The verse is as follows: ‘When you travel to the heights and the depths, snapping, you go in all directions, like an army in greedy pursuit./ When the wind fans your flame, like a barber a beard you shave the ground’ (Jamison and Brereton 2014, 1628). In H.H. Wilson’s translation of the Rig Veda, another instance of the appearance of the word ‘barber’ can be found, in the Sixth Ahyaya of the First Ashataka. The hymn in which it is found is in praise of the Ushas (Dawn): ‘Ushas cuts off the accumulated (glooms); as a barber (cuts off hair): she bares her bosom; as a cow yields her udder (to the milker)…’ (Wilson 1866, 237). He provides an alternative translation of the reference to the barber as like a dancing girl; the original Sanskrit includes the terms nritue iva and pesansi vapate which could refer to both the performance of a dance and the actions of a barber (ibid.).

6 Vidalakara or Bidalakara refers to bamboo-workers and basket makers. In the Vajasaneyi Samhita and the Taittiriya Brahmana they are among the 148 victims listed for human sacrifice (purushamedha). In this sacrifice, the Bidalkaras are dedicated to the pisacas, a class of deities that are in the same class as asuras and raksasas; Vivekanand Jha (1978) surmises that this fact points to the aboriginal origin of the caste. The name for the Bidalkaras becomes ‘Vena’ in the post-Vedic age, and several references to them as hina jatis (lesser castes) can be found in Pali texts. Jha also cites the Kusa Jataka in which an enraged queen uses the terms ‘Vena’ and ‘Candali’ to address her daughter-in-law. In the same text, however, we see a prince apprenticing under the court basket-maker, which shows that they were not considered Untouchable at this point in time (Jha 1978).

7 Buruda is a basket-weaving caste from Maharashtra and Telangana (Russell 1916, 209).

8 In the Atharva Veda, Vasahpalpuli is the word used to refer to a female washer of clothes. References to the handling of clothes in this Veda do not seem to have a derisory tone as can be expected thanks to the later prevalent caste-nature of the work: night and day are personified as twin sisters weaving themselves into existence. However, Pesakaris, or embroiders of intricate designs of gold into cloth, are listed as victims of purshamedha in the Vajasaneyi Samhita and the Taittiriya Brahmana (Verman 2013). In the later Vedic age (1000–500 BCE) with material progress, increased urbanization and a proliferation of several occupations, Vivekanand Jha postulates, the specific job of washing clothes was formalized. The two categories of this profession were based on gender: Malaga corresponding to men and Vasahpalpuli to women. Women were especially predominant in occupations that pertained to clothing and weaving, with professional categories like Vayitri, Rajayitri, Pesakari, Bidalakari and Kantakikar emerging, which dealt with weaving, dyeing, embroidery, basket making and thorn working [what is this?] respectively (Jha 1991).

9 Rajaka refers to communities involved in the washing of clothes in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Sri Lanka. The caste is also referred to as Vannan, Vannar (in Tamil) and Chakali (Telugu). References to the community can be found in the Ramayana in which it is a Rajaka who questions Sita’s chastity upon her return to Ayodhya with Rama, and also in the Basavapuranam, an epic which charts the life and philosophy of Basavanna, a Shaivite social reformer of the twelfth century and founder of Lingayatism (Thirupathi 2016). In Sri Lanka, the Rajakas are called Radas and are part of the Sinhalese caste society. For an overview of caste distribution in Sri Lanka, see Silva et al. (2009).

10 [Manu X.4] Bühler renders X.4 as: ‘The Brahmana, the Kshatriya, and the Vaishya castes (varna) are the twice-born ones, but the fourth, the Sudra, has one birth only; there is no fifth (caste)’ (1886, 402).

11 While Ambedkar rightly makes much of this passage the non-use of the term Untouchable and the possibilities this gives rise to, the term Chandala—often used derogatorily for Untouchables even today—is repeatedly used in Manusmriti besides other terms that connote Untouchability. That logical consistency is not a virtue of Manusmriti or other Brahmanic texts, often written by a collective and collated over a period of time, is something Ambedkar himself draws our attention to repeatedly (see especially Riddles in Hinduism, 2016, especially Riddle No. 18, “Manu’s Madness or the Brahmanic Explanation of the Origin of the Mixed Castes”, 139–54). Bühler leaves Chandala as is in III.239 and does not use the term ‘untouchable’ even once in his work though he often uses the term ‘outcast/s’: ‘A Kandala, a village pig, a cock, a dog, a menstruating woman, and a eunuch must not look at the Brahmanas while they eat’ (1886, 119). However, Doniger and Smith consistently translate Chandala as ‘“Fierce” Untouchable, saying that the Chandala is ‘the paradigmatic Untouchable’, ‘often used as the generic term for any Untouchable’ (1991, 234), quite like the Chinese traveller Fa-Hian does, as we shall see. Also, outcast and Chandala are listed one after another in the Manusmriti, making them distinct and separate categories of exclusion, thus adding to the confusion. Doniger and Smith (1991) in their introduction argue that Manusmriti, written when Brahmanism was pushed into a crisis by the emergent Sramana critiques, ‘attempts to extend its reach to all people as well as all situations—the king as well as the ritual priest; the Untouchable as well as the priest; the householder as well as the world-renouncer; women as well as men’ (xxxvi). Yet Ambedkar with great conviction argues that there was likely no Untouchability recognized by Manusmriti and that the outcasts who lived outside the village were ‘Broken Men’ who became untouchable later, after they embraced Buddhism and continued eating the dead cow.

12 Ambedkar offers a contradictory reading of this passage from Manu in his posthumously published essay entitled “The House the Hindus Have Built”. This essay was meant for foreign readers unfamiliar with Indian society, but the contradiction is striking: ‘What Manu meant was there were originally four Varnas and four they must remain. He was not going to admit the Untouchables into the House the ancient Hindus had built by enlarging the Varna System to consist of five Varnas. That is what he meant when he said that there is not to be a fifth Varna. That he wanted the Untouchables to remain out of the Hindu social structure is clear from the name by which he describes the Untouchables. He speaks of them as Varna–Bahyas (those outside the Varna System). That is the difference between the Primitive and Criminal Castes and the Untouchables. There being no positive injunction against their admission in Hindu Society, they may in course of time become members of it. At present they are linked to Hindu Society and hereafter they may become integrated into it and become part of it. But the case of the Untouchables is different. There is positive injunction against their incorporation in Hindu Society. There is no room for reform. They must remain separate and segregated without being a part of the Hindu Society. The Untouchables are not a part of the Hindu Society. And if they are a part they are a part but not of the whole. The idea showing the connection between the Hindus and the Untouchables was accurately expressed by Ainapure Shastri the leader of the orthodox Hindus at a Conference held in Bombay. He said that the Untouchables were related to the Hindus as a man is to his shoe. A man wears a shoe. In that sense it is attached to man and may be said to be a part of the man. But it is not part of the whole for two things that can be attached and detached can’t be said to form parts of one whole. The analogy though is none the less accurate’ (1989b, 169).

13 The Narada Smriti comprises of eighteen laws that concern legal and economic proceedings. In a chapter entitled ‘Head of Dispute’, under the subhead ‘Breach of Promised Obedience’ one can find discussions on existent slavery. Five kinds of labourers are listed, of which four are proclaimed to be free (a pupil, an apprentice, a hired servant and an agent) and they can be of any caste. The fifth kind, the slave, is said to be of fifteen kinds and they are declared as impure. The jobs assigned to them are: ‘Clearing the house, the gateway, the convenience, and the road from rubbish, rubbing the secret limbs, and gathering and removing impurities, especially urine and faeces’ (Jolly 1876, 61–2). ‘Attending to the master’s pleasure’ is also said to be an impure task. The fifteen kinds of slaves are: ‘One born in the house, one bought, one received by donation, one got by inheritance, one maintained in a famine, one pledged by a former master, one relieved from a great debt, one made prisoner in a war, one obtained through a wager, one who has offered himself, saying, “I am thine”, an apostate from religious mendicity, a slave for a fixed period, one maintained in reward of the work performed by him, a slave for the sake of his wife, and one self-sold’ (Jolly 1876, 63–4). The service of the first of four of these are said to be hereditary.

14 All the same, Ambedkar ceremonially burnt a copy of the Manusmriti on 25 December 1927 at Mahad following the effort by Brahmins to purify Chavadar Tank after the Dalits, led by Ambedkar, drank water from it on 20 March 1927. By the twentieth century, the Manusmriti, first translated by William Jones, came to symbolize Brahmanism and its excessive defence of caste ideology. While Ambedkar holds the work in contempt, he is here willing to grant that technically the terms untouchable or untouchability were not deployed in this text. Besides, in Who Were the Shudras? (1946) Ambedkar says he undertook a study for fifteen years, that is from 1930 onwards, of relevant shastraic literature in translation. It could be argued that till 1932, till the gains of separate electorates for Untouchables at the Round Table Conferences, which were stymied by Gandhi and the Hindu Mahasabha with the 1932 Poona Pact, Ambedkar held the hope that Hinduism could be reformed and repaired. It is after the Poona Pact was signed owing to Gandhi’s blackmail that Ambedkar undertakes his extensive study of caste and Untouchability.

15 [Bühler, Laws of Manu (S.B.E.) Vol. XXV. Int. CXIVI.] In the mentioned source, Bühler tries to fix the date of Manusmriti’s authorship. The difficulty of fixing such a date is discussed at length by Bühler. The main reason given for this is the continuity within which the Manusmriti was produced. Without a doubt, it draws on several Sutras, but the problem then becomes whether the Sutras came first or the Manusmriti. Furthermore, the contradictory nature of injunctions contained in the Sutras and the Manumriti make it even more complicated, for it becomes unclear which tract is trying to improve on the imperfections of which one. By comparing Manu’s injunctions to texts across the Brahmanical fold, Bühler provides comparative studies of different values held in different times and the different valencies and usages of words in different texts to place its authorship at around the second century CE. In their introduction to The Laws of Manu (1991), Doniger and Smith state that the text was composed around the same time (xvii). Patrick Olivelle (2005) draws on the Manusmriti’s relationship with the Mahabharata, the older sutra texts, similarity to lines in the Arthasastra and references in texts like the Kamasutra, Mrichhakatika and Vajrasuchi to fix its date of composition to somewhere between the second and third centuries CE (22–5).

16 Chander Kishan Daphtary was an Indian lawyer and bureaucrat. He was appointed India’s first solicitor general, and was, between 1963 and 1968, the attorney general of India. From 1972 to 1978 he held office in the Rajya Sabha.

17 After the reign of Asoka (269–232 BCE), the Mauryan Empire devolved into a state of instability. This culminated in the revolt carried out by the military general Pushyamitra who assassinated the king Brihadratha and established the Sunga dynasty in 184 BCE. The Sungas are chiefly credited with reviving the Vedic practice of the yajna. It was during the time of Pushyamitra’s rule that Patanjali’s Sanskrit grammar and prose books were written (Kosambi 2008, 187–8).

18 Pushyamitra is said to have had strong anti-Buddhist convictions. It is claimed that he destroyed Buddhist monasteries and persecuted monks throughout his empire which stretched from Pataliputra to Sakala. Buddhist texts Divyavadana and Manjusrimulakalpa ascribe several conflicts to Pushyamitra in which he invaded several Buddhist kingdoms, one of which was the conquest of Sakala. The claim these texts make is that Pushyamitra died ingloriously while fighting one such battle in the vicinity of his Sakala territory. The Sungas after Pushyamitra were a weak succession of kings, and inroads into their kingdom were made by the Greeks, Satavahanas and tribal chiefs like Kharavela. However, Ujjain remained under Sunga rule for the length of their existence. It was during this period that Krishna was raised from a tribal deity of the Yadus to a more prominent position with the Greek ambassador Heliodoros proclaiming his devotion to the god; however, he was not as yet made into the powerful figure as a Vishnu-avatar which he was to become later. D.D. Kosambi tells about the Sungas that despite their symbolic importance, as in the case of the revivial of the yajna, ‘their success lay more on the parade ground and in fields of culture than in battle’ (2008, 188). However, the memory of the dynasty persisted in the Brahmin imagination as can be gleaned from Gupta-era poet and playwright Kalidasa’s Malavika and Agnimitra, a romantic play about Pushyamitra’s son. The tenth and last Sunga king, Devabhuti, was assassinated by his Kanvayana Brahmin minister, Vasudeva, to establish the Kanva dynasty (Sen 1949; Kosambi 2008, 187–8). See also p. 248 note 61 earlier.

19 Ambedkar elaborates on the significance of this moment in subcontinental history in his ambitious but unfinished book-length manuscript “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Ancient India” (1987, 149–440) where he is largely concerned with the ‘decline and fall of Buddhism’ and argues that ‘the object of the Regicide by Pushyamitra was to destroy Buddhism as a state religion and to make the Brahmins the sovereign rulers of India’ (269). Devoting a chapter to the ‘Literature of Brahmanism’ that was deployed after Pushyamitra’s rise, he says though ‘most Hindus, whether orthodox or not, learned or not, have an inerradicable belief that their sacred literature is a very old one in point of time.’ It is a fact that ‘(1) Manusmriti (2) Gita (3) Shankaracharya’s Vedant (4) Mahabharat (5) Ramayana and (6) the Puranas’ were written in the wake of Pushyamitra’s putsch (1987, 239). Throughout this chapter, Ambedkar uses an array of sources and internal evidence from the texts to arrive at possible dates of various Puranas, Smritis, Sutras and epics—just as he is keen in The Untouchables to establish a date for the emergence of Untouchability or the banning of the sacrifice of the cow and the consumption of beef.

20 With the spread of Buddhism in China, after the first century CE, several monks, guided by their devotion, felt the need to travel back to the land of Buddha particularly to visit the Bodhi tree. Several names of such travellers have been discovered on inscriptions from the second and third century, such as Chi-I and Ho-Yun. It is also possible that many pilgrims have been lost to history and their time in India went unrecorded. Fa-Hian (CE 399–414), also known as Faxian, was one such Buddhist pilgrim. Having concerned himself with this religious pursuit, he travelled from China to India, and visited monasteries in what is now Xinjiang, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Like Hsuan Tsang, he recorded a survey of ‘Buddhistic Kingdoms’. His travel writings were translated into the English by James Legge as A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms (1886).

21 [Buddhist Records in Western India by Beal. Introduction p. xxxvii–xxxviii.] The following quote is taken from Samuel Beal’s Introduction to his translation of Hsuan Tsang’s writings, Buddhist Records in Western India, Vol. I (1884). This introduction includes a section which is a translation of Fa-Hian’s writings, entitled “The Travels of Fa-Hian: Buddhist Country Records”. The above text is part of the sixteenth chapter of Fa-Hian’s work, and in another translation, done by James Legge, it is titled as “On to Mathura or Muttra. Condition and customs of Central India; of the monks, viharas, and monasteries”. When the term ‘Chandala’ occurs in Legge’s translation for the first time, he provides the following reference from Ernest J. Eitel’s Hand-Book of Chinese Buddhism, being A Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary with Vocabularies of Buddhist Terms: ‘The name Chandalas is explained as “butchers,” “wicked men,” and those who carry “the awful flag,” to warn off their betters;— the lowest and most despised caste of India, members of which, however, when converted, were admitted even into the ranks of priesthood’ (Legge 1886, 43). Legge slightly alters the origin definition given by Eitel, changing its language and structure, and most noticeably its spelling: from ‘Tchhandala’ (see Eitel 1904, 175).

22 Also known as Banabhatta, Bana was a Brahmin poet and author in the seventh CE. He was a member of the court of king Harsha of the Vardhana dynasty. Bana is considered one of the greatest Sanskrit writers. His two most famous works are Harshacharita and Kadambari. Harshacharita is a book of praise which lists the great deeds of king Harsha. In addition, it also traces the illustrious history of Bana’s family, and connects them to the goddess Saraswati and the sage Dadhica (Lochtefeld 2002; Sharma 1968).

23 Kadamabari is considered one of the first novels in world literature (though the 11th century Japanese work, The Tale of Genji, stakes a greater claim since it uses only prose). It is a romance that broke the tyranny of fixed metres and is set in free verse. Historian D.D. Kosambai says, ‘Kadambari has compound words that go at times to several lines each in printed editions. But his skill was such that the very name of the book, actually the name of its heroine, has now come to mean a ‘novel’ or ‘romance’ in Indian languages’ (2008, 203). The love story between the main characters, a princess named Kadambari and a prince named Chandripida, is but one element of the book’s complex plot. Kadambari was left unfinished at Bana’s death and is said to have been completed by his son Bhusanabhatta (Sharma 1968).

24 [Kadambari (Ridding’s Translation), p. 204] Ambedkar is citing from The Kadambari of Bana translated by C.M. Ridding and published in 1896 by the Royal Asiatic Society. Unlike modern translations (such as Padmini Rajappa 2010), Ridding’s work is closer to the poetic temper of Bana’s work.

25 Matanga: there are many Matangas, at least four, in Vedic mythology and Puranic lore. One of them becomes a knowledgeable sage by his deeds despite his low place in the Varna hierarchy and figures in the Buddhist tradition as well. Says Omvedt in Buddhism in India: Challenging Brahmanism and Caste: ‘Another sutta in the Sutta Nipata, the Vasalasutta, makes the same point that whether a person is a ‘wastrel’ is also determined by action, not birth; and in doing so it uses the example of Matanga, the son of a Chandala, who wins glory, fame and paradise by his actions and in the process draws masses of Brahmans and Khattiyas to serve him’ (2003, 77). Omvedt also discusses another real (not mythical) Kasyapa Matanga, a Buddhist missionary who ‘left for China in 65 CE’ through the treacherous Karakoram route, whose name owes to the ‘semilegendary Candala hero Matanga’ (123–4). Speaking of how this could well be the ‘earliest mention of a Dalit in any Indian literature’ she cites from the Sutta Nipata, #136–41: ‘Birth does not make an outcaste, birth does not a Brahman make;/ action makes a person low, action makes him great./ To prove my case I give just one example here/ –the Sopaka Matanga, Candala’s son, of fame./ This Matanga attained renown so high and rare/ that masses of Brahmans and Khattiyas to serve him were drawn near’ (281). Kosambi looks at a range of literary and living examples to argue that the name Kasyapa (Kassapa in Pali) attests to an aboriginal tribal root since the Vedic period (since some of the Soma hymns are attributed to a sage Kasyapa). ‘The Kasyapas have clear connection with aborigines through the prajapati myths and also the tortoise totem which their name indicates. It is very well known that a good many of the spurious Brahmins claim the Kasyapa gotra’ and that the Kasyapa genus is ‘a residuary for all doubtful Brahmins. Census enumerators used to report that highly improbable claimants to Brahminhood in the hinterland generally offered the Kasyapa gotra.’ He also pertinently delineates the Chandala–Kasyapa connection: ‘…if a child be born of a marriage between forbidden degrees, one rule would make it an outcaste Candala while the other, seemingly more generous, says that it should be assigned to the gens Kasyapa. This discrepancy is not so great as it seems, for the Candalas were a tribe (or several tribes) that became a low caste, due to stubborn persistence in breaking tabus kept by good Aryans; the Kasyapas, on the other hand, rose slowly from their ambiguous position’ (1985, 160).

26 [Ibid., p. 8–10] Ambedkar provides a 1100-word excerpt from Kadambari where Bana, in his own narrative voice and in that of the emperor’s, describes the celestial beauty of the Chandala maiden in epic terms. We have retained the key passages here, but the curious may consult BAWS 7 (1990b, 376–7) to read it in full. Given the nature of Kadambari’s florid prose-poetry, there’s a great deal of fictive excess and exaggeration in describing everything. An example, which we have dropped from Ambedkar’s main text, has been retained in this endnote as illustration. Before the king sets his eyes on the Chandala woman, the king is described thus: ‘And she entered and beheld the king in the midst of a thousand chiefs, like golden-peaked Meru in the midst of the noble mountains crouching together in fear of Indra’s thunderbolt; or, in that the brightness of the jewels scattered on his dress almost concealed his form, like a day of storm, whereon the eight quarters of the globe are covered by Indra’s thousand bows. He was sitting on a couch studded with moon-stones, beneath a small silken canopy, white as the foam of the rivers of heaven, with its four jewel-encrusted pillars joined by golden chains, and enwroathed with a rope of large pearls’ (Ridding 1896, 6).

27 Ambedkar’s comparison of Fa-Hian’s non-fictional documentary effort with Bana’s fictional poetic fantastic excess appears untenable. Besides, Bana’s narrative makes it clear that the Chandala woman—who is never named—is an exception and that her birth into such a station is unfortunate. The earlier passage from Kadambari is clear about the Chandala quarter is a ‘market-place of evil deeds’. Also, Brahmanic mythologies abound in instances of liaisons between Kshatriya and Brahmin men with Shudra and outcaste women and the other way around (although Anuloma or hypergamy where a ‘superior’ male took an ‘inferior’ female was countenanced and instanced in Puranic lore than Pratiloma or hypogamy). In the Mahabharata, the Kuru king Shantanu falls in love with the fisherwoman Satyavati and marries her, and soon a story about her high origins is concocted. See also Ambedkar’s own Riddle No. 18, “Manu’s Madness or the Brahmanic Explanation of the Origin of the Mixed Castes” about how common mixed caste affairs were and how the multitude of names (given by various Brahmanic texts) for the progeny of such miscegenation boggle the mind. See also p. 347–8 note 25 on Kasyapa and Matanga.