3. The constitution of the four varnas.
Let us now inquire into the actual condition and constitution of the four varnas. The varna Brāhmana, the sacredotal class, whose traditional occupations were studying, teaching, receiving and bestowing gifts, etc., was by no means confined to those occupations; it was not possible for them to remain so. Our writer recognized this fact, as did some of his predecessors, and prescribed for them a number of occupations which a Brāhmana might follow in time of distress. He also condemned as uninvitable to a Shrāddha those Brāhmanas who followed about thirty occupations[1] which were not proper for their varna. This fact shows that the caste had taken a very wide latitude of occupation.
Again, these Brāhmanas were not an entirely democratic body amongst themselves, apart from the degradation that attached to the occupation followed. The Brāhmana whose first wife was a Shūdra woman was himself looked down upon (iii, 155). Sons of adulteresses and widows were also considered as lowered (iii, 156, and see the rules regarding inheritances). Our author again thinks that children in order to be classed in the same varna as that of the father should be begotten of wives wedded as virgins (x, 5). This appears to be
- ↑ The occupations which he thus condemned (iii, 151-166) were as follows: Teaching for money, selling of soma and flavors, bards, selling oils, keeping a gambling house and those of physicians and temple-priests and sellers of meat and shopkeepers, informers, messengers, architects, planters of trees, paid servant of the village, usurer, cattlemen, actors, singers, members of a corporation (gana), makers of bows and arrows, trainers of elephants, oxen, horses, camels, astrologers, bird fanciers, breeders of sporting dogs, falconers, farmers, shepherds, or keepers of buffalos.
