164
HISTORY OF CASTE.
Snātaka not to dwell in a place full of Shūdras. He again says that a Brāhmana may appropriate the property of a Shūdra with force. In many of the cases I think he does not mean by Shūdra a person who was serving the upper castes, but people of good position who are uninitiated. The large number of Kshatriya tribes which were coming to be regarded as Shūdras, and the sharp contrast often made between Brāhmana and a Shūdra in various places makes me think that at this period the real Kshatriyas were very few. This period of our text appears to be very near the one in which Kshatriyas and Vaishyas came to be regarded as extinct; and for this condition we have to thank Buddhism.
