Chandalas

Topic: Society in Early India: Kinship, Varna-Jati, Women · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 7 "The Gupta Era: An Age of Tireless Creativity"; Class 12, Ch 3 "Kinship, Caste and Class - Early Societies"

Meaning

Chandalas were the group placed below all four varnas in Brahmanical texts. They were ranked lowest because their work, handling corpses and dead animals, was thought to cause ritual "pollution".

They matter because they are the clearest early example of untouchability. Law codes, Chinese pilgrims and Buddhist stories all describe them. This lets historians compare the rules in the texts with what people actually did.

Explanation

Background: the idea of purity and pollution

• Brahmanical texts set out four varnas (the four ranked social orders): Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra.
• They also ranked jobs by ritual purity (being clean in a religious sense). Some jobs were said to make a person "polluted".
• Handling corpses and dead animals was seen as the most polluting job of all.
• People who did this work were pushed below even the Shudras.

• They were called chandalas.

• People believed that both the touch and even the sight of a chandala polluted a person of higher varna.

• The Manusmriti (an ancient Brahmanical law code) says the chandalas came from the union of a Brahmana woman and a Shudra man [2].
• This is the text's own claim, not a historical fact about who their ancestors were.
• It used the idea of a "mixed" birth to justify giving them the lowest rank.
• NCERT's point is that the real basis of the rank was the work they did.

Main features: Manusmriti's rules for chandalas

The Manusmriti calls these their "duties". In practice they were rules that kept chandalas out:

• They had to live outside the village.
• They had to use discarded utensils (old pots that others had thrown away).
• They had to wear clothes taken from the dead and ornaments of iron, not gold or silver.
• They could not move about in villages and cities at night.
• They had to dispose of unclaimed corpses (bodies with no family to perform the last rites).
• They had to work as executioners (people who carry out death sentences).
• Britannica describes a similar set of rules [2]:
• live out of sight, away from the city and near graveyards
• keep dogs and donkeys
• eat from broken vessels and use no metal vessels

• marry only within their own group

• The pattern: every rule controlled where they lived, what they touched, what they wore and when they could move. Keeping them out became part of daily life.

How it worked in practice: the evidence of the pilgrims

• Fa Xian (c. 5th century CE) wrote that "untouchables" had to sound a clapper (a wooden noise-maker) in the streets [3].

• The noise warned others to move away so they would not see or touch them.

• Xuan Zang (c. 7th century CE) wrote that executioners and scavengers lived outside the city [4].

• Taken together:
• The Manusmriti tells us what the rule-makers wanted to happen.
• The pilgrims show that the rules were actually followed, and still followed about two centuries apart.

Results and resistance: the Matanga Jataka

• Not everyone accepted the system. Buddhist stories in Pali challenged it.
• The Matanga Jataka (a Jataka is a story about one of the Buddha's earlier births):
• The Bodhisatta (the future Buddha) is born a chandala named Matanga.
• He marries Dittha Mangalika, a merchant's daughter.
• Their son Mandavya studies the Vedas and feeds 16,000 Brahmanas.
• Matanga comes for food in ragged clothes. Mandavya is ashamed of him and sends him away, saying the food is only for Brahmanas.

• Matanga tells him that people who are proud of their birth do not deserve gifts, and that people free from vices do deserve offerings.

• The message: a person's worth comes from how they behave, not from the family they were born into. In this story a chandala speaks back against the varna order.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: early Indian society, c. 600 BCE – 600 CE. The pilgrims' accounts cover the c. 5th to c. 7th centuries CE.
• Region: the settled villages and cities of north India. Chandalas lived on the edges of these settlements.
• Texts and other evidence:
• Manusmriti: a Brahmanical law code. It gives the rules for chandalas and claims they came from a Brahmana–Shudra union [2].
• Fa Xian (c. 337 – c. 422 CE): a Chinese Buddhist monk who began his Indian pilgrimage in 402 CE and wrote the Foguoji ("Record of Buddhist Kingdoms") [3].
  • He visited Udyana, Gandhara, Peshawar, Taxila, Kapilavastu, Bodh Gaya, Banaras (Varanasi) and Kushinagara [3].
  • He recorded the clapper.
• Xuan Zang (602–664 CE): a Chinese Buddhist monk who left China in 629 CE without a travel permit, studied at Nalanda, and wrote the Datang-Xiyu-Ji ("Records of the Western Regions of the Great Tang Dynasty") [4].
  • He recorded that executioners and scavengers lived outside the city.

• Matanga Jataka: a Buddhist story in Pali that criticises pride of birth.

• Method point: the evidence is strong because law codes written by Brahmanas and accounts by foreign travellers say the same thing.

Don't confuse with

• Shudras: they were the fourth varna, still inside the four-fold order. Chandalas were placed below all four varnas.
• Nishadas: forest hunter-gatherers. The texts saw them as outsiders because of their way of life. Chandalas were looked down on because their work was seen as polluting.
• Mlechchhas: people who did not speak Sanskrit and did not follow Brahmanical customs. They were outsiders because of language and culture, not because of pollution.
• Fa Xian vs Xuan Zang: Fa Xian (c. 5th century CE, Foguoji) wrote about the clapper. Xuan Zang (c. 7th century CE, Datang-Xiyu-Ji, Nalanda) wrote about executioners and scavengers living outside the city.

Prelims Hooks

• The Manusmriti says chandalas came from a Brahmana woman + Shudra man union [2].
• Manusmriti rules for chandalas: live outside the village, use discarded utensils, wear clothes of the dead and iron ornaments, no movement at night in villages and cities, dispose of unclaimed corpses, work as executioners.
• Fa Xian (c. 5th century CE) said untouchables sounded a clapper in the streets. His book is the Foguoji, and his pilgrimage began in 402 CE [3].
• Xuan Zang (c. 7th century CE) said executioners and scavengers lived outside the city. His book is the Datang-Xiyu-Ji, and he studied at Nalanda [4].
• Matanga Jataka (Pali): the Bodhisatta is born a chandala named Matanga. His wife is Dittha Mangalika and his son Mandavya feeds 16,000 Brahmanas.
• Trap: chandalas were not a fifth varna, and they were not Shudras. Texts placed them below the varna order because handling corpses and dead animals was seen as polluting.

Mains Points

• The texts set the rules, and the travellers show the rules were followed.
• The Manusmriti is prescriptive: it says how society should work.
• Fa Xian's clapper (c. 5th century CE) and Xuan Zang's note about homes outside the city (c. 7th century CE) are accounts by outsiders, written about two centuries apart [3][4].

• Together they show that untouchability was actually practised. A text checked against a traveller's account is stronger evidence than either one alone.

• Exclusion was built into everyday life.

• Each rule controlled where chandalas lived, what they used and wore, and when they could move.

• The claim of "mixed birth" [2] was an excuse made up afterwards for a rank whose real basis was their work.

• People protested even in this period.

• The Matanga Jataka lets a chandala speak and teaches that conduct matters more than birth. This fits the wider Buddhist and Jain rejection of ranking by birth.
• It can be linked to the Bhakti saints and to modern anti-caste reform. Together they show a long line of protest, not something that began only in the 19th century.

Related concepts

• Nishada
• Mlechchha
• Antyaja
• Untouchability
• Dasa-karmakara
• Vishti

Read more

• Beyond and beneath the varnas: integration, subordination, conflict