Chandala

Chandala is a Sanskrit word for someone who deals with disposal of corpses, and is a Hindu lower caste,[1] traditionally considered to be untouchable.[2][3]

For the town in Bangladesh, see Chandal, Bangladesh. For other uses, see Chandal.

History

Varna was a hierarchical social order in ancient India, based on the Vedas. Since the Vedic corpus constitute the earliest literary source, it came to be seen as the origin of caste society. In this Brahmanical view of caste, varnas were created on a particular occasion and have remained virtually unchanged. In this ordering of society, notions of purity and pollution were central, and activities were delineated in this context. Varna divides the society into four groups ordered in a hierarchy; beyond these, outside the system, lies a fifth group known as the untouchables, of which the Chandala became a constituent part.[4]

The first mention of the fourfold varna division is found in the later Rigveda. Vedic literature also mentions some groups such as Ayogava, Chandala, Nishada, and Paulkasa which were outside the four-varna classification. They were referred to as belonging to the panchama varna or panchamas, meaning fifth. The Yajurveda mentions their degradation from the varna classes, mentioning the Chandala group in particular, who were said to be the untouchable class of people born of the union between a Shudra male and a Brahmin female.[2]

There are frequent references to the forest-dwellers in the post-Rigvedic literature; the Chandalas were one of these primitive people, who were forced to belong to the fringes of the society. The Chandalas were "severely stigmatized in the later Vedic age", but untouchability appeared later during 600 B.C. to 200 A.D. According to Manusmriti, a degraded occupation does not signify untouchability, though untouchability forces a person to take up "low and impure occupation". In the post-Manu era, the practice of untouchability did not just intensify, but also applied to increasingly more groups of people, and the term Chandala became a label not just for a tribe but for all whom the Indo-Aryans considered to be at the very bottom of society.[3]

In India, except Bengal, Chandal is also used as a pejorative reference to a mean or low person.[1][5]

See also

References
  1. Viswanath, Rupa (2014). The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India. Columbia University Press. p. 268. ISBN 978-0-23116-306-4.
  2. Chandrashekhar Bhat (1984). Ethnicity and Mobility. Concept publishing. pp. 2–3.
  3. S. M. Michael (1999). Untouchable: Dalits in Modern India. Lynne Rienner Publishers. pp. 3–4. ISBN 9781555876975.
  4. Thapar, Romila (2004). Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. University of California Press. pp. 63, 511. ISBN 978-0-52024-225-8.
  5. Biswas, A. K. (2000). The Namasudras of Bengal: profile of a persecuted people. Blumoon Books. p. viii. ISBN 9788187190431. Though he is physically almost practically unknown, save and except in Bengal, calling someone a Chandal is the ultimate insult and humiliation of a Hindu anywhere under the sun.

Further reading
  • Anna Dallapiccola, Dictionary of Hindu Lore and Legend, ISBN 0-500-51088-1
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