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148 INDIA AS DESCRIBED' IN EARLY TEXTS
Besides vanna, jāti, gotta, bhoga (wealth), 1 and kula, we have mention in the early Pali texts of mâna or prestige as determining a person's family or social status, of which the testing was marriage factor of boys or girls.
VAs for the four vannas forming the four broad divisions of the Indo-Aryan socioty, it should be noted at the outset that the usual order of enumeration, was: the Brāhmaṇas, the Kşatriyas or Rājaṇyas, the Vaisyas and the Sūdras. In the early Buddhist texts, on the other hand, the order of the first two vannas was reversed with the result that the Khattiyas came to be placed first and the Brāhmaṇas just next to them. As regards the remaining two vannas, the order was left undisturbed. The Jainas and Buddhists contended for the precedence of the Khattiyas over the Brāhmaṇas on the Brahmanist's own ground, i.e., the purity of birth through seven generations on the father's as well as the mother's side. The history of the superiority between these two indeed as old as the remote v some of the earlier Upanişads at intellectual and spiritual groun
1 Dhammapada-akhalatha, ü, p. 218: jātiya og usadiso. * Digha, i, p. 99: jötivado iti pi gottavādo iti pil * Ibid., i, p. 99: dvāha-vivdha-vinibandham.
