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SOCIAL LIFE AND EVONOMIQ OONDITIONS 151
and acted as matchmakers. The Purohitas who interpreted omens, castrated and branded animals and acted as butchers (go-ghātaktā). Those who armed with the sword and the shield and axe guarded the business-quarter and led the caravans through roads infested with robbers and thus resembled the Gopas and Nisādas. Those who in the garb of hermits behaved like hunters (luddakasamā), killed hares, cats, lizards, fish and tortoises. The Yājñikas who in performing the Somayāga for lucre acted like bathers (malamajjanasamâ) to the kings.
Similarly the criticism of the Brahmin position offered in the Pali Väsettha Sutta clearly implies that the Brāhmaṇas of the time followed the pursuits of agriculturists (kassakā), craftsmen (sippikā), order-carriers (pessikā), tradesmen (vānijā), soldiers (yodhājīvā), sacrificers (yājakā) and landlords (rājaññā) as various means of their livelihood.1
In the Fragment on Silas, it is clearly stated that the Brāhmaṇas, seoular as well as religious, parned their livelihood by such low pursuits as those of apothecaries, druggists, physicians and surgeons, priests, occultists and sorcerers, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, palmists, foretellers, interpreters of dreams and signs and
1 Sutta-nipäta, p. 122; Fiok, Social Organisation, yo. 221f.
