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102
RIŞABHA DEVA
Brāhmaṇa class had no place, as an integral part of the caste system, till the time of the author of the Adi Purāņa, who seems to bave again laid some emphasis on the distinction, to placate the Brahmanical hatred and win them over to protect the Jainas against bitter persecution at the hands of their co-religionists (Hindus).
The distinction of the touchable and the untouchable among Sudras seems to have grown much later. It could not well have been laid down by the WORLD TEACHER. Imagination is not comforted by the idea of a Divine Lawgiver declaring all of a sudden that certain sections of men who had up to that instant been all as much touchable as any of the highest men that could be named, should thenceforth be deemed pariahs and social outcasts! What seems most likely to have happened is that after a time, the duration of which cannot be now fixed by any known definite land-marks, those of the Sudras who followed such professions and trades as the sweeper's, the shoe-maker's and the like, fell into filthy habits as a class, and were thenceforth denied social intercourse with the higher varņas. Probably, their exclusion was originally based on economical factors rather than on any considerations of blood-inferiority. Those who today preach a general levelling down of all differences at once
