Page:The history of caste in India.pdf/85

 they stayed outside the village and assigns them slaughter of wild animals as their duty or occupation (x, 36, 48). This description is very significant. He not only denies them the position of a Kshatriya but ranks them very low. Such a thing could not have happened when Andhras were in the ascendent. Since the death of Ashoka Andhras were rising steadily, so that in the year 27 B. C. they took control of Pātaliputra. We are not certain as to how long the Andhra power lasted in the North. In the year 113 A. D., when Guatamīputra Shatakarnī, who was an Andhra monarch, describes in his inscriptions his prowess and territories, the inscriptions show that he did not have any possession in the North at that time. It is possible that the Andhras may have been a ruling tribe in the South and a writer in the North may not have given them a very high place, but even such a thing does not seem probable as long as the Andhras were very powerful in the South, and well known in the country. But only when a dynasty was declining, as this was about 200 A. D. (it ended in fact in 227 A. D.), such a thing could be written safely, and a doctrine of this kind regarding the great nation in the South could have received currency.

We again have Yavanas or the Greeks mentioned as a warrior tribe, which has become Shūdra, by not consulting the Brāhmanas. Probability of their mention falls within the period 327 B. C. (the date of Alexander's invasion) to 350 A. D. Vishnu Purāna testifies the existence of Yavanas along with Shakas as a warrior class, after the fall of the Andhras in the year 227 A.D. But in the year 350 A. D. in the inscription of Samudra