Intro
- Fewer ritual demands.
- Almost no food or drink restrictions.
- No gotra/ pravara based marriage restrictions, since in most cases they wouldn’t even be known.
- Pursuit of nearly any occupation (we’ll dwell on the few restrictions later).
- Little or no penance for deviating from the śāstra.
In contrast, dvija-s (especially brāhmaṇa-s) had a great many restrictions placed on them with regard to rituals, daily practice (ācāra), livelihood, education and food. For example, a brāhmaṇa was barred from accumulating wealth, was required to perform numerous lengthy rituals daily and seasonally, spend a decade or more learning the veda-s and its limbs, restrict his dietary options and abstain from most spirits. When they deviated from these high standards, they were censured and lost social standing. In many cases (we quote some examples below, in the “legal disabilities” section), they were prescribed harsher penances and punishment.
Attractiveness
- The dharma system was framed more in terms of duties than rights or privileges. This fundamental difference should not be forgotten. However, in modern debates, it sometimes becomes necessary to get an accurate picture of privileges that existed in practice.
- Would many people not find aniravasita-śūdraness appealing? Consider the following.
About personal habits and occupation
- How many people want some śāstra to impose restriction on what the eat and drink and what occupation they take to? How many of us would not want to cross the seas?
About social status
- How many of us can practically hope to rule a state as a heridetary monarch of the same class as King Rāma?
- How many people (of even the brāhmaṇa jāti) would want to lead the precarious life of penury demanded by the dharmaśāstra-s? Wouldn’t people rather want to accumulate wealth, enjoy pleasures, build dams, temples and wells?
- How many of us really want to go about touching or cooking for brāhmaṇa-s?
- How many people want to spend the best part of their childhood and adolescence in brahmacarya, mastering the veda-s and vedāṅga-s in the traditional way?
- More to the point, now that many organizations have provided such an opportunity for a century or more, how many śūdra-s have taken to the veda-s, and how many brāhmaṇas have left them?
- How many of us consider ourselves learned enough in the classics to hold forth on dharma to others (much less, to courts and kings)?
About ritual practices
- How many of us are truly so dissatisfied by the wide ritual options available to us, including image adoration, haṭha-yoga, homa-s - that we want more?
- How many people want not to be rid (that too without guilt) of the endless cycle of rituals prescribed by the dharmaśāstra-s for the dvija-s?
- How many people want to perform the elaborate, costly and nearly extinct vedic sacrifices (whose difference from common homa-s we reemphasize)?
Indeed, we see today many people born in brāhmaṇa and kṣatriya jāti-s become de-facto aniravasita-śūdra-s for this reason, even at the cost of foresaking the privelege of, say, eating with, cooking for or being able to touch the more orthoprax vaidika brāhmaṇa-s.
So, the life of the aniravasita śūdra of the later Hindu society had many desirable traits. In conclusion, we feel that the kind of life an aniravasita-śūdra allowed by the dharmaśāstra-s, if accurately presented, is the life of a happy commoner - one who could rise to exalted heights of ruling a country and producing beautiful poetry, and one who could be at peace, in symbiotic relationships with his dvija countrymen. Just as the vaiśya in early Indo Āryan society, the aniravasita-śūdra was the commoner of the later Hindu society, and his life was not one that we need pity or feel shame about. Rather, the liberties our dharmaśāstra-s provided for these commoners of our society, contrasted with the restrictions imposed on the elite, are worthy of being appreciated. An exaggerated account of defects should not be allowed to prevent us from appreciating the relevant, noble essence of the dharmaśāstra-s.