Risabha Deva

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Jain Mitra Mandal

Page 43

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seems to have 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)!
PUBLIC LIFE
The distinction of the touchable and the untouchable among Sudras seems to have grown muchlater. It could not well have been laid down by the WORLD TEACHER. Imagination is not comforted by. the idea of a Divine Law-giver 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 man 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 varnas. Their exclusion was originally based on economic factors rather than on any considerations of blood-inferiority.
Change of varna has always been permitted. within certain limits which aimed at securing what may be termed appropriate samskaras (mentality, impressions, impulses), and the change of appearances and surroundings. In Jainism varna is to be fixed for a new convert, according to his occupation.
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