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TULST-PRAJNA
compares his case to that of wife. If a women marries a man belonging to a lower varsa the off spring is called 'varņa-sankar' but Nārada does not say the women becomes a member of some fifth varņa as a result of such marriage. So Nārada had no need of speaking of the slaves as the 'fifth varna'.
There are two and only two verses quoted from the Nārada Smțiti in the chapter, "Occupational Origin of untouchability" which provide some pretexet for the assertion that "the Nārada Smsiti speaks of the slaves as the fifth class." They are as follows:
“The sages have distinguished five sorts of attendants according to law. Among these are four sorts of labourers; the slaves (are the fifth category of which there are) fifteen species,"18 “Thus have the four classes of servants doing pure work been enumerated. All the others who do dirty work are slaves, of
whom there are fifteen kinds."10
It is evident from the verses that Nārada used the terms 'five sorts' and 'four classes' in a particular context and in a sense having nothing to do with the specific number of the varnas. The 'five classes' as well as the five sorts' are called 'attendants'. How can one take them to mean 'four varnas' or 'five varnas' as Ambedkar suggests ? If the fifth sort' or the fifth class' is taken as a varna, the rest should also denote four varņas. But Närada calls them 'labourers'20 and names them not as Brāhmaṇa, Ksatriya, Vaishya and Shūdra but as "a student, an apprentice, a hired servant and fourthly an official."'31 Thus, Nārada did not say the slaves constituted fifth varna and Manu had no need to contradict him.
What did then, Manu mean to say ? He had to face a number of problems. How to deal with those who were close to the Vedic Aryans ethnically but did not believe in the Varņa system ? How to reck on with the foreigners who had come to acquire the state power. How to treat the nomadic tribes ? How to confront the differences that existed within the Shūdras ? How to deal with those who did not recognise the superiority of the Brāhmanas? These were the questions Manu had to answer and he answered them in two verses. The first verse says insubordination to the Brāhmaṇas leads to the degradation of families, while the second says there is no fifth varna23 The first statement expresses the intention to degrade certain sections of the society, while the second shows the desire to include certain groups in one of the four varnas, This interpretation though new and supported neither by Ambedkar nor his orthodox adversaries, is borne out by the rest of the text. While Manu declares numerous castes Antyajas or Varņa-sankars, he opens the way of entry into
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