Sudras in Manu

The scope and extent of this dissertation is limited to the Code of Manu. Sudras and their numerous sub-castes, besides the much maligned untouchables, have found mention in some form or other in various law-texts both before and after Manu. The problems relating to them, despite a few commendable attempts, are still a desideratum. 

Prior to Manu, history had known only two codes of Hammurabi and Moses coming respectively from about the twentieth and the sixteenth centuries B.C. Of these the latter is nothing but a series of domestic commandments and the former, howsoever detailed and extraordinary, is a brief document containing royal commands on various topics of state administration and property rights. Manu’s Code on the contrary towers high over all such documents of antiquity. It plans out the activities of a settled and ordered humanity in all its social patterns. It registers and recounts all that had come down to its days in way of social habits, customs and usages, positive pieces of legislation as reflected in earlier works, and it even endorses, declaims and recreates, where need be, types of social behavior considered fit by the eminent law-giver. Being one of the most ancient codes of the Hindu society, it has rightly commanded enormous respect and its authority has seldom been questioned.