India, Aug. 13 -- By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik - Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist

The term Chandala, referring to the "lowest of the low" in Brahmin lore, appears a few times in the Vedic literature itself. It is essentially absent from the Rigveda Samhita and emerges only in the later strata of the corpus - the later Samhitas, Brahmanas and Upanishads. The references are scattered, but each one is significant for understanding how the figure of the Chandala entered Vedic thought.

The earliest direct mention occurs in the symbolic "human sacrifice" list of the Purushamedha, in the Vajasaneyi Samhita (Shukla Yajurveda), Purushamedha hymn (30.5-22), where various social and occupational types are assigned to different deities. The Ch...