Gyaneshwari -Sant Gyaneshwar
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Chapter-18
Release
But because these Shudras are closely connected with the three castes, they are reckoned as the fourth caste. The scriptures have included the Shudras in the castes, as they have close connection with the twice-born, in the same way, as the rich smell the flowers of a garland along with its thread. Such is the arrangement of the four-fold caste system. I shall now tell you their respective functions, by performing which these four castes escape from the pair of scissors in the form of birth and death and attain to the Supreme Self. These functions have been distributed among the four castes according to the three qualities of the prakriti (821-825). Just as a father divides his property among his sons, or the sun shows the different paths to different wayfarers, or the master assigns different duties to servants, so the three qualities have distributed the functions among the four castes. There the sattva quality divides itself, into two irregular parts and creates the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas, the Vaishya caste came into being, through the mixing of the sattva and rajas qualities and the Shudra caste was formed out of the combination of the rajas and tamas qualities. In this way, O wise Arjuna though the entire humankind formed a single group, they were divided into four different castes, because of the three gunas (826-830). Then, just as a lamp shows a thing in the dark, so the scripture shows the functions as differentiated by the qualities. O Lucky Arjuna, I shall tell you, what the distinctive functions of these four castes are. |
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