Who Were the Shudras?

Who Were The Shudras presents a bold and revisionist inquiry into one of the most fundamental questions of Indian social history: the origins and status of the Shudras within the Indo-Aryan social order. The book addresses two central questions, who the Shudras were, and how they came to occupy the position of the fourth Varna. Drawing on extensive research, it advances a series of striking conclusions. It argues that the Shudras were originally one of the Aryan communities of the Solar race, and that early Indo-Aryan society recognized only three Varnas, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas. Far from being a separate category, the Shudras were initially part of the Kshatriya Varna.