166 A Disputation respecting Caste, by Asuv Guosxa. 
and purity are the best of all things; lineage is not alone deserving of 
respect. If the race be royal and virtue be wanting to it, it is contemptible 
and useless.” Karuina Muni and Vyasa Muni, and other sages, though 
born of Sudras, are famous among men as Brahmans; and many persons 
born in the lowest ranks have attained heaven by the practice of uniform 
good conduct (sila). To say therefore that the Brahman is of one parti- 
cular race is idle and false. 
Your doctrine, that the Brahman was produced from the mouth, the 
Kshatriya from the arms, the Vaisya from the thighs, and the Sudra from 
the feet, cannot be supported. Brahmans are not of one particular race. 
Many persons have lived who belonged to the Kaivarta Kul, and the Rajaka 
Kul, and the Chdndal Kul, and yet, while they existed in this world, per- 
formed the Chura Karan, and Mung-bandan, and Dant-kashtha, and other 
acts appropriated to Brahmans, and after their deaths became, and still are, 
famous under the Brahmans. 
All that I have said about Brahmans you must know is equally applicabie 
to Kshatriyas; and that the doctrine of the four castes is altogether false. 
All men are of one caste. 
Wonderful! You affirm that all men proceeded from one, 7. e. Brahma; 
how then can there be a fourfold insuperable diversity among them? If I 
have four sons by one wife, the four sons, having one father and mother, 
must be all essentially alike. Know too that distinctions of race among beings 
are broadly marked by differences of conformation and organization : thus, 
the foot of the elephant is very different from that of the horse; that of the 
tiger unlike that of the deer ; and so of the rest: and by that single diag- 
nosis we learn that those animals belong to very different races. But I 
never heard that the foot of a Kshatriya was different from that of a 
Brahman, or that of a Sudra, All men are formed alike, and are clearly of 
one race. Further, the generative organs, the colour, the figure, the ordure, 
the urine, the odour, and utterance, of the ox, the buffalo, the horse, the 
elephant, the ass, the monkey, the goat, the sheep, &c. furnish clear 
diagnostics whereby to separate these various races of animals: but in all 
those respects the Brahman resembles the Kshatriya, and is therefore of the 
same race or species with him. I have instanced among quadrupeds the 
diversities which separate diverse genera. I now proceed to give some 
more instances from among birds. Thus, the goose, the dove, the parrot, 
the peacock, &c. are known to be different by their diversities of figure, 
