↑Ghurye 1969, pp. 15–17, Quote: "This was only generally true, for there were groups of occupations like trading, agriculture, labouring in the field and doing military service which were looked upon as anybody's, and most castes were supposed to be eligible for any of them..
↑Richard Gombrich (2012). "Chapter 8. Caste in the Monastery". Buddhist Precept & Practice. Routledge. pp. 343–357. ISBN978-1-136-15616-8.; According to Gombrich's study of Buddhist texts, particularly relating to castes in Sri Lankan Buddhist and Tamil Hindu society, also "The terms Vaisya and Sudra did not correspond to any clear-cut social units, even in the ancient period, but various groups were subsumed under each term (...); In medieval times (say AD 500–1500) though society was still said to consist of the four classes, this classification seems to have become irrelevant (...)"
↑Ronald L. Barrett (4 March 2008). Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India. University of California Press. pp. 68–. ISBN978-0-520-25218-9. Among the most vocal of these supporters was Dr. Shastri, a professor of Ayurvedic medicine at a well-known university, who associated the Caraka Samhita use of shudra for lesser conditions with the shudra (peasant) castes, linking both
↑G. Krishnan-Kutty (1986). Peasantry in India. Abhinav Publications. pp. 47–. ISBN978-81-7017-215-4. The ancient texts designate the sudra as a peasant. The distinction between the all-India category of varna and the local and omnipresent category of jati is well brought out by M. N. Srinivas in his famous book The Remembered Village, ...
↑Jayant Gadkari (October 1996). Society and Religion: From Rugveda to Puranas. Popular Prakashan. pp. 76–. ISBN978-81-7154-743-2. an extract from Pali work Majjima Nikaya tell us ... shudras [live] by the sickle and ears of corn. A large number of Shudras appear to be agricultural laborers. Shudras were not entitled to learn Vedas and a precept says 'Vedas are destroyer of agriculture and agiculture is destroyer of vedas.'
↑Sangeet Kumar (1 January 2005). Changing role of the caste system: a critique. Rawat Publications. p. 144. ISBN978-81-7033-881-9. In same texts, the pure Shudras were described as giver of grain (annada) and householder (grhastha). The reason was that the actual work of cultivation was generally done by peasants belonging to the Shudras caste.
↑Grewal, J. S. (2005). The State and Society in Medieval India. Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy, and Culture. Oxford University Press. p. 156. ISBN978-0-19-566720-2. At its beginning or a little before the millennium, the Manusmriti considers the pursuit of agriculture blameworthy because the 'wooden [plough] with the iron point injures the earth and the [beings] living in the earth'. Thus, by an appeal to the doctrine of ahimsa, so much promoted by Buddhism and Jainism, the plough became unclean, and the peasant who worked the plough earned opprobrium that has stuck till our own times. R. S. Sharma shows how in the legal texts peasants came generally to be regarded not as Vaishyas as earlier, but as Shudras. This is confirmed in the seventh century by Xuan Zhuang (Hsuan Tsang) who found that in India peasants were held to be Shudras. Such varna ranking of most peasant castes (now usually given the designation of 'Other Backward Castes') is thus more than 1300 years old, and was in place by the early medieval times. If certain older communities were thus reduced in status, it is possible that other communities, previously held to be outside the pale of the varna system, were absorbed as Shudra castes once they took to agriculture. We have such an example in the Kaivartas.
↑Dwijendra Narayan Jha (1 January 2004). Early India: A Concise History. Manohar Publishers & Distributors. p. 196. ISBN978-81-7304-587-5. For the shudras now took their position as cultivators and the origin of the modern peasant castes of kurmis in Bihar and kunbis in Maharashtra may be traced back to the early medieval period
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