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Now we come to a subject-matter more important—the treatment of different castes by civil and criminal law and discrimination for the reason of varna. Here the reader should note the fact that there was no discrimination advised by dharma writers on the lines of jāti, but they only advised that some discrimination should be made between the varnas. Here the differences in the ceremonial and the discriminations at the court against some varnas deserve our attention. We should try to find out if any of the varnas were endowed with any peculiar privileges, political or social.

While narrating what our text has to say on these different points, the consideration of its value becomes imperative. I have already said that our text is a book on dharma, whose primary object is to tell, not how things actually were, but how things ought to have been. Thus the text throws on us the task of determining how the things were. The injunctions of the texts are by no means facts. A dharma writer may give a certain precept, but it is our duty to find out the likelihood of that precept being followed.

A peculiar situation under which dharma writers wrote their texts should be noticed. The kings were the persons who were supposed to maintain the privileges of different varnas, on the recommendation of dharma