Chandala

Chandala is a Sanskrit word for a person who deals with the disposal of corpses, and the name of a Hindu lower caste traditionally held to be untouchable. Vedic literature names the Chandala among groups outside the four varnas, the 'fifth' or panchama, and the Yajur-Veda describes them as an untouchable class born of the union of a Shudra man and a Brahmin woman. The Chinese traveller Faxian, crossing India in the 4th–5th centuries CE, wrote that they lived apart from others and that only the Chandalas were fishermen and hunters and sold meat. In many parts of India the word Chandal is still used as an insult.