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पौल्कस (paulkasa)

 
Monier Williams Cologne
English
पौल्कस॑
m.
 (= पुल्कस) the son of a Niṣāda or of a Śūdra father and of a Kṣatriyā mother,
VS.
ŚBr.
&c.
Monier Williams 1872
English
पौल्कस पौल्कस, अस्, m., Ved. (= पुल्कस,
said to be) the son of a Niṣāda or of a Śūdra
father and of a Kṣatriyā mother.
Vedic Reference
English
Paulkasa is the name of one of the victims at the Puruṣa-
medha (‘human sacrifice’) in the Yajurveda.^1 The name also
occurs in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad^2 as that of a despised
race of men, together with the Cāṇḍāla. The Maitrāyaṇī
Saṃhitā^3 has the variant Puklaka or Pulkaka, clearly the same
as Pulkasa, of which Paulkasa is a derivative form, showing
that a caste is meant (cf. Kaulāla, Pauñjiṣṭha). In the accepted
theory^4 the Pulkasa is the son of a Niṣāda or Śūdra by a
Kṣatriya woman, but this is merely speculative
the Paulkasa
may either have been a functional caste, or, as Fick^5 believes,
an aboriginal clan living by catching wild beasts, and only
occasionally reduced to menial tasks.
1) Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā, xxx. 17
Tait-
tirīya Brāhmaṇa, iii. 4, 14, 1.
2) iv. 3, 22.
3) i. 6, 11.
4) Cf. St. Petersburg Dictionary, s.v.,
Pukkaśa. Zimmer, Altindisches Leben,
217, takes Paulkasa as a mixed caste.
5) Die sociale Gliederung, 206. Cf.
Eggeling, Sacred Books of the East, 44,
416, n. 6.
Stchoupak
French
पौल्कस-
m.
 fils d'un père Niṣāda et d'une mère Kṣatriyā (?).