According to Buddha's view the castes must fall to the ground. There was no world-soul from which all creatures emanated, and therefore the distinctions which rested on the succession of these emanations did not exist. In the first instance, however, he attacked the castes from the point of view that the body can only have a subordinate value. "He who looks closely at the body," he said, "will find no difference between the body of the slave and the body of the prince. The best soul can dwell in the worst body." "The body must be valued or despised in respect of the spirit which is in it. The virtues do not inquire after the castes."[476] But he also applied the distinction of castes to show that in fact they give a higher or lower position to men; that the arrangement brings external advantages or disadvantages. It was the conception of the more or less favourable regenerations which caused him to assume these distinctions and bring them into the series of regenerations. He allowed that there was a gradation leading from the Chandalas to the Brahmans, that birth in a higher or lower position was a consequence of the virtues or failings of earlier existences; but the distinctions were not of such a kind that they limited the spirit; that they could in any way prevent even the least and lowest from hearing the true doctrine and understanding it, and attaining salvation and liberation. Hence while the castes do indeed form distinctions among men, these distinctions are not essential, but in reality indifferent. If the Brahmans reproached Buddha that he preached to the impure, he replied: "My law is a law of grace for all."[477] He received Çudras and Chandalas, barbers and street-sweepers, slaves and remorseful criminals, among his disciples and initiated.[478] Nor did he exclude women; even to them he imparted the initiation of the mendicant.[479] On one occasion Ananda, the scholar of Buddha, met a Chandala maiden drawing water at a fountain, and asked to drink. She replied that she was a Chandala and might not touch him. Ananda answered: "My sister, I do not ask about your caste, nor about your family; I ask you for water if you can give it me." Buddha is then said to have received the maiden among his initiated.[480]