“For those who take refuge in Me — even those said to be of lowly birth, women, vaiśyas, śūdras — they too reach the supreme goal.” Read in its own hierarchical age, this is a radical throwing-open of the highest attainment to everyone barred by the ritual system. The path of loving refuge asks no credential of birth, sex or class; it asks only the turning of the heart. Whatever the social categories of the time, Kṛṣṇa declares the door of liberation to stand open to all who will enter — the same universality proclaimed for animals and plants, the “sin-born,” and for the virtue-born alike.