Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/806

782 782 INDIA [HISTOBY. sacrifices, and all worshipped the same bright gods. Beneath them was a fourth or servile class, called Sudras, the remnants of the vanquished aboriginal tribes whose lives had been spared. These were &quot; the slave-bands of black descent,&quot; the Dasas of the Veda. They were distin guished from their &quot; twice-born &quot; Aryan conquerors as being only &quot; once-born,&quot; and by many contemptuous epithets. Thay were not allowed to be present at the great national sacrifices, nor at the feasts which followed them. They could never rise from their servile condition, and to them was assigned the severest toil in the fields, and all the hard and dirty work of the village community. Of the four Indian castes, three had a tendency to increase. As the Aryan conquests spread, more aboriginal tribes were reduced to serfdom as Sudras. The warriors, or Kshattriyas, would constantly receive additions from the more wealthy or enterprising members of the cultivating class. When an expedition or migration went forth to subdue new terri tory, all the colonists would for a time lead a military life, and their sons would probably all regard themselves as Kshattriyas. In ancient times entire tribes, and at the present day the mass of the population throughout large tracts, thus claim to be of the warrior or Rajput caste. Moreover, the kings and chief fighting-men of aboriginal races who, without being conquered by the Aryans, entered into alliance with them, would likely assume names of the warrior or Kshattriya rank. We see this process going on before our eyes among many of the abori ginal peoples. The Brahmans, in their turn, seem at first to have received into their body distinguished families of Kshattriyan descent. In later times, too, we find that sections of aboriginal races were &quot; manufactured &quot; into Brahmans. The Vaisya or cultivating caste did not tend in this manner to increase. No one felt ambitious to win his way into it, except perhaps the poor Sudras, to whom any change of condition was forbidden. The Vaisyas themselves tended in early times to rise into the more honourable warrior class, and at a later period to be mingled with the labouring multitude of Sudras and mixed descent. In many provinces they have almost disappeared as a distinct caste from the modern population. In ancient India, as at the present day, the three conspicuous castes were (1) the priests and (2) warriors, of Aryan birth, and (3) the serfs or Sudras, the remnants of earlier races. The Kshattriyas or Rajputs, at any rate in some parts of India, seem to represent a quite separate ethnical movement from that of the Brahmans that is to say, either a different Aryan migration into India, or an altogether distinct race of perhaps Scythic origin. The Sudras had no rights, and, once conquered, ceased to struggle against their fate. But a long contest raged between the priests and warriors for the chief place in the Aryan commonwealth. In order to understand that contest, we must go back to the time when the priests and warriors were simply fellow-tribesmen. The priestly or Brahman caste grew slowly out of the families of Rishis who composed the Vedic hymns, or were chosen to conduct the great tribal sacrifices. In after times the whole Brahman population : of India pretended to trace their descent from seven ; Rishis. But the composers of the Vedic hymns were some- ! times kings or distinguished warriors rather than priests ; j the Veda itself speaks of these royal Rishis (Rdjarshis). When the Brahmans put forward their claim to the highest rank, the warriors or Kshattriyas were slow to admit it ; and, when the Brahmans went a step farther, and declared that only members of their families could be priests, or gain admission into the priestly caste, the warriors disputed their pretensions. In later ages the Brahmans, having the exclusive keeping of the sacred writings, effaced from thorn, as far as possible, all traces of the struggle. They taught that their caste had come forth from the mouth of God, divinely appointed to the priesthood from the begin ning of time. Nevertheless, a large body of Vedic verses and Sanskrit texts has now been brought to bear upon the struggle between the Brahmans and Kshattriyas for the highest rank. 1 In many of the Aryan tribes, however, the priests failed to establish themselves as an exclusive order. Indeed, the four castes, and especially the Brahman caste, seem only to have obtained their full development amid the plenty of the Middle Land (Madhyadesha), watered by the Jumna and the Ganges. The earlier Aryan settlements to the west of the Indus remained outside the caste system; the later Aryan offshoots to the south and east of the middle land only partially carried that system with them. But in the Middle Land itself, with Delhi as its western capital and the great cities of Ajodhya and Benares on its eastern frontier, the Brahmans grew by degrees into a compact, learned, and supremely influential body, the makers of Sanskrit literature. Their language, their religion, and their laws became in after times the standards aimed at throughout all India. They naturally denounced all who did not submit to their pretensions, and stigmatized the other Aryan settlements who had not accepted their caste system as lapsed tribes or outcastes (Vrishalas). Among the lists of such fallen races we read the name afterwards applied to the lonians or Greeks (Yavanas). The Brah mans of the middle land had not only to enforce their supremacy over the powerful warriors of their own kingdoms, but to extend it among the Aryan tribes who had never fully accepted the caste system. That must have been the slow work of ages, and it seems to have led to bitter feuds. See BRAHMANISM, vol. iv. p. 201. While the Brahmans claimed religion, theology, and philosophy Bi as their special domain, and the chief sciences and arts as supple- m mentary sections of their divinely-inspired knowledge, they secured LT their social supremacy by codes of law. Their earliest Dharma- co sdstras, or legal writings, belong to the Sutra period, or scholastic development, of the Veda. But their two great digests, upon which the fabric of Hindu jurisprudence has been built up, are of later date. The first of these, the code of Mami, is separated from the Vedic era by a series of Brahmanical developments, of which we possess only a few of the intermediate links. It is a compilation of the customary law current probably about the 5th century B.C., and exhibits the social organization which the Brahmans, after their 1 The quarrel between the two sages Visvamitra and Vashishtlia, which runs through the whole Veda, is typical of this struggle. Visvamitra stands as a representative of the royal-warrior rank, who claims to perform a great public sacrifice. The white-robed Vashishtlia represents the Brahmans or hereditary priesthood, and opposes the warrior s claim. In the end Visvamitra established his title to conduct the sacrifice; but the Brahmans explain this by saying that his virtues and austerities won admission for him into the priestly- family of Bhrigus. He thus became a Brahman, and could lawfully fill the priestly office. Visvamitra serves as a typical link, not only between the priestly and the worldly castes, but also between the sacred and the profane sciences. He was the legendary founder of the art of war, and his son Susru-fa is quoted as the earlies t authority on Indian medicine. These two sciences of war and medicine form upa- Vcdas, or supplementary sections of the divinely inspired knowledge of the Brahmans. Another royal Eishi, Vitahavya, &quot; attained the con dition of Brahmanhood, venerated by mankind,&quot; by a word of the saintly Bhrigu. Parasu-Eama, the divine champion of the Brahmans, was of warrior descent by his mother s side. Maim, their legislator, sprang from the warrior caste ; and his father is expressly called &quot;the seed of all the Kshattriyas.&quot; But when the Brahmans had firmly established their supremacy they became reluctant to allow the possi bility of even princes finding an entrance into their sacred order. King Ganaka was more learned than all the Brahrnars at his court, and per formed terrible penances to attain to Brahmanhood. Yet the legends leave it doubtful whether he gained his desire. The still more holy but probably later Matanga wore his body to skin and bone by a thousand years of austerities, and was held from falling by the hand of Indra himself. Nevertheless, he could not attain to Brahmanhood. The reformer, Gautama Buddha, who in the 6th century before Christ overthrew the Brahman supremacy, and founded a new religion, was a prince of warrior descent, perhaps born ip too late an age to be adopted into and utilized by the Brahman caste.