Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/246

204 to each of them. These laws are conceived with no humane or sentimental scruples on the part of their authors. On the contrary, the offences committed by Brahmans against other castes are treated with remarkable clemency, whilst the punishments inflicted for trespasses on the rights of higher classes are the more severe and inhuman the lower the offender stands in the social scale. The three first castes, however unequal to each other in privilege and social standing, are yet united by a common bond of sacramental rites (sanskaras), traditionally connected from ancient times with certain incidents and stages in the life of the Aryan Hindu, as conception, birth, name-giving, the first taking out of the child to see the sun, the first feeding with boiled rice, the rites of tonsure and hair cutting, the youth s investiture with the sacrificial thread, and his return home on completing his studies, marriage, funeral, etc. The modes of observing these family rites are laid down in a class of writings called Grihya-sutras, or domestic rules. The most important of these observances is the upanayana, or rite of conducting the boy to a spiritual teacher. Connected with this act is the investi ture with the sacred cord, ordinarily worn over the left shoulder and under the right arm, and varying in material according to the class of the wearer. This ceremony being the preliminary act to the youth s initiation into the study of the Veda, the management of the consecrated fire and the knowledge of the rites of purification, including the sdvltrl, a solemn invocation to savitri, the sun, which has to be rspeated every morning and evening before the rise and after the setting of that luminary, is_supposed to constitute the second or spiritual birth of the Arya. It is from their participation in this rite that the three upper classes are called the twice-born. The ceremony is enjoined to take place some time between the eighth and sixteenth year of age in the case of a Brahman, between the eleventh and twenty-second year of a Kshatriya. and between the twelfth and twenty-fourth year of a Vais ya. He who has not been invested with the mark of his class within this time is for ever excluded from uttering the sacred savitri and becomes an outcast, unless he is absolved from his sin by a council of Brahmans, and after due performance of a purifica tory rite resumes the badge of his caste. With one not duly initiated no righteous man is allowed to associate or to enter into connections of affinity. The duty of the Sudra is to serve the twice-born classes, and above all the Brahmans. He is excluded from all sacred knowledge, and if he performs sacrificial ceremonies he must do so without using holy mantras, No Brahman must recite a Vedic text where a man of the servile caste might overhear him, nor must he even teach him the laws of expiating sin. The occupations of the Vaisya are those connected with trade, the cultivation of the land and the breeding of cattle ; while those of a Kshatriya consist in ruling and defending the people, administering justice, and the duties of military profession generally. Both share with the Brahman the privilege of reading the Veda, but only so far as it is taught and explained to them by their spiritual preceptor. To the Brahman belongs the right of teaching and expounding the sacred texts, and also that of interpreting and determining the law and the rules of caste. Only in exceptional cases, when no teacher of the sacerdotal class is within reach, the twice-born youth, rather than forego spiritual instruction altogether, may reside in the house of a non-Brahmanical preceptor ; but it is specially enjoined that a pupil, who seeks the path to heaven, should not fail, as soon as circum stances permit, to resort to a Brahman well versed in the Vedas and their appendages. Notwithstanding the barriers placed between the four castes, the practice of intermarrying appears to have been too prevalent in early times to have admitted of measures of so stringent a nature as to wholly repress it. To marry a woman of a higher caste, and especially of a caste not immediately above one s own, is, however, decidedly pro hibited, the offspring resulting from such a union being excluded from the performance of the sraddha or obsequies to the ancestors, and thereby rendered incapable of inheriting any portion of the parents property. On the other hand, men are at liberty, according to the rules of Manu, to marry a girl of any or each of the castes below their own, provided they have besides a wife belonging to their own class, for only such a one should perform the duties of personal attend ance and religious observance devolving upon a married woman. As regards the children born from unequal mar riages of this description, they have the rights and duties of the twice-born, if their mother belong to a twice-born caste, otherwise they, like the offspring of the former class of intermarriages, share the lot of the Sudras, and arc excluded from the investiture and the savitri. For this last reason the marriage of a twice born man with a Sudra woman is altogether discountenanced by some of the later law books. At the time of the code of Manu the inter mixture of the classes had already produced a considerable number of intermediate or mixed castes, which were care fully catalogued, and each of which had a specific occupation assigned to it as its hereditary profession. The self-exalta tion of the first class was not, it would seem, altogether due to priestly arrogance and ambition ; but, like a pro minent feature of the post- Vedic belief, the transmigration of souls, it was, if not the necessary, yet at least a natural consequence of the pantheistic doctrine. To the Brfili- manical speculator who saw in the numberless individual existences of animate nature but so many manifestations of the one eternal soul, to union with which they were all bound to tend as their final goal of supreme bliss, the greater or less imperfection of the material forms in which they were embodied naturally presented a continuous scale of spiritual units from the lowest degradation up to the absolute purity and perfection of the supreme spirit. To prevent one s sinking yet lower, and by degrees to raise one s self in this universal gradation, or, if possible, to attain the ultimate goal immediately from any state of corporeal existence, there was but one way, subjection of the senses, purity of life, and knowledge of the deity. &quot; He &quot; (thus ends the code of Manu) &quot; who in his own soul perceives the supreme soul in all beings and acquires equanimity toward them all, attains the highest state of bliss.&quot; Was it not natural then that the men who, if true to their sacred duties, were habitually engaged in what was most conducive to these spiritual attainments, that the Brahmanical class early learnt to look upon themselves, even as a matter of faith, as being foremost among the human species in this universal race for final beatitude 1 The life marked out for them by that stern theory of class duties which they themselves had worked out, and which, no doubt, must have been practised in early times at least in some degree, was by no means one of ease and amenity. It was, on the con trary, singularly calculated to promote that complete morti fication of the instincts of animal nature which they considered as indispensable to the final deliverance from the revolution of bodily and personal existence. The pious Brahman, longing to attain the summum boniim on the dissolution of his frail body, was enjoined to pass through a succession of four orders or stages of life, viz., those of Irahmachdrin, or religious student ; yrihastha (or grikamedkin}, or householder ; vananvasin (or vdnaprastha), or anchorite ; and sannydsin (or bhi/ishii), or religious mendi cant. Theoretically this course of life was open and even recommended to every twice-born man, his distinctive class- occupations being in that case restricted to the second station, or that of married life. Practically, however, those 