kings and chieftains like Sree Krishna and the Pandavas were wielding immense influence with the people and eclipsing the Aryan monarchs by their power and splendour and wisdom. This new race of kings and people probably did not have that respect for Vedic sacrifices which the priests wanted to preserve for their own advantage. Some of the orthodox Aryan kings also must have felt uneasy about the increasing predominance of Indian rulers and supported the priests in their plans to suppress the Indians by caste laws and restrictions tending to keep them permanently outside the pale of Aryan religion and society and degrade them to the position of virtual slaves without rights of citizenship, as a class of Sudras, a new name now concocted by the priests. This purpose, the suppression of the masses by prohibiting them from all knowledge and status, is the dominant characteristic of all the caste rules framed at this time and during many centuries thereafter.
The Brahmans, like the Christian missionaries of ...a later age, were very often the first to penetrate into the still unexplored regions of India and bring the peoples under their subjection. The stories connected with Hiranyaksha, Hiranyakashipu and Bali,’ which we shall have to explain in a following chapter, show how the Brahmans succeeded by their priestcraft and Other tactics to bring those Indian kingdoms under their sway. In this process of expansion and exploitation the stupefying claims and pretensions of the priests to divine origin and superiority; and the theory of caste seemed to work wonderfully with the superstitious people of the South. The caste scheme was soon discovered to be a very effective instrument of domination and exploitation, for keeping the people ignorant in order to make them submissive, and for keeping them weak by increasing divisions and disunion among them.
Therefore some of the kings must have helped the Brahmans in their efforts to promulgate and enforce caste distinctions and laws. The numerous Brahmanas of this period, the Sutras which came afterwards and lastly the Manu Smriti which is the final shaping of the Brahman-imposed social order have all as their keynote the preservation of the exclusive rights and privileges of the Brahmans, the prevention of all encroachments on these by other people, the .perpetual subordination of all other ‘communities to the Brahman, and above all the suppression of all efforts on the part of the Indians to rise in social status and religious learning which in those days meant all learning.
It was not to be expected that the other communities would passively submit to the dictation of the priests abrogating their liberties, and it took many Centuries before the Hindu nation – was completely caught in the grip of caste. The Brahmans had therefore to start by enforcing their own exclusiveness from all other people by the internal discipline of the priestly class itself. Preventing inter-marriage was the most important thing, and with this motive they introduced child marriage and prohibition of widow marriage. Women then enjoyed great freedom and exercised a voice in the selection of their husbands, After they had grown mature, it was futile to compel them to give up their immemorial rights. The easiest thing, therefore, was to give away the girls in marriage before they were old enough to protest. There was a danger that on the, death of their husbands, they might violate caste restrictions and marry outside the caste, if widow marriage were permitted. The Brahman lawmakers therefore ‘decided that a widow should not marry and the most meritorious thing she could do was to 15tern herself with the dead body of her husband. Historians are agreed that widow marriage
Was permitted in ancient days and Sati was unknown.
“Rise up, woman, thou art lying with one whose life is gone, come to the world of the living, away from thy husband, and become the wife of him who holds thy hand and will be willing– to marry thee.”* Dr. Rajendralal Mitra in his paper on “Funeral Ceremony in Ancient India, says, “that the remarriage of widows in ancient India Was a national custom can be established by a variety of proof and argument, the very fact of the Sanskrit language having from ancient days such words as Didhishu’ (a man that has married a widow), Parapurva’ (a woman that has taken a second husband), Paunarbhava’ (a son of a woman by her second husband) is enough to establish it.” In order to justify the inhuman custom of Sati which the priests sought to impose upon their wives, they created a Vedic authority by misinterpreting a verse in the Rig-Veda., “There is a perfectly– harmless passage (X, 18-7) which refers to a procession of women at a funeral ceremony. The passage may be translated: ‘May these women not suffer the pangs of widowhood. May they who have good and desirable husbands enter their homes with collyriurn and butter. Let these women, without shedding. tears, and without any sorrow, first proceed to the house, wearing valuable ornaments.’ There is not a word in the above relating to the burning of widows.
But a word in it “Afire” was altered into “Agee” and the text was then mistranslated and misapplied in Bengal to justify the detestable custom of widow burning. In the words of Prof. Max Muller, “This is perhaps the most flagrant instance of what can be done by an unscrupulous priesthood. Here have thousands of lives been sacrificed and a fanatical rebellion been threatened on the authority of a passage which was mangled, mistranslated and misapplied.’’*
*Rig-Veda X, 18-8,
Pages 110- 11, Vol. I, History of Civilisation i in Ancient Indie, R. 0. Dutt.
In religious matters and learning, women were degraded to the position of the Sudras. They were denied property rights and freedom. The priests had no scruples in thus crippling their own wives. People to whom the ladies of the king’s harem no less than the wives of the ordinary householder, were easily accessible, could not have had any great respect for their own wives. This is not a mere conjecture. Until a few years ago, and perhaps even now in some places, the Brahmans of Malabar were considered to have a general right to enjoy any women they desired from among the non-Brahmans without involving any social impropriety. And the •result is that even at the present day, the women of those Brahmans are the most pitiable victims of despotism and heartlessness. The result of all these priest-made rules was that the Brahman women were to remain as chattels of their .husbands and to be destroyed when the latter died.
With these and similiar rules, the Brahmans fortified themselves against intermingling by marriage or eating. To strengthen their hold on the minds of the people, they adopted many of the Indian gods and goddesses in their sacrificial system and connected them with Aryan deities. Thus we see that Tndra was also called Arjuna. Rudra was given many appellations such as Girisha, Tamra, Nilakanta, Kapardin, Pasupati, Sankara, Siva. Isana, Mahadeva and others. The seven tongues of fire were deified as seven goddesses Kali, Karali, Manojava, Sulohita, Sudhtimarvarna, Sphuling–ini and Biswarupi. Goddesses like Daksha Parvati and Uma-Haimavati were. also introduced. The story of Vishnu getting dominion over the whole world from Asuras was told in the Aitheya Brahman. Krishna is mentioned as
punil of .Ghora Angirasu 1n the Chhandogya Upanishad. The numerous gods and goddesses of the Indians were incorporated into the priestly system of mystic Mantras and secret rituals and gorgeous sacrifices intended to ensnare the people and keep them willing victims of priestcraft.
We shall now notice some of the provisions they made for keeping the Indians permanently a subject people degraded like slaves and prevented from aspiring to rise to a higher status at any time in their
lives.
“The tongue of a Sudra, who spoke evil about persons in the first three castes should be cut off. A Sudra who dared to assume a position of equality with the first three castes was to be flogged.”*
A Sudra who abused a twice-born man or assaulted him with blows should lose the limb with which he offended; if he overheard a recitation of the Vedas molten lac or tin was to be poured info his ears; if he repeated the Vedas his tongue should be cut; and if he remembered Vedic hymns, his body was to be torn into pieces.t
Persons of the first three castes committing adultery with a Sudra woman were banished. A Sudra committing adultery with a woman of any of the three higher castes was to suffer death.t
Mann says that no collection of wealth was to be made by a Sudra even though he be able to do it, fora Sudra who has acquired wealth gives pain to Brahman, and that a Brahman may• appropriate by force the property of a Sudra.
If a Sudra mentions the names and birth of the twice born with contumely, an iron nail, ten fingers long, shall be thrust into his mouth.
If he arrogantly teaches Brahmans Dharrna, the king shall cause hot oil to be poure4 into his
mouth and ears. f!
“Let the king never slay a Brahman though lie have committed all possible crimes.
| *Apastamha III, 10-27. §X, 129. | fGautarna XII. $Apastamba. Manu, 267-272. fol. 379-81. |
“The caste system had been completely organised in the Rationalistic Period and threw an indelible stain on the criminal law of India. There was one law for the Brahman, another for the Sudra, the former was treated with undue leniency, the latter with excessive and cruel severity.”*
“Thus Apastamba enjoins upon a king to punish those who have transgressed the caste laws even by death…. The caste regulations were thus enforced upon the people by terror of punishment both in this life as well as in the next.”
The Brahmans did not take long to realise that their claims and commandments could be enforced only if they had political power. They possessed plenty of wealth; their subtle influence with the people was greater than that of the king; they had abundant leisure; they had almost made a monopoly of all learning. They could therefore demand a hand in the exercise of the kings’ authority. Already the palace priest had become a necessity. From the position of Purohit of the king to that of religious adviser and minister was an easy step. The Brahman became very soon the chief member of the king’s council. “The increasing influence of the Brahman aristocracy began to have very important consequences both politically and socially. For not only did the Brahmans as experts in sacrificial lore obtain the respect due to religious teachers, but they also challenged the supremacy of the Kshatriyas, the political and military leaders, on the ground that the strict discipline of the mind and body which was a fundamental principle of Aryan philosophy, was as indispensable for success in war and politics as it was for the spiritual development of those who sought divine truth. The Brahman university
*Page 47, Vol. II, fide R. C. Butt, History of C. in A. T.
1-Pa.go 170-171, Corporate Life in Ancient India. It. O. Majuradar (1918).
became a school of arms and military tactics, diplomacy and political science, and just as Drona in the ahabharata was the Brahman Instructor of the Pandavas in the use of the bow and other weapons of war, so the rahman diplomatist and politician ‘became the chief among the ministers who formed the royal council.”
From that position of power, temporal as well as spiritual, the Brahmans began to enforce, in the name of the king and the country, one by one, those caste laws and religious ordinances, which were intended to keep the prince and the people alike servile to the priests. No doubt they very often served to check the autocracy of the kings and to ensure to the people government according to law; but the unhappy circumstance was that very curtailment of the king’s power meant a tightening of the priest’s grip, and the law of the country generally meant the priest-imposed caste laws with special provisions to exempt the Brahman from taxes and punishment and to inflict unjust ,restrictions and punishments on the Indian peoples. In the Mahabharata it is said that King Vena transgressed the rules of Dandarlithi and therefore the Rishis killed him and put his son Prithu on the throne. Then the Brahmans and the gods said to him, “Rule the earth according to this law, without love or hate and even-handed towards all beings., Promise also that you will not punish the Brahmans and that you will prevent the intermixture of castes.” Prithu promised to do so. The Brahmans and the gods accordingly gave him their best things.” What a hypocritical profession of justice ! The king is compelled to rule even-handed, lout also not to punish Brahmans! The king is to treat everyone equally, but also to enforce upon them
*Page 9, History of A. R. in India, by E. B Page 101, Epic India, by C. V. Vydia.
the indignities of caste gradations and punish them according to their castes.
We already saw that the whole people, including the king and the priests, were originally called the Wis.’ When the Brahmans, and afterwards, the Kshatriyas, agreed to remain as exclusive hereditary groups, the bulk of the people forming the “Vis” were obliged to preserve their self-respect by similarly refusing to mingle with other communities. All the Indians who had not already mingled and become one with the “Vis” were called the Sudras, a class which did not exist in the Rig-Vedic days but was created as a result of Brahmanical rules. , The process of fraternization and fusion which had gone on for so many centuries with happy results was ‘stopped and the forces of disintegration and mutual rivalry-were let loose in the country. In the course of a few centuries, it became a fashion throughout the country to form exclusive social groups, and refuse association with others, on some pretext or other. Sometime it was enmity with another group, sometim.2s it was a dispute between leaders, at other times it was the dignity of a rich family; again it might be a caste dispute ;—no matter what the provocation or justification was, it became a pastime for ignorant people to set up claims of social priority or attribute social inferiority and break off into distinct, non-co-operating “castes.” The Brahmans encouraged these divisions, because every additional caste meant added strength to the caste system as a whole and greater-security and influence for the presiding Brahman caste. The kings enforced these differences with merciless severity. This was the origin and course of ‘development of the Hindu castes. We shall see in the following chapters the vicissitudes of this priest imposed socio-religious feudalism.
No social or religious law can be established or ong enforced without the sanction of the state, and it took many centuries of conflicts, machinations and persecutions before “caste” was finally recognized as the birthright and badge of servility of the Hindus. The peace and. prosperity afforded by the Gangetic valley Indo-Aryan civilization brought forth some of the glorious things in philosophy and science which India has contributed to The world, and also along with them those institutions of injustice and shame which throttled the nation to death. “It was under the same gentle but enervating influences that they also unconsciously lost all social freedom and were gradually bound down by unhealthy priest-imposed laws and restrictions which made further progress on the part of the people impossible. This is the dark side of Hindu civilization. Priestly supremacy threw its coil round and round the nation from its early youth, and the nation never attained that social and political freedom and strength which marked the ancient nations of Europe.”*
The crime of Brahmanism is not so much that it created an exclusive “caste,” but that it condemned the non-Brahmans to perpetual subordination and disunion, not so much that it monopolized religion and learning, but that it suppressed the intellectual and moral growth of the non-Brahmans, not so much that it exaggerated the rituals and sacrifices, but that it converted religion into a means of heartless exploitation. Brahmanism has, from its very inception down to the present day, meant the intellectual and moral starvation of the Hindu masses, the emasculation of the Hindu nation forced to .live and die in an atmosphere of inferiority and disunion, and the submergence of all true religion in a flood of ceremonialism, and its prostitution for the exploitation of Hindu devotees.
