had opened the eyes of the ruling class to the danger of allowing the Brahmans to go unchallenged. As we have seen, the first opposition took the form of refuting the teachings– of the Brahmans and the efficacy of their rites. King Janaka was the leader of the intellectual revolt against Brahmanism. He had a daughter. Sita. At the same time, King Dasaratha was an imbecile ruler and bad meekly submitted to the authority of his Brahman advisers who managed everything according to the priestly laws.. But Dasaratha’s eldest son Rama was an independent prince, and even as a young student showed the spirit of revolt by disputing– with his teachers. It was Sree Rama’s searching questions which brought into ex­istence that famous work of spiritual wisdom, the ‘Yoga Vasishta. Its teachings are those of the Upan­ishads; it has no faith, in rituals and sacrifices; and advocates the highest wisdom of Brahma Vidya. The Brahmans must have felt that Rama was not going to be a docile king like his father; and what was worse Rama had gone and allied himself with the leader of the opposition to Brahmanism, King Janaka, by marrying his daughter Sita. This was too much. The Brahmans decided to prevent the accession of Rama to the throne and compelled King Dasaratha to banish his beloved son to the forests. Weak-minded Dasaratha soon died of grief.

After defeating Ravana, Rama came back as a great hero and conqueror. Even then the Brahmans did not give him peace. They insisted on his aban­doning his alliance with Janaka by divorcing Sita. It was a complete victory for the Brahmans. Rama submitted to their dictation; his life had been fnade miserable by their machinations and he preferred,. much against his own good sense, to victimise his queen to provoking another Brahman opposition. Peerless, adorable Sita was banished to the forest to satisfy the clamour of the priests. Another instance of Brahman domination over Rama may be noticed in the story of the Sudra whose head was cut off by Rama at the instance of the Brahmans for the offence of performing Tapas which Brahmans alone were entitled to perform: The King had thus become a puppet in the hands of the priests. Probably, Rama himself was not a pure Aryan; he was black in colour. Anyhow, he was one of the earliest kings who for a time opposed and suffered very much from the Brahmans to whom he succumbed in the end.

Incidents like the above, the murder of King Vena, the slaughter of the Kshatriyas by Brahman Parasurama, the abject helplessness of Rama, the heart-rending fate of Sita, must have created deep suspicion and discontent among the Kshatriyas regarding– the growing arrogance of the priests. The Kshatriya Monarchs alone ‘were unable to meet this powerful confederation of Brahman aristocrats, and when the rivalry ripened into a great war, Indian kings like Krishna and Arjuna championed the cause of the liberal –party of Kshatriyas and crushed the orthodox party. It is the story of the final destruct­ive war –between the orthodox Kshatriyas under Brahman leadership and the liberal Kshatriyas back­ed by Indian kings, that is depicted in the Epic of the Mahabharata. As Mr. Mutt has remarked, “Every later poet and editor has contributed his mite towards enlarging, altering and distorting the ancient epic; every new sect has been careful– to incorporate its newfangled tenets in this national work.” The Ramayana and the Mahabliarata in the form in which we have them now were finally completed more than fifteen centuries after the events described in them took place, and many legends were added from time to time by numerous writers.

The bare outline of the historical facts may be picked up from the Bharata with great difficulty as follows: Owing to the rise of Brahman power the Kshatriya kings had become divided into two patties,–those who supported Brahmanism, and those who opposed it. A crisis was’ bound to arise, and the Brahman Drona started the conflagration. The Panchala king had insulted Drona, who therefore left his court and joined the Kurus. Living with the Kurus, who were pro-Brahman in their. outlook, Drona quietly developed his plans for wreaking vengeance on the king of the Panchalas. It is said that the Pandavas were brought down from the Himalayas with their mother by a Brahman. They were, perhaps, Indian kings and warriors. Their marrying Draupadi as their common wife, a custom which did not prevail among the Aryas, confirms the suspicion that they were non-Aryas. The king of the Panchalas questioned Yuclhishtra on the propriety of this marriage, but the. latter replied that it was the custom in •their tribe, and therefore– not opposed to Dharma. So the Pandavas belonged to a different tribe. Drona brought down these chieftains as a preparation for his offensive against the Panchalas. When the military training of the princes was over, Drona demanded as the reward of his tuition the help of the Kurus to attack the Panchalas who had insulted him. The request had to be acceded to, The J.Kurus attacked the Panchalas and annexed half of their kingdom. Not satisfied with this, Drona sent Arjuna disguised as a Brahman to win Panchala’s daughter, Draupadi, whose choice of a husband had been proclaimed. The plan succeeded and Draupadi became the wife of the Indian chiefs. When so much_ had been accomplished, perhaps in fulfillment of a previous promise, the Pandavas had to be given a kingdom to set themselves up as rulers. The Kurus were not willing to go so far as that to please Drona, but were in the end compelled to yield and gave an. unclaimed forest region to the Pandavas. With the help of their leader Krishna, the Pandavas reclaimed the forest area, .built a new capital city and soon became a great power rivalling the Kurus. The latter began to repent of having given a kingdom to the Pandavas, and advised by Drona, managed some­how to take it back from them and drive the Panda-vas out after insulting their queen Draupadi. Quite naturally, the Pandavas now allied themselves with their relative, the Panchala king, and under the lead­ership of Krishna decided to take back their kingdom from the wicked Kurus. Great preparations were made by both sides. The real fight was between the two parties among the Kshatriya kings—the orthodox party led by the Brahman, Drona, and the liberal party led by the great Indian ruler, Krishna. The support of all the chief monarchs of the country was enlisted on one side or the other, because the fate of the whole nation was involved in this issue.

The decisive, but disastrous, battle of Kuruk­shetra was fought, ending in the crushing defeat of the Brahmanical party and the victory of the national Indian party led by Krishna. The battle was truly fought for the inspiring principles which are em­bodied in the Bhagavad Gita, the essence of the philosophy of Indo-Aryan Kshatriyas and the nation­al leaders as against the teachings of the Brahmans. A new era began in the history of India. The old order of things had vanished. The leadership of the country passed from the hands of Indo-Aryan kings into those of the rising Indian kings. The national party which stood for the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and for the co-operation of the Aryan and the Indians as brethren of the same motherland without distinctions of race or religion or caste, came into power; and the line of orthodox monarchs who had, under the advice of Brahmans, prided them­selves on being Aryan kings and tried to suppress the Indians and by establishing caste distinctions degraded them to a despicable position in society, came to an end. Rama, and more than Rama, Krishna came to be looked upon as the heroes of this national awakening who had championed the people’s cause, and stories and legends grew around them. They were deified; they came to be con­sidered as incarnations of God. In later centuries, when great Indian kings were ruling the country, to placate them and the people and gain their adherence to Brahmanism, the priests had to incor­porate the stories of these national heroes in the religion of the Hindus.

The Mahabharata –war had destroyed the power of the Indo-Aryan rulers. Kshatriya kings, warriors and nobles had died by thousands. Though the Brahman party had been defeated, the Brahmans as a class suffered nothing. They kept out of the conflagration and were not affected, in men or wealth. Their success did not depend on the results of the military struggle. They were interested only in set­ting one king against another, one party against an­ other party, in keeping the Kshatriyas always fight­ing either among themselves or with Indian kings, and in this they succeeded until the Kshatriya power was practically annihilated. This was all that the Brahmans wanted. The opposition to Brahmanism came from the Kshatriyas who led the popular party and now that that opposition had almost disappeared, the way was opened for the unobstructed penetration of Brahmanism into all parts of the country, for the increasing vogue of sacrifices add rituals, and the submission of the kings and peoples to the serfdom of caste.