(c) “A woman whose husband dies before her, in her former state was of a great family, which she left to live with a stranger and when he died, burnt herself with him. Cure: She must pass all her life in austerities or put an end to her existence by burying herself in snow.”
(d) woman who does not menstruate is punished for the following action: Once in a former state when she had her customs, some neighboring children came into her house to play, but she was angry and drove them away. Let her fill an earthen vessel with water from one hundred wells, throw into it a betel-nut, a masha of gold, and perform Homa; and then give it to a Brahman. She must also give five or seven or nine or eleven kinds of fruits to children to eat.”
“A woman who has only one daughter is punished for having possessed a great deal of pride in her former existence, and not showing proper respect to her husband. Cure : Let her ‘plate the horns of a -white ox with four tolas of gold and the hoofs with four tolas of silver, and cover the hump with one and a half tola of copper; which she must bestow in charity with a vessel made of two and half seers of brass, . besides satisfying with food one hundred Brahmans. Or she. must make ten mashas of gold into the form of the deity,- and after performing certain incantations,. give it in charity and feed fifty Brahmans.”*
Ordeals for deciding cases were prescribed according to caste. For Brahmans: “They Weigh the . person in a pair of .scales; then they perform-certain religious ceremonies and weigh him again, then if he is found to be lighter than he was the first time, his claim is admitted; but if his scale pre ponderates, or the balance stands even he is declared
* Pages 717.18, Ayin Akbari by Francis Gladwin.
a liar. Some books admit of a trifling difference. This kind of ordeal is peculiar to Brahmans,”
For Vaishyas : “The person stands up to the navel in water with his face towards the east. He next dives under the water, when one of the bystanders shoots from a bow, measuring io6 fingers’ breadth, an arrow made of reed, without any iron spike, and another person runs and fetches it back. If the appellant keeps all this while underwater, his cause is declared just. This order is peculiar to the Byess.”
For Sudras: “Deadly poison is administered thus • This is to be mixed up with thirty times the quantity of ghee, and after repeating certain incantations administered to the person who is to be tried. He must turn his face to the south and the person who administers it must look towards the east or the north.. If it has not any effect during the time that the spectators can clap their hands five hundred times, his cause is pronounced just, and antidotes are given to him. This ordeal is peculiar to the Sooder caste.”*
To support and exemplify these and similar injunctions and superstitions were written the fanci-ful Puranas—indeed they are still being concocted as occasions arise to praise the sanctity of a temple or the sacredness of a bath or a place of pilgrimage. No story was considered too false, too obscene or too cruel to be propagated as a Purana or Mahatmya. In the words of a distinguished historian of the 20th century such indeed were “the peculiar institutions which she (India) evolved and which enabled her to combat successfully the otherwise irresistible influences of the state or political sovereignity, irrespective of the nationality and personnel of such sovereignity for the time being.” No doubt they
* Pages 741 an 741, vide Agin Akbari.
have been supremely successful in preventing the state, whether under the Muharnmadans or the British, from emancipating the people from their serfdom to priestcraft, gross superstitions and ruin-ous exploitation. They have served by their standing insult to humanity to make the Hindus despised by the self-respecting nations of the world.
In accordance with the new ordinances of the saints, Brahmans in many places openly asserted their right to be treated as Bhudevas (earthly gods)
and Bhupatis (lords of the earth) demanding worship from all, rulers and the ruled, and claiming a divine right to the ownership of all land. In Malabar it became a widely recognised rule that land could be owned by the Brahmans only and other people should hold tenures under the Brahmans, Shivaji surrendered his entire kingdom to his Brahman Guru and the character of his administration showed, that he recognised the Brahmans as the chief beneficiaries of his state. During the regime of a Brahman minister, the Maharaja of Travancore dedicated his kingdom to the deity of the chief temple and began to rule as the Dasa or agent of the deity, and the state was peimanently saddled with an Ali-. gation to celebrate every six years a festival for Brahmans costing- many lakhs of rupees. “There is scarcely a state in Rajputana in which one fifth of the soil is not assigned for the support of the temples, their ministers, the secular Brahmans, bards and genealogists” We saw from the very beginning that if was the Kshatriyag who manfully opposed -the Brahmanical pretensions. The priests now started the theory that the race of Kshatriyas had become extinct and there really existed only Brahmans and Sudras, even the Vaisliyas having lost their distific: tine status:` Under this pretext arose the practke of
*Todd’s Annals of iirewar.
raising Indian rulers to Kshatriyahood after per-, forming expensive ceremonies which served to fill the pockets of the priests and also to proclaim openly the abject submission of the ruler to the Brahmans. In some cases, the Hindu Raja had to go to the extent of becoming the ceremonial bearer of the hereditary Brahman Guru’s Vahan (palanquin) whenever the latter visited his state. The southern rulers of the Muhammadan period fell easy victims to these tactics and became willing tools for the enforcement of the caste law upon themselves and their subjects.
The Vaishyas too were deprived of their right to religious sacraments which they had enjoyed from most ancient days. Alberuni describes the Hindus of the early eleventh century as living in isolation without any knoweldge of other peoples or countries and treating all outsiders as impure castes. He says: “Vaishyas and Sudras are not allowed to 1-i-ear it (the Veda) much less to pronounce or recite it .
every action which is considered a privilege of the Brahmans, such as saying prayers, the recitation of the Vedas and offering sacrifices to the fire is forbid-<len to him to such a degree that when, for example,
Sudra or Vaishya is proved to have recited the Vedas—he is accused by the Brahmans before the ruler and the latter will order his tongue to be cut off.” Wherever Brahmanism penetrated, there the people were compelled to submit to insulting classifications assigning to them, graded positions in society and curtailing their liberties of social inter7 course. Brahmanism was no less fanatical in its aims and brutal in its methods than the bigots of Islam who soon succeeded them.
* Page 195 Later Hindu Civilisation by R. C. Dutt.
worship. It served many more purposes. The village temple was generally the centre of the village administration and the high court of caste law. – Caste distinctions and their gradations were decided on the basis of the rights enjoyed iii the temple by the parties. (1) The Brahmans alone had access to the Holy of holies and could perform pooja (offer¬ing) to the idol. (2) The next in rank could stand in front of this innermost shrine but not go in. (3) Those of the third grade were allowed inside the compound wall but were not permitted to enter the main building of the temple. (4) Others lower still had to stand outside the outer wall. (5) Then there were the untouchables who had to wait at varying distances from the temple, some not being free to enter even the temple street.
Caste disputes were heard and decided in the temple premises in accordance with the law as ex-pounded by the priest. Elections to the village ‘assemblies were held there; there were held the meetings of the assembly; ordeals were administered in front of the deity; fines imposed often went into the temple coffers. The temple-priest had an effective mvoice in all these functions. The village school was conducted in the temple by the priest or his dependants and the venom of caste-spirit was ‘injected into the blood of the children to make them proof against all notions of self-respect. The larger temples of the towns and cities were sometimes used as the treasury of the ruler. Unexpended gold, jewels and money were preserved in underground cells and secret chambers of the temple so that the temple priest practically became the controller of ‘the finances, which office he used to fill even in the lays of Magasthenes. For the Brahmans; the temple offices offered the most lucrative profession they had ever since the days of the horse-sacrifices and supplied all their cravings—food, wealth and women. Feasting, dancing, music and other indulgences of the ancient Yajna were brought back and popularised through the temples. Their very plan and construction were symbolical of the sacrificial ground. The old Mantras and Tantras continued to be used, and the new deity Kali satisfied the craving for bloody sacrifices.
The temple movement was actively supported by the Rajahs for quite another reason also. The temples were a source of considerable revenue to the state and they were used to collect money from the credulous people by all sorts of deceptions and tricks. Kautliya, the Brahman minister of Chandragupta, describes in his Arthasastra the methods to be employed for making the people part with their hard-earned wealth.. “The superintendent of religious institutions may collect in one place the various kinds of property of the gods of the fortified cities and country parts and carry away the property to the king’s treasury.”
“Or having on some night set up a God or an altar or having opened a sacred place of ascetics, or having pointed out an evil omen, the king may collect subsistence under the pretence of holding pro-‘,cessions and congregations (to avert calamities).”
“Or else he shall proclaim the arrival of gods by pointing out to the people any of the sacred trees in the king’s garden, which has produced untimely flowers and fruits.”
“Or by causing a false panic owing to the arrival of an evil spirit on a tree in the city wherein -a man is hidden making all sorts of devilish noises, the king’s spies under the guise of ascetics, may collect money (with a view to propitiating the evil spirit and sending it back)”.
“Or spies may call upon spectators to see a servant with numberless heads in a well connected with a subterranean passage and collect fees from them for the sight, or they may place in a borehole made in the body of an image of a serpent or in a hole in the corner of a temple or in the hollow of an ant-hill, a cobra, which is, by diet, rendered unconscious, and call upon credulous spectators to see it on payment of a certain fee). As to persons who are not by nature credulous, spies may sprinkle over or give drink of such sacred water as is mixed with r anaesthetic ingredients and attribute their insensibility to the curse of gods. Or by causing an outcaste person, to be bitten by cobra, spies may collect revenue under the pretext of undertaking remedial -measures against ominous phenomena.”* As the Frenchman Abbe Dubois wrote more than a century ago, “There is no trick which the Brahman will not employ in order to excite the favour of the worshippers and thus to enrich themselves by their congregations to avert calamities.”
“The worship of images has never an ennobling influence on a people’s mind, but in India the practice was accompanied by other evils. Down to the time of Mann, the Vaishyas and the mass of the people could worship their gods in their own way, and could offer libations at their domestic hearth. When however the worship was transferred from the fire-side to the temple, priests as custodians of such temples had an additional influence on the popular mind, and forged Pompous celebrations chain round the necks of the people. ptohus c. debt.. actions and gorgeous decorations arrested fostered the superstition of the immigration and e populace; poetry, arts, architecture, sculpture, and music lent their aid; and within athfeelve centuries the nation’s wealth was lavished on monials which were the gorgeous edifices and cereutward manifestations of
* Page 304, ArthaEasira, Shamagastry.-
the peoples’ unlimited devotion and faith. Pilgrim-ages which were rare or unknown were organised on a stupendous scale; gifts in lands and money, poured in for the support of the temples; and religion itself gradually transformed itself into a blind veneration of images and their custodians. The great towns of India were crowded with temples;. and new gods and new images found sanctuaries in stone-edifices, and in the hearts of the ignorant worshippers.”
Rajas and rich men were induced by all sorts of cunning and deception to build costly temples. There is a typical story about the founding of the famous temple of Jagannath. Raja Inderdunmian sent a learned Brahman to pitch upon a site for the founding of a city. When he came to the. seashore he saw a crow dip itself in the water three times and worship the sea. He was surprised and asked the crow the reason for its strange conduct. It replied that it was once a Deva (god) and became a crow by the curse of a sage. That spot was frequented by gods, and the crow which was about to attain liberation from the curse was worshipping the gods. The Brahman then saw by his spiritual vision the wonderful events that took place there and reported the matter to the Raja who built a large temple on the spot where the crow bathed. Such were the silly fables told and deceptions practised by priests, and almost every one of the many thousands of temples in India, big and small, derives its origin from similar or worse fabrications. The purposes for which temples were actually built may be detected in the nature of their daily rituals and the wealth and feastings associated with them. It is said about Jagannath: “The Brahmans wash the image of Jagannath six times every day, and dress
* Page 70, Later Hinau Civilisation by R. C. Dutt.
