Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s1.1

c48.s1.1

origin back to the 10th century, when a considerable colony was imported by the reigning sovereign from upper India and acclimatised in the north and west of the present Province. Orissa received, or produced, its stock a little later, but there seems some reason to think that there was an earlier strain which had become extinct, or had degenerated below the standard exacted by the dynasty which had established itself on the coast. The frequent invasions of upper India from the north-west during the ten first centuries of the Christian era are credited with the dispersal of large bodies of Brāhmans from Rājputāna and the Madhyadeśa, some of whom took refuge in the seclusion of the Nepāl valley, others in the west Dekkan; others, again, fled by sea through Sindh or Kāṭhiāvāḍ to various settlements along the west coast. Amongst the latter were at least three Brāhman communities who have preserved a credible tradition of their northern origin. The Brāhman was never organised into a tribe upon a territorial basis, but was, from the beginning, parasitic upon other classes of the community. In Vedic times he was part and parcel of the fortunes of the Chief, his patron. In later times, as the tribes settled, multiplied and expanded, he attached himself to the landed classes, his principal clients, for "unde vivent oratores si defecerint aratores?" Still later, again, he was liable, according to numerous traditions current amongst the Brāhmans of to day, to be imported in large bodies to a distant Court on the invitation, not always declinable, of the pious ruler. When, moreover, there is taken into consideration the incorporation into the Brāhmanic order of local communities and of priests and exorcists of the wild tribes accepting Brāhmanism, the capricious exercise of the powers of Brāhmanification arrogated to themselves by sundry of the Chieftains, and the results of left-handed unions with the daughters of the land, the extent to which the Brāhman is scattered far and wide is no matter for surprise. The land, however, where they first became a consolidated body and established the hierarchy they have since dominated, is still that in which their numbers are both absolutely and relatively the greatest. Between the Jamnā and the Ghogrā, roughly speaking, there are about 4 800 000 Brāhmans. Of the vast population of Bengal, 2 900 000 are of that order; these two Provinces, therefore, account for more than half the total number. Brāhmans abound, too, relatively to the population, in Rājputāna, and Madras, Bombay and the Panjāb each contain between a million and a quarter. The distribution over these large areas is not, of course, even. Orissa and Bihār stand out above the rest of Bengal, except for a few places in the centre of the Province. Further up the Ganges, Oudh surpasses the sister Province of Agra in the relative number of its Brāhmans, and it is worth noting that Gonda, the traditional seat of the Gauṛ section of Brāhmans still maintains its preeminence. The prevalence of Brāhmans along the eastern bank of the Jamnā extends also for some distance to the west in both Rājputāna and the Panjāb. In the former tract there is a large settlement in the so-called desert States of the north and west, but in Sindh and towards the domain of the Balūch and Paṭhān, scarcely any are to be found. In the Panjāb, the greatest relative prevalence of the sacerdotal element is found in the outer-Himālaya, where Brāhmanism reigns in unwonted vigour. In the west of India, the Brāhman is well represented on the wealthy plains of Gujarāt, and holds a strong position throughout the Dekkan. In the Dravidian tracts, his numbers are fairly evenly distributed over the main linguistic divisions.