Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s1.4.2

c48.s1.4.2

Even in the tracts where a serious rival is found in a professional writing class, the Brāhman usually has a share in the State appointments to which the "literary proletariat" of India look mainly for their subsistence. Of the learned professions, Law and Instruction are the more attractive to this caste. A few take up the lower branches of Engineering, and still fewer the practice of Medicine, a following which is to a great extent barred to them by reason of caste-scruples in regard to the surgical training involved. In commerce they have not made their way beyond the universal venture in lending money to their neighbours, to which every Indian capitalist, according to his resources, is inclined. The Brāhman shares, also, the general aspiration to own land, either as an investment or as a possession honorific in the eyes of the lay world. Wherever they have settled in large masses, as in the Gangetic Doāb and Oudh, or in compact local colonies, which probably preceded their advance as a sacerdotal body, they have taken to cultivation on the same lines as the ordinary peasantry, except that they but very rarely put their hand to the plough, though they go as far as standing upon the crossbar of the harrow to lend their weight to that operation.