Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c28.11

c28.11

The term kṣatropetā dvijātayaḥ was used comprehensively sometimes, as shown in a passage which enumerates many of them.⁶ There it includes three classes: kṣatriyas who relinquished their own status and became brahmans, such as Viśvāmitra; others of lower rank who became brahmans, such as Kakṣīvant (p. 220); and kṣatriyas who became brahmans and still retained their kṣatriya status, that is, ‘kṣatriyan brahmans’, and it is this class to which the term more properly and mainly applies. They developed in both the Solar and Lunar lines, rarely and only in the earliest times in the former, oftener and at various periods in the latter. They were real brahmans with the kṣatriya status superadded.⁷ There is no suggestion that there was any difficulty in the assumption of brahmanhood in such cases, and hymns composed by such persons were admitted into the Rigveda. Princes who became rishis in the earliest times are often described as having qualified themselves by long austerities, but, apart from the general statement about austerities in the passage cited above, there is no indication that these ‘kṣatriyan brahmans’ underwent any such initiation, and it seems they merely assumed brahmanhood. In the Lunar line those after Bharata’s time could claim brahman ancestry, because they were descended from the Bharadvāja, whom Bharata adopted as son and who continued his lineage (p. 159 f.), so that they could regard themselves as kṣatriyas or brahmans or both combined.¹