Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c31.54

c31.54

Those brahmans who associated with the Ailas thus became established and multiplied into the great brahman families, and the others disappeared or took lower rank,¹ except the Vasiṣṭhas who maintained their high position in the powerful Mānva kingdom of Ayodhyā. The Aila kings appear to have been their own sacrificers, and the brahmans on becoming established among them assimilated Aila religious ideas and rites and became priests, and Aila princes also became brahman-priests. Brahmanism thus gradually changed its character and became the well-known system, priestly and not magical,² which took its great development among the Bhāratas as displayed especially in the Rigvedic hymns of the times of Vadhryaśva, Divodāsa and their successors.³ It owed a great deal to Bharata and his descendants. He was a powerful and pious monarch, he adopted the brahman Bharadvāja as his son, and not only were his successors (p. 159) friendly to brahmans, but many of them also became brahmans (chapter XXIII). The infusion of royal scions into the ranks of the brahmans must have enhanced brahmanhood greatly and also no doubt modified it, and therefrom arose a fresh, vigorous and illustrious development of it with apparently a strong stimulus to sacrificial worship, as the statements infra about the Veda, sacrifice and dharma also indicate. The Ailas Aryanized the brahmans¹ as they did the other peoples, and then the new brahmanism became the stronghold of Aryanism.