Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s1.6

c9.s1.6

But advantages of position and material resources alone cannot raise a nation to eminence. It is the character and the spirit of the people "that give all their life and efficacy to them". As in Western Europe, so in Magadha, we have a commingling of races and cultures. Kikatas and other *Anāryas* blended here with priestly and fighting clans of Aryan India as Celts did with Latins and Teutons in Gaul and some neighbouring lands of Western Europe. It is possible to detect two strands in the cultural as well as the ethnic texture of the Magadhan people. The same race that produced fierce warriors and exterminators of princes and peoples listened to the quiet teachings of Mahāvīra the Jina and Gautama the Buddha. It played a part in the evolution of a universal religion as it did in the foundation of a pan-Indian empire. The wide outlook of the Magadhans was not a little due to the absence of the rigidity that marked the social polity that evolved on the banks of the Sarasvati and the upper Ganges. In their realm Brāhmaṇas could fraternize with Vrātyas. Kshatriyas could admit plebeian (Śūdra) girls to their harem, blue-blooded aristocrats could be done to death or otherwise deprived of the throne to make room for the child of a nagara-śobhinī, and a barber could aspire to imperial dignity.