History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c17.8

v1.c17.8

The Kesari kings were not only great builders of stupendous temples to Śiva-temples the adornments of which are more decorous than those which in a sense disfigure the later temples of Vishnu in Orissa; but they were also great restorers of the Brahmin religion. They invited and settled a colony of Brahmins from northern India in much the same way as orthodox kings in Bengal and elsewhere did later on. "The local legends and the palm-leaf records alike relate that the founder of the long-haired or Lion line imported ten thousand Brahmins from Oudh and endowed them with lands round Jaipur on the sacred Vaitarani river. They professed the royal religion and were Śaivites to a man. They found already settled Brahmins who were, however, once Buddhists. These latter were allowed to retain the title of Brahmins but they were interdicted all intercourse with the new settlers. They were of course denied the Jus Connubi from the first and these nominal Brahmins formed a distinct caste which by degrees sank into the mass of the peasant population." "They are still found in Orissa as good cultivators and are known as Laukika Brahmins and still wear a dirty Brahmanical thread over their half naked body" (Hunter's Orissa Vol. I p. 239). This settlement of Northern Brahmins and the consequent division of Orissa Brhmins into Laukika and Vaidika is typical of the social evolution of the higher classes throughout India with its sub-divisions of castes which appear at first inexplicable but which show how centuries of profession of the Buddhistic faith differentiated Brahmins from Brahmins and Kshatriyas from Kshatriyas and led to the present strange prohibition of marriage and even food between subdivisions of the same chief caste or Varna.