History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c8.22

v1.c8.22

As mentioned before Brahmins sometimes took up the suffixes Varmā and Gupta also to indicate that they followed the profession of warriors or traders. For the Brahmins in those days as now followed a diversity of professions besides their principal professions, namely, यजन and याजन, अध्ययन and अध्यापन i. e., sacrificing and officiating at sacrifices, learning and teaching. Bāṇa describes his uncles as learned men studying themselves and teaching others, performing great sacrifices, keeping Agnihotra and living a religious life appropriate to Gṛihastha Brahmins. And yet for himself Bāṇa describes his associates in his young days, as dancers and music teachers, actors and painters, poets and dramatists, servant girls and old women, goldsmiths and chemists, Hindu Sanyāsis and Buddhist recluses and other non-descript people. It is not impossible to suppose from the Mṛichhakatika where a Brahmin thief is introduced, that Brahmins were good and bad in those days as they are now and followed good and bad professions but the generality of them may be taken to have followed, then as now, either a religious life or the profession of Government servants, a profession in which they often rose to the position of governors of provinces. The Mandsaur-well-inscription No. 35 Corp. Ins. Ind. Vol. III gives an example of this kind. Abhayadatta, the son of Ravikīrti was a ‘Rājasthānīya and protected the region containing many countries (presided over by his own upright councillors), which lies between the Vindhya mountains from the summit of which there flow the waters of the Revā and the mountain Pāriyātra up to the ocean” p. 157. Similar instances might be quoted from other epigraphic records proving the frequency of such appointments in those days. And such governors eventually often became kings themselves.