A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c6.177

c6.177

In the hymns of the Rig-veda we meet with allusions to several legendary stories—afterwards more fully developed by the Brahmans in their Brâhmaṇas—by which laws that were in later times acknowledged as generally binding, and as based upon the authority of the Veda, are manifestly violated. It is an essential doctrine of the Brahmans, that the religious education, and the administration of sacrifices, as well as the receiving of rewards for these offices, belong exclusively to their own caste. Kakshîvat, however, whose hymns are found in the first and ninth maṇḍala of the Rig-veda, and who, whether on account of his name or for some better reason, is said to have been a Kshatriya, or of royal extraction, is represented as receiving from King Svanaya presents, which, according to Manu¹, it would have been unlawful for him to accept. In order to explain this