Hindu Administrative Institutions c8.s2.34

c8.s2.34

No scholar has bestowed so much thought and attention on this great institution as Julius Eggeling and hence we cannot refrain from quoting him once again. He continues: ‘The struggle for social ascendency between the priesthood and the ruling military class must in the nature of things have been of long duration. In the chief literary documents of this period which have come down to us, viz. the *Yajur Veda*, the *Brāhmaṇas* and the hymns of the *Atharva Veda*, some of which perhaps go back to the time of the later hymns of the *Rik*, we meet with numerous passages in which, the ambitious claims of the Brahmans are put forward with singular frankness. The powerful personal influence exercised by the *purohita* as has already been indicated seems to have largely contributed to the final success of the sacerdotal order.’ The so-called struggle between the two classes, the Brahmans and the Kṣatriyas, is more a product of the imagination than one of actual fact. In the whole mass of the Vedic and later Sanskrit literature we cannot trace a conflict between a king and his *purohita*. The king dared not disobey the *purohita* or the *purohita* overrule the monarch. The ambitious claims of the Brahmans are not peculiar to the *Yajur Veda* or the *Atharva Veda* alone. Did we not find the same in the *Rig Veda Samhita*? Prof. Keith distinguishes two classes of priests in this period, the king’s *purohita* and the sacrificial priest. Says he: ‘In both cases the priest was in the long run at the mercy of the political power of the king.'¹ The office of *purohita* is glorified everywhere such as the *Arthaśāstra* texts of Kauṭalya and Kāmandaka. There is no final success of one order over the other, because the very premises are doubtful. We have no definite passages in any of the texts portraying the different phases of the struggle for any sort of social ascendency. It is possible that references to occasional disputes between some *purohita* and his king² has been misconstrued for the struggle between the two orders of the community.³