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War in Ancient India c4.s5: The Warrior Caste

War in Ancient India c4.s5

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The Warrior Caste

c4.s5.1

Thus the value and importance of the army were realised very early in the history of India, and this led in course of time to the maintenance of a permanent militia to put down dissensions within and arrest aggressions from without. Of capital importance to the execution of both foreign and home policy was the institution of the army. War or no war, the army was to be maintained, to meet any unexpected contingency. In a country where there were many castes and communities whose occupations were hereditary, the standing army came to consist largely of the members of the hereditary fighting castes, thus maintaining a group solely devoted to the waging of war. This gave rise to the Kṣatriya or warrior caste, and the kṣatram dharmam came to mean the primary duty of war. To serve the country by participating in war became the svadharma of this warrior community. How this had a salutary effect on the administration of the land, a study of the history of ancient India will demonstrate. The cut-and-dry distinction of the civil population from the military and the equally clear distinction between the civil and military functions of the State helped to a large extent not only the progress of civil administration but also the moral and material welfare of the land. This cut deep at the root of that mental attitude now called militarism.

c4.s5.2

We are told that the educational system in Italy under the Fascists and in Germany under the Nazis has been directed so as to develop the militarist attitude among the people. It prepares the whole community for war. There are again nations which advocate conscription involving compulsory military service for male adults. This necessarily leads to the separation of the sexes and affects the entire social structure. Things were different in ancient India. No doubt there was compulsory military service. But it was confined to one particular caste and it was not universal. The necessary education, drill, and discipline to cultivate militarism were confined to the members of one community, the Kṣatriyas. This prevented the militant attitude from spreading to other communities and kept the whole social structure unaffected by actual wars and war institutions. Says the *Atharva Veda*: ‘May we revel, living a hundred winters, rich in heroes’.¹ The whole country looked upon the members of this particular community as defenders of their country and consequently did not grudge the high influence and power wielded by the Kṣatriyas, who were assigned a social rank next in importance to the community which ministered to the intellectual and spiritual needs of the society.⁵

c4.s5.3

⁴ Bk. XIX, 12. 1. Harvard Oriental Series—Trans. by W. D. Whitney.

c4.s5.4

⁵ A thesis has been put forward by Prof. N. Ghose of the Dacca University in his *Indian Literature and Culture Origins*, that it was the Vrātyas who occupied the ancient Magadha and Anūpa Deśa and supplied man-power to the Indo-Aryans; that these Vrātyas became absorbed into the Aryan fold by the Vrātya Stoma ceremony, which is, according to him, a conversion ritual; that these Vrātyas formed the warrior caste and fought battles on behalf of the Indo-Aryans; that the result of this synthesis of culture was the birth of the *Atharva Veda* and other later literature glorifying the Kṣatriyas

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