The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c14.165

c14.165

Land-cultivating and cattle-rearing Brâhmaṇas are also not uncommon in Western India; the law-books recognised certain exceptional cases when this occupation was permissible for a Brâhmaṇa in cases of dire necessity.¹ For that was a time when liberality towards Brâhmaṇas was a clear duty of the king and the amassing of wealth and the possession of land by the Brâhmaṇas were necessary consequences of this. Nevertheless, in the western lands the circumstance that the Brâhmaṇas tried to maintain at any cost their premier position among the castes, the position of an age-long holy and (through the privilege of offering sacrifice) premier caste, worked itself in this way, that this occupation, which was reserved, according to the theory, for the Vaiśyas, was followed by private individuals and as quietly as possible, probably, also by means of leases. To cultivate the land, plough in hand, could not be a worthy thing for a Brâhmaṇa, because with a plough the killing of living beings was unavoidable.²