The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c19.2

c19.2

The picture which we can draw from our popular sources of the social conditions which ruled in eastern India about Buddha's time, does not give occasion, in my opinion, for a highly sentimental view, nor does it justify the theory that the castes were invented by the priests for establishing and strengthening a hierarchical social organisation. The political influence of the Brâhmaṇas greatly diminished, especially, in the eastern lands, as compared with the position and power of the ruling classes who, leaving out of account special cases, did not allow much scope for any Brahmanical desire for power; even of an intellectual supremacy of the Brâhmaṇas no trace is to be found in the age and the subject with which we have to do, for even in the spiritual province, other classes, especially, the ruling princely families, challenged the premier position of the worldly Brâhmaṇa caste. As for the position of the lower classes, it was not better, but also not worse, than it would appear to be under similar conditions; aboriginal races standing at a low culture-stage are oppressed in all ages and times by their more highly cultured conquerors and employed in a slave's work: also similar contrasts between immense wealth on the one side and miserable poverty on the other we meet with wherever a more highly cultured race wants to use its superiority even in economical matters.