A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c7.78

c7.78

Proceeding further in the analysis of the relations of the ruling and the priestly classes with reference to each other, the Brāhmaṇas would appear, in the first place, to lay down the doctrine of co-ordination of these powers. Thus the Sat. Br. in the course of its exposition of the Rājasūya makes the priest exclaim to the assembled multitude in two successive stages of the ceremony, "This man, O ye (people), is your king, Soma is the king of us Brāhmaṇas."(\∗) This passage is applied in the immediately following lines to justify the Brāhmaṇa's immunity from taxation, but it obviously carries within itself the notion that the priestly class is independent of the king. The Yajus Saṃhitās and the Brāhmaṇas, moreover, would appear to set forth two different views concerning the mutual relationship of these powers. The first is represented by a passage of the Taitt. Sam. which roundly declares the kingly power and the priestly power to be helpful to each other.† Some passages of the Brāhmaṇas, however, introduce us to the view of one primary power,—namely the sacerdotal—of which the other is a derivative. Thus the Śat. Br. declares in one place that the priesthood (Brahma) is the conceiver and the nobility (Kṣatra) is the doer, for the god Mitra is intelligence and the god Varuṇa is will. In the beginning the two were separate. Then Mitra, the priesthood, could stand without Varuṇa, the nobility, but Varuṇa could not stand without Mitra. "Whatever deed Varuṇa did unsped by Mitra, the priesthood, therein forsooth he succeeded not." Then Varuṇa invited the assistance of Mitra, promising to place him foremost. "Whatever deed sped by Mitra, Varuṇa thenceforward did, in that he succeeded. Hence it is quite proper that a Brāhmaṇ should be without a king, but were he to obtain a king, it would be conducive to the success (of both.) It is, however, quite improper that a king should be without a Brāhmaṇ, for whatever deed he does, unsped by Mitra, the priesthood, therein he succeeds not.”\* This passage, it will be observed, represents the mutual relations of Brāhmaṇa and Kṣatriya in the terms of the attributes of intelligence and will. It therefore follows that the Brāhmaṇa is the mainspring of the activities of the Kṣatriya. This point is further developed in the above passage by means of a legend of the divine prototypes of the two classes, which finally leads to the conclusion that the kingly power involves as its necessary adjunct the priestly power, not *vice versa*. From this conception of the priestly power as being the motive force as well as the indispensable adjunct of the kingly power, it is but one step to draw out the notion that the latter is derived from the former. This step is taken in a passage of the Śat. Br. which categorically states that the nobility is produced out of the priesthood.†