A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s3.106

c8.s3.106

Let us next consider the views of our present authors with regard to the position of the Brāhmaṇa order in relation to the rest. In the early part of this chapter we have seen how Gautama in his Dharmaśāstra inculcated the old principle of the joint authority of the king and of the Brāhmaṇa by making them the source of individual existence as well as of the social and the moral order.∗ As between these powers, however, the authors of the Dharmaśāstras are content with reproducing the old Vedic texts relating to the Brāhmaṇa's independence of the king and the king's subordination to the Brāhmaṇa. The teachers whom we are now considering, while repeating the above views, ultimately push their theory to the extreme position of the Brāhmaṇas implying that the Brāhmaṇa is the one primary power, of which the king or the Kṣatriya is a derivative. In Chapter LXXII of the Śāntiparvan Bhīṣma quotes an old legend relating to the discourse of king Purūravas and the god of Wind. The god, after stating how the Brāhmaṇa, the Kṣatriya, the Vaiśya and the Śūdra, were produced respectively out of the mouth, the arms, the thighs, and the feet, of Brahmā says, "A Brāhmaṇa coming into existence is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all created beings, for the protection of the treasury of the law. Afterwards the Lord created the ruler of the world, the second caste, the Kṣatriya, that he might wield the sceptre for protecting the people. Brahman Himself has ordained that the Vaiśya should maintain these three castes by means of wealth and agricultural produce and that the S̄ūdra should serve them.”[^asterisk] As the first of these verses is identical with the verse I 99 of the Manusamhitā, it has evidently been borrowed in both the works from an earlier collection of metrical maxims, probably from the Arthaśāstra of the Wind-god Himself whom Bhīṣma quotes. The above passage, apart from its bearing on the relative position of the Brāhmaṇa and the king, seems to present some points of interest. It connects itself, to begin with, with the old Vedic dogma of creation of the four castes out of different parts of the Creator’s body. Further, it seems to indicate beneath the mask of theological dogma a remarkable appreciation of the principle that we have met with in a passage of Baudhāyana,dagger the principle, namely, of the specialisation of functions and of the organic unity of society. Lastly, the above extract evidently implies, and this is what immediately concerns us here, that the Brāhmaṇa and the Kṣatriya are invested with a kind of superior authority over the others by right of birth, or else that of divine ordination. The point last mentioned, namely, that which involves the idea of divine ordination of the two powers, is directly mentioned in a verse which is common to the S̄āntiparvan and the Manusamhitā. It reads, “For when the Lord of creatures (Prajāpati) created cattle, he made them over to the Vaiśya ; to the Brāhmaṇa and to the king he entrusted all created beings.”[^ddagger]