Caste and Race in India c7.140

c7.140

We conclude from our discussion that the Brahmin was, during the period, very strongly entrenched and that he had sufficiently subdued the Kshatriya. Henceforth the Kshatriya as a serious competitor of the Brahmin vanishes from the field. Nevertheless he has been mortified. And it is our contention, that having succumbed in the age-long struggle within the fold, he breaks away and raises the banner of revolt. Both Jainism and Buddhism appear to us to be movements started by Kshatriyas of exceptional ability preaching a new philosophy which were utilized by their immediate followers for asserting the social superiority of the Kshatriyas over the Brahmins. Whatever be the express statements about caste, in the original preachings of Mahāvīra and Buddha, a close student of the early literature of these religious movements will feel convinced that the chief social aim of the early writers was the assertion of the pre-eminence of the Kshatriyas. It is a well-known fact that no Jain Tirthamkara was ever born in any but a Kshatriya family.¹ In Buddhist literature there are several examples where the enumeration of the four castes is headed by the Kshatriya, the Brahmin coming next. Many a time the Kshatriyas aggressively put forward claims for prior recognition over the Brahmins.² To Buddha himself is ascribed the saying that along with the Kshatriyas the Brahmins take precedence over the other castes in the matter of marks of respect to be shown to one's social superiors.³ A legend tells us that Buddha in one of his previous incarnations, wavered as to whether he should be reborn as a Brahmin or a Kshatriya and decided in favour of the latter alternative as the Kshatriya class was then regarded as higher than the Brahmin. In one of Buddha's discourses there is a dialogue between Buddha and Ambattha, a Brahmin student, in which the latter is represented as having acknowledged the fact that a Kshatriya's son by a Brahmin wife would be recognized as a Brahmin by the Brahmins but not by the Kshatriyas, because the latter accorded equal status only to the full-blooded Kshatriyas.⁴