The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s5.2

c2.s5.2

was neither original nor universal. Our earliest literature is indeed religious, though with but little mysticism. But the religious element did not penetrate deeply into unpriestly classes. One is too apt to dispose of the general Hindu as Max Müller does with the words: ‘To the Greek, existence is full of life and reality; to the Hindu, it is a dream and a delusion.’ (Ancient Sanskrit Lit., p. 18.) If we mean by the Hindu the Hindu philosopher and priest, this is true; but if we apply it to the Hindu at large, it is as misleading as to interpret the spirit of our earlier Europe by the writings of a Thomas à Kempis or a Molinos. The priest certainly came to believe in life as an illusion, and his doctrine has had its great and bad effect upon the Epic poetry; but if we study the coarse, sensual, brutal, strife-loving, blood-hungry Hindu warrior; if we revert to the Vedic ancestor of this ferocious creature, and see what joy in life as life is portrayed in battle-hymn and cattle-hymn, we shall be ready to admit, I think, that through the whole history of the Hindu, from the early Vedic until the pseudo-Epic period, there reigned the feeling, in the larger class of the native inhabitants, that existence is full of life and reality. I would not cavil at Müller’s distinction, because it is plain he means that in general aspect such a difference is perceptible. But this is a difference that would fall to pieces, were we to eliminate the literary class, from whose works we form such a judgment. The Hindu soldier’s view of existence must be got mainly by inference, for the priest has done his best to inspire the knight with the thoughts of the priest; but if we study even priestly delineations of military life, we shall see that philosophy and even religion lay far from the soldier’s heart. His life was bent on the material things of this world, as was the farmer’s. He was no dreamer, till the priest retouched his portrait.