The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s5.26

c2.s5.26

∗ xi. 2. 20; 9. 21 ff.; 26. 4 ff.; xv. 31. 4; ix. 31. 24. These passages are easily multiplied. I select but a few of epigrammatic or special moral interest: ‘We know not whether death comes by day or by night; but this we know—that nothing immortal lies in peace’ (ii. 17. 2). ‘The palace of Indra is for them that seek their death in battle’ (ii. 12. 21). ‘For war was the warrior born, victor or vanquished he goes to Indra’s heaven’ (v. 135. 13). ‘A knight’s rule is “the weapon forever;” he should not seek to be a priest; for Indra was a warrior, and slew his sinful kin’ (xii. 22. 5 ff : although in the same book Vasistha has to exhort Indra to ‘make up his mind like an Aryan and slay his foes,’ ib. 282. 24). ‘A pious priest and a warrior dying face to the foe both (attain the same end, and) split the disk of the sun’ (v. 33. 61). ‘Face to the foe—who dies thus, endless his heaven’ (iii. 54. 18). ‘Do not grieve, my friends,’ says even the sinful Duryodhana, ‘for if the Vedas be any rule to you, I have conquered the world to come, in that I have not swerved from knightly law’ (ix. 65. 28 ff. : cf. iii. 52. 25, yadi vedāḥ pramāṇāḥ) So it is said (xi. 26. 12 ff.): ‘They that die slaughtered (by chance) go to worlds of gods and kings; they that die with the thought “I will die” join the angels; they that hold out against all odds, these go to the home of Brahma; while even those that have begged for mercy, if they still die with their faces to the foe, go to the guhyaka world; moreover, those that die anyhow on the field of battle, even if killed by accident (not slaughtered by the sword), go to the Kurus of the North after death’ (12: hutāni śarīrāṇi B., hatāni C. 767 : cf. xii. 98).