History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c20.121
History of Dharmaśāstra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c20.121
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v2.c20.121.1
It should not be supposed that the brāhmaṇas inserted these eulogies solely for the purpose of increasing their importance and tightening their hold on the other classes. If the other classes had not themselves more or less shared these ideas, no amount of iteration on the part of brāhmaṇas would have given them the influence which they as a matter of fact wielded. Their influence was a growth of centuries and they themselves were as much parts of the huge edifice of the caste system as the other varṇas. Besides the brāhmaṇas had no military force behind them. They could only succeed in influencing the other varṇas by persuasion and their own worth. The brāhmaṇas were the creators and custodians of the vast literature that had grown up, they were the guardians of the culture of ages, they were expected to shoulder the burdens of teaching and preserving the vast literature on such gifts as were voluntarily made. Though many among them did not live up to the high ideals set up for their order, there must have been not a few who made as near an approach to the fulfilment of the ideal as possible. It was the greatness of these latter that led to the glorification of the whole order to which they belonged. Learning and *tapas* are more or less elusive and impalpable, while birth from brāhmaṇa parents was quite an apparent and palpable thing. Therefore that was seized upon by some writers as the principal reason for the respect to be given to brāhmaṇas.
v2.c20.121.2
For centuries human societies have everywhere acquiesced in the government and control exercised by small coteries of the elite, generally the elite of birth, who have guided the destinies of their societies on traditional lines of religious and social order. It must be remembered that the smṛti works also extol the office of the king (which was generally hereditary and is so even now) to the skies. Manu (VII. 4-11) propounds³⁰⁷ the theory that the king has in him the parts of such gods as Indra and that a king is a great deity in human form. The theory of varṇas as conceived by Manu and other smṛtikāras was based upon the idea of the division of labour, on the idea of balancing the rival claims of various sections of the community; it laid greatest emphasis upon the duties of the varṇas rather than upon their rights and privileges. It raised the brāhmaṇa to the highest pinnacle of reverence, but at the same time it placed before him the ideal of not hankering after temporal power, of leading a life of comparative poverty and of making his knowledge available to the other classes for a scanty and precarious return. It made the military caste feel that they were not all-in-all, but had to look up to some other class as superior to themselves. European writers severely condemn brāhmaṇas for their greed, selfishness and constant praises of gifts to themselves.
v2.c20.121.3
But they forget to take account of the circumstances under which the brāhmaṇas were forced to sing the praises of gifts to them. The ideal before brāhmaṇas was to lead a life of comparative poverty; they were forbidden to follow many worldly pursuits and depended on the generosity of their patrons. They did not live in monasteries as Buddhist and Christian monks did nor were they entitled to fixed and fat salaries like the bishops in some Christian countries. They had further to bring up their own families and pupils and had themselves also to make gifts to others. In modern capitalist societies those who have brains and knowledge tend to become financiers and capitalists, all wealth is centred in their hands, they reduce most other men to mere wage-earners who are often hardly better than helots. While finding fault with the brāhmaṇa writers of over two thousand years ago for the eulogies they bestowed upon themselves, one should not forget that even in the 20th century when the pursuit of scientific studies is professed to have reached its zenith, we hear ecstatic and arrogant eulogies of the white man's burden, of the great and glorious achievements of the Nordic race and the greater and more glorious future it is destined to attain (vide the very first sentence in Spengler's 'The Decline of the West', English translation by C. F. Atkinson).
v2.c20.121.4
The brāhmaṇas never arrogated to themselves the authority to depose kings and to hand over vast territories for ever to whomsoever they liked, as Pope Alexander VI by his Bull of 1493 made over the New World to Isabella of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon (vide Dean Inge's 'Christian Ethics' 1930 p. 160 where this astounding Bull is set out).