History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c20.121.3

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).