History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c96.s1.58
History of Dharmaśāstra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c96.s1.58
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A very high ideal was placed before brāhmaṇas (vide above pp 936-938) They were to study the Veda and its subsidiary lores as a duty (to be discharged), were to perform sacrifices and make gifts also and their proper means of livelihood were only three viz. teaching the Veda and Śāstras, officiating as priests in sacrifices and receiving religious and other gifts. How arduous learning the Veda was will be clear when it is remembered that a brāhmaṇa who was to be regarded as a very learned one had to memorize one Veda at least Supposing he was a student of the Ṛgveda he had to commit to memory the ten thousand and odd verses of the Ṛgveda, also its *pada-pāṭha*, its krama-pāṭha, the Brāhmaṇa text (generally the Aitareya), the six Vedāṅgas (auxiliary works) viz the Kalpasūtra (of Āśvalāyana generally), Vyākaraṇa (the Grammar of Pāṇini in about four thousand *sūtras*), the Nirukta (in at least 12 chapters), metrics, Śikṣā (Phonetics) and Jyotiṣa. The first three of these six Vedāṅgas are rather longish treatises and abstruse. These extensive texts were generally committed to memory without understanding the meaning and so entailed very great strain on the mind and memory. There were thousands of such brāhmaṇas in India up to the beginning of this century, and even now there are still hundreds of such men. They were to teach the Veda without demanding any fee (demanding a fee to teach Veda was and is regarded as sinful even to this day).
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They were allowed to receive a fee if the pupil or somebody on his behalf paid something at the end of studenthood. Not only did they transmit the Veda free, but there were in the present author's youth in Konkana and Mahārāṣṭra many Vaidik brāhmaṇas who gave free board and lodging to several pupils (or arranged to feed them by turns at the houses of brāhmaṇa families in the village or town). All this has now almost stopped owing to rationing during the world wars and present high prices. So teaching hardly brought any regular and substantial amount of money (vide H. of Dh. Vol. II. pp. 108-110). As regards officiating as priests, that was a precarious and fitful source of income. Besides, in Ṛg. times at least, the scion of a royal family could be a *purohita* i. e. a priest (vide H. of Dh. Vol. II. p. 109). It should be remembered that all brāhmaṇas were not priests, they could be so if they chose and if they were learned Further, many learned brāhmaṇas refuse even now to act as priests in śrāddhas for *pitṛs* (at least for three years after the man's death). Pāṇini (V. 2. 71) provides for the formation of the word 'Brāhmaṇaka' meaning a province or country where 'brāhmaṇas followed the profession of arms' and Kautilya (IX. 2) also refers to armies of brāhmaṇās, kṣatriyas &c. The third source specially permitted to brāhmaṇas was the privilege of receiving religious gifts from a worthy or unblemished person (vide H. of Dh. Vol. II pp 110-11).
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Brāhmaṇas could follow other occupations in distress, but even then there were great restrictions imposed on them by śāstras even when they took to other means of livelihood (vide H. of Dh. Vol II pp 118-132).²⁶²⁰ The ideal set before brāhmaṇas was one of poverty, of plain living and high thinking, of forsaking a very active pursuit of wealth, of insisting on the necessity and high value to themselves and the Aryan society of studying, preserving, propagating and augmenting the ancient literature and culture. Kings, rich persons and even ordinary men made gifts of lands and houses to learned brāhmaṇas (which were deemed the most meritorious gifts).²⁶²¹ The present author saw in his boyhood very learned Vaidika brāhmaṇas themselves ploughing their own lands, while repeating inaudibly the Veda (i e revising it, as otherwise it might slip from their memory) and knew a middle class Vaidika brāhmaṇa family that for seven generations had taught Veda to a number of pupils and provided them with free board and lodging; (out of these seven the present author personally knew three generations, the last of whom stopped a few years ago the Vaidika school owing to present high prices of food, decrease in gifts due to the increasing poverty of the people round about and their unconcern for Vedic studies). Even in the times of the early Upaniṣads, the brāhmaṇa's first duty was to learn and teach the Veda and to take all knowledge for his province.
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Ajātaśatru, king of Kāśi, exclaimed, when the brāhmaṇa Bālāki Gārgya approached him for knowledge of *brahman*, 'this is against the natural usual course that a brāhmaṇa should approach a kṣatriya to learn about *brahman*' (Br. Up. II 1. 15). That indicates that many brāhmaṇas must have endeavoured to act up to the old ideal of learning in olden times They became the custodians of the vast literature that had accumulated and was growing every day and were expected to preserve that literature and propagate it Though every brāhmaṇa could not have lived up to the high ideals set up for brāhmaṇas, a very large number must have made as near an approach to the ideal as possible It was the greatness of these latter that led to the glorification of the whole class. In most communities there is a group of the *élite*, which represents the ideals of the whole community, its essential tendencies and acts up to the ideals Learning, great moral and spiritual attainments among individuals are rather elusive and impalpable, while birth in a certain family is a very obvious thing. Most people in ancient and medieval times followed the occupation of their forefathers. The kingly office was highly eulogised by Manu (VIII. 4-8), who propounded the theory that the king represented in his person eight deities (Indra, Agni, Varuṇa, the Sun, the Moon, Kubera, Yama and Vāyu) and that the king was a great divinity in human form. The office of the king also was hereditary.