History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c96.s1.61

v7.c96.s1.61

Except in a few cases the brāhmaṇas were never rulers. It was the kṣatriyas and śūdras that were rulers. Therefore, a generalisation was made that birth in a particular group or family was a more or less sure indication of the possession of certain qualities generally associated with the members of that group or family. The brāhmaṇas were teachers with no salary, officiated as priests when called and were given fees, but there was no assurance of a continuous and certain payment. They had no church organization²⁶²² (such as Archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons in the Anglican church) and monasteries for monks among Buddhists and in the Christian Church. The brāhmaṇas were not monks but householders who had to maintain a family and bring up children and to make their sons learned and of high moral and spiritual worth. There is no example in the whole world of a small minority of the population of a country, that had no military strength behind it, being revered for at least thirty centuries without any serious challenge not only by the common people but by nobles and kings. What was the basis of the reverence shown to brāhmaṇas as a class for at least three thousand years? They were believed to be religious, moral and spiritual leaders and the possessors and representatives of an idealistic culture ('ideational' in the language of Prof. Sorokin). The secret of the power of and regard for brāhmaṇas had been the fact that as a class they performed well three of their appointed tasks of study, teaching and comparative renunciation (in spite of the failings of some individual brāhmaṇas). The brāhmaṇas had no army to support them and they could not, by devoting themselves to physical sciences, find new sources of income or well-being for themselves or for the whole community.