Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c14.5

c14.5

**Ascendancy of Brahminism.** It is to be recalled that "the Mauryan empire", as F. W. Thomas puts it [*Cambridge History*, I. 484], "began with a Brāhman, as well as a national reaction," and, under Kauṭilya's leadership, regulated society by the rules of *Varṇāśramadharma*, as explained above. The apex of this society was the Brāhmaṇa who, as *Purohita*, and the king's preceptor, influenced politics and administration to a very large extent, and legislation as a member of the *Parishad*. His social position of pre-eminence was recognised by laws exempting him from taxation and confiscation, from corporal punishment and the death penalty, branding and banishment being in his case the *ultima ratio* [IV. 8]. But all this social honour was due to the fact that he hardly belonged to the society as such: he was in the world but not of it. "His true office was study and teaching, and his proper abode was the forest hermitage where he maintained the sacred fires and lived for another world" [*Cambridge History*,] [*Ib.*].