Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c14.s5: Social Organisations

Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c14.s5

Language: English

Social Organisations

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The Brâhmanic Hindus left their religious life unorganised. On the social side they display some corporate activity. It was in those days physically impossible for any of the four castes, spread all over the country, to set up a central organisation. But the local sections and subsections of the sub-castes into which Hindu society had split up offered scope for organisation. In Brâhmanical theory, the state is constantly urged to keep all castes to their duties. But it is also enjoined to respect the laws and usages of families and castes, as of village communities and corporations. The province of caste usage includes marriage, commensality, rites and ceremonies and often ordinary morality. A breach of the rules may be visited by censure, imposition of penances and, lastly, excommunication. To be an outcast is a dreadful calamity which sends a shudder of horror through a whole family and the entire circle of friends. In most cases, however, provision is made for re-admission into the community. These rules of caste governance which are still in operation go back to great antiquity. Three or four hundred years before the Christian era, Gautama, the earliest of the Dharma Sûtra writers, relies partly on penances and excommunication for deadly sins as well as for what appear trivial offences or no offences at all to modern minds. He counsels a son,—apparently a Brâhmaṇa young man—to cast off a father who may have murdered a king or a Brâhmaṇa scholar, who may have sacrificed for a Śûdra from monetary motives, who may have divulged the Veda to the unauthorised, or who may have dwelt with men of the lowest castes. In another general list of offences in the following chapter, atheism is reckoned among the sins to be punished with excommunication. The excommunication should be performed to the accompaniment of certain solemn rites. Spiritual teachers and kinsmen shall assemble and perform the sinner’s funeral rites beginning with the libation of water.

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Excommunication.

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“3. And (afterwards) they shall overturn his water-vessel (in the following manner):

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“4. A slave or a hired servant shall fetch an impure vessel from a dust heap, fill it (with water taken) from the pot of a female slave and, his face turned towards the south, upset it with his foot, pronouncing the (sinner’s) name and saying: I deprive N. N. of water?

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“5. All (the kinsmen) shall touch him (the slave) passing their sacrificial cords over the right shoulder and under the left arm, and untying the locks on their heads.

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“6. The spiritual Gurus and the relatives by marriage shall look on.

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“7. Having bathed, they (all) shall enter the village.

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“8. He who afterwards unintentionally speaks to the (outcast sinner) shall stand, during one night, recitin the Savitri.

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“9. If he intentionally (converses with the outcast, he must perform the same penance) for three nights.¹

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¹ Gautama, XX, 2–9; XXI, 1. Sacred Books of the East, Vol. II, pp. 278-9.

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It will be observed that to associate with an excommunicated person was to invite excommunication on one’s head. In the next chapter, Gautama is at pains to add that a year’s company of outcasts or instigating others to acts causing loss of caste led to excommunication. The consequences of excommunication were not merely moral but also material and spiritual. An outcast was deprived, after death, of the rewards of his meritorious deeds. He lost the right to follow the lawful occupations of the twice-born—a penalty which could be enforced only by public opinion or government.² No wonder there were those who described this condition as hell.

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² Ibid., XXI, 2–6.

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Not less significant is the ceremony of re-admission or purification by penances. One kinsman shall fill a golden vessel with water from a very holy lake or river, and make the penitent bathe in it.

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Re-admission.

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“11. Then they shall give him that vessel and he, after taking it, shall mutter (the following Mantras): ‘cleansed is the sky, cleansed is the earth, cleansed and auspicious is the middle sphere, I here take that which is brilliant.’

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“12. Let him offer clarified butter, (reciting) these Yajus formulas, the Pâvamânis, the Taratsamandis and the Kûşmândas.

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“13. Let him present gold or cow to a Brâhmaṇa.

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“14. And to his teacher.”³

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³ Gautama, XX, 2–9; XXI, 1. Sacred Books of the East, Vol. II, p. 279.

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There were, however, some offences for which a life-long penance was necessary and from which one could be purified only after death.¹

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¹ Ibid., XX, 16--18.

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Caste Usage. Gautama and the other lawgivers are full of similar descriptions of offences and expiations but each small subsection of a sub-caste tended to develop a usage of its own. It was to be enforced by the public opinion of the group, generally expressed at a meeting for the purpose. In the towns and villages of India one may still see these assemblies at work. They have no permanent organisation, no regular chairman or secretaries, no written rules of procedure within the group, so to say there is a latent force which springs into action to meet a contingency. It works informally but expeditiously.

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Other Organisations. Besides religious, economic and social organisations, there were academic and philanthropic institutions in ancient India. Their working can be studied in foreign travellers, inscriptions and incidental notices in literature but there was no special theory of their administration.

Linked texts (1)

Gautamadharmasūtra — Gautama (dharmasūtrakāra), Sanskrit