The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c21.116

c21.116

draws its darkest stain. In spite of its anxiety to promote morality and righteousness, it was alien to all ideas of democracy, of equality or equal opportunity. The influence of caste on administration is clear from authentic records. It is worth while inquiring how far the state in its turn influenced the development of caste. Buddhist and Jaina kings would naturally reduce its political significance, though nothing could obliterate it. Foreign or mixed tribes and clans which possessed themselves of political authority got installed as Kṣatriyas and thus affected the old order. Some rulers claim in their inscriptions that they actually enforced the rules of caste.¹ If so, such action would promote the tendency of the community to split into innumerable sub-castes. The size of a principality, whether that of a suzerain or a feudatory, was usually small. A ruling of the state on a matter of caste would operate over a restricted area and thus differentiate one group of a widespread caste from all others. In course of time they would be permanently disunited. Government servants of various grades would come to form classes of their own; classes which, after the Hindu fashion, would develop into castes. Kâyasthas, already referred to, furnish an example. More direct means might sometimes be employed. Sir William Hunter has recorded the tradition that certain rulers of Orissâ, finding themselves in need of more Brâhmaṇas than existed in their dominions, promoted whole groups to Brâhmaṇahood. As the old Brâhmaṇas refused to admit the new ones to commensality and intermarriage, the latter formed themselves into new castes. The Jaina tradition recorded in the Âdi Purâṇa that King Bharata, son of the first Tirthakara Ṛiṣabha, created Jaina Brâhmaṇas out of Kṣatriyas, Vaiśyas and Śûdras is suggestive. The Râjas of Chambâ are said to have bestowed on some people the right to wear the sacred thread in return for gifts and services. Alberûni has preserved a tradition that "the kings of antiquity who were industriously devoted to the duties of their office, spent most of their care on the divisions of their subjects into different classes and orders, which they tried to preserve from inter-mixture and disorder. They did not allow anybody to transgress the limits of his class, and even punished those who would not be content with their class."¹ The statement cannot be taken at its face value but it does seem to indicate that governmental action had something to do with the development and maintenance of the system of castes and sub-castes. For later times Tod reports the tradition of a Râjpût prince who regulated the dress of all even to the tie of a turban and who would thus accentuate the outward distinctions of caste.