The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s16.t2.1

c7.s16.t2.1

Our attention is invited by the chronology of the Indian state-systems to another set of “geopolitical” forces. We are led to witness the incessant dynastic expansions, contractions and dissolutions, the ups and downs in the fortunes of families as well as the constant activities of soldiers and generals on the go. During the five thousand years or so exhibited here the Indian peoples seemed all the time to carry out in life the *Aitareya-Brāhmaṇa* (VII. 15) ideal of being ever on the move, “*charaiveti*,” “*charaiveti*” (go on, march on etc.) and to function, so to say, as the living embodiments of “social mobility,” both horizontal and vertical.⁴⁹ All these movements from region to region and family to family could not but set in motion strong demographic convection-currents, leading very often to metabolistic re-arrangements in or transformations of social stratification, —the fall of the high and the elevation of the low.