The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s5.8

c9.s5.8

Unless the navel be conceded to be superior to the head, and the feet superior to the ear,—simply because the authors have cared to mention these items in that order,—the Brāhmaṇa cannot be superior to the Rājanya and the Vaiśya to the Śūdra. One is not at liberty to have two or three different logics in one and the same *sūkta*. We find that the items have been mentioned in a very haphazard manner. The string of names that we come across here does not constitute a system in any sense. Neither the students of astronomy nor of physics would be inclined to fight over the "value" or the significance to be attached to the place assigned to the natural agencies, the air, the sky, the earth and the four quarters in the *Sūkta*-schedule. No value ought, therefore, to be reasonably attached to the order in which the Brāhmaṇa, the Rājanya etc. have been mentioned in this "award" of the poet Nārāyaṇa as recorded in the *Rig Veda*. The question of the precedence or superiority of some in relation to the others cannot be said to arise in the enumeration, illogical and incoherent as it is.¹⁸