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Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s5: IV. Origins According to Legend: Rivalries Between Priests and Nobles

Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s5

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IV. Origins According to Legend: Rivalries Between Priests and Nobles

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CONCERNING the genesis of the castes the Hindus possess nothing but a few legends which signify very little. They bear a symbolic and superficial stamp. The most widespread—the one with which we are already familiar—is that which derives the Brahmans from the mouth, the Kshatriyas from the arms, the Vaiśyas from the thighs, and the Śūdras from the feet of the demiurge. Even where it is pressed into service, as in Manu, it is obviously an adjunct which disturbs the order of the cosmic theory. This is still clearer in the Rāmāyaṇa, in which, finally, the castes appear to be derived from Manu, wife of Kaśyapa,¹ somewhat as in Iran the three classes are in turn derived either from Yima, the first king, or from Zarathuśtra, the great religious initiator.²

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¹ Muir, *Sanskrit Texts*, I, p. 117.

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² Spiegel, *Eran. Alterth.*, III, p. 554.

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The variants in certain Brāhmaṇas³ are nothing more than clever exercises, little etymological arrangements of no weight or importance. In the majority of the speculations on the origin of human beings castes are left entirely out of account.¹ The trains of reasoning which connect their appearance either with successive ages of the world² or with the natural inclinations of mankind have neither more authority nor more stability than an adventitious fiction which reserves for each caste its own particular heaven.³

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³ *Indische Studien*, X, pp. 7 et seq.

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¹ Cf., for example, Muir, *Sanskrit Texts*, I, pp. 22 et seq

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² Muir, *Sanskrit Texts*, I, p. 149.

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³ Ibid., pp. 86 et seq.

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All these explanations are recent and academic. Like the whole of tradition, they are inspired by the system of four fundamental castes.

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I have spoken in passing of those often violent conflicts which arise here, there, and everywhere between neighbouring castes. They blaze up over some special privilege to which a caste cannot bear to see its right contested. They bear no comparison, either by nature or casual importance, with the class-struggles for domination which must have taken place between priests and nobles in the past.

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There can be no doubt that the delimitation of prerogatives and the balance of privileges between the sacerdotal and noble classes have never from the beginning really possessed the absolute precision ascribed to them by the dogmatic texts. We know how much variability of practice is concealed beneath the strictness of the rules.

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Whatever care the sacerdotal class may have taken to reserve for itself the privilege of ritual acts and sacred studies, this privilege suffered many exceptions, especially in the early period. The chiefs, admitted to receive religious teaching, must, in more than one case and in spite of opposing claims, have set themselves up in their turn as teachers. A number of Vedic songs are attributed to Kshatriyas, even to Vaiśyas.¹ If the hymns themselves so insistently exhort the chiefs to have near their person a professional priest (purohita), this is perhaps because they often dispensed with this duty. In several cases the sons of nobles fulfilled this function.² The sacerdotal literature bears witness to the great learning of certain kings, who outdo even the Brahmans themselves. The books which exhibit the Brahmanic theory in its complete development provide also for the case, certainly exceptional, where a Brahman may take as master a Kshatriya or a Vaiśya.³

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¹ Muir, *Sanskrit Texts*, pp. 265 et seq.

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² Zimmer, op. laud., p. 196.

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³ Āpastamba Dh. S., II, 4, 25.

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Legend has also preserved for us the names of women of Brahmanic or royal race who possessed vast theological learning and oratorical gifts.⁴

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⁴ Indische Studien, X, pp. 118-19; *Sanskrit Texts*, p. 430.

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There is even a case where the Brāhmaṇa, after extolling the knowledge possessed by a king (Janaka) of the Videha, seems by way of conclusion to declare that he had become a Brahman.¹ It is the legend of Viśvāmitra, however, which furnishes the most famous example of a promotion of this kind. The Vedic hymns indicate a long rivalry between Viśvāmitra and Vasiṣṭha; perhaps the favour of King Sudās and the office of private chaplain were at stake. The texts are obscure and their combination doubtful. Be that as it may, the primitive theme in the Epic has become embellished with copious variations; it tells in precise terms of a violent struggle which was waged between the two personages as to which of them should possess the miraculous cow, Surabhi, which grants all prayers. Extraordinary austerities are involved, and at the end Viśvāmitra, who belonged by origin to the royal line of Kuśikas, became a Brahman.

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¹ Śatap. Brāhm., cited by Muir, Sanskrit Texts, I, pp. 426-9.

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It is an odd delusion to profess to use such tales as documents bearing on the history of caste. All that they can show is that in spite of the claims of the Brahmanic class a monopoly of religious life and activity has never really been exclusively theirs. The outstanding fact is that at the period when they took definite form Brahmanic ambition had received its final consecration in the system which is the law. To admit that a Kshatriya might not touch sacred things except by becoming a Brahman was, in the eyes of Brahmans, another way of paying homage to their privilege. A rare exception, very dearly bought, confirmed the rule. It is impossible to see in it a proof that changes of caste have been officially recognized, still less that the legend is older than the caste-system. The utmost we may infer from it is that the rule entrusting the religious ministry solely to the Brahmanic castes, being foreign to the archaic constitution of the rites, which did not assume a privileged priesthood, suffered in remote antiquity still more exceptions than in later times which were further removed from the primitive family-priesthood.

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It may be tempting, but it is unquestionably dangerous, to coin history from legend. The process demands very delicate handling.

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The stories either from the Epic or from the Purāṇas, recalling the harsh acts of certain kings towards the Brahmans and the punishments meted out to them in consequence, have been laboriously collected.¹ We hear of Vena forbidding the priests to make sacrifices; of Purūravas depriving them of their jewels; of Nahusha causing his chariot to be drawn by a thousand Brahmans, and other tales. Scholars have seen in them the traces of the struggle for predominance between Brahmans and nobles. We may, without offence, question whether they all really do reflect memories of this kind.

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¹ Muir, *Sanskrit Texts*, I, pp. 226 et seq.; Lassen, *Ind. Alterth.*, I, pp. 705 et seq.

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The most suggestive is without doubt the story of Paraśu-Rāma. The son of Jamadagni, he belonged to the line of the Bhārgavas. One day King Arjuna, who had been received into the hermitage of Jamadagni, treacherously repaid this hospitality by stealing the calf of the cow that the holy man was about to sacrifice. Quick to avenge the paternal wrong, our hero, holy but truculent, twenty-one times devastated the Kshatriya race. Such destruction did he wreak that, according to certain versions of the legend, all the warriors disappeared, and no other course lay open to the Brahmans, if they were to restore to the earth its tutelary masters and the indispensable equilibrium to the social organization, but to unite with the widows of the Kshatriyas to found together a new caste of nobles. What is really the origin of this story? Does it reflect a vast class-struggle between nobles and priests? This conclusion appears to me, I admit, less obvious than to other critics; but it is not worth while to argue the point. The story undoubtedly betrays exceedingly strained relations between the two classes, at least in certain places and at certain times.

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A domination such as the Brahmans achieved, which they were obliged to strengthen with each century, is not set up unquestioned. The care that their books take, at all times, from the Vedic hymns onwards, to establish the dogma of their superiority in the strongest and most extravagant terms, shows clearly the persevering labour that has been necessary to ensure its success. It has been correctly pointed out ¹ that a whole series of hymns of the Atharvaveda seems to reflect a period, or at least numerous examples, of conflicts between Brahmans and Kshatriyas. It is clear, moreover, that from time immemorial the power which they possessed as representatives *par excellence* of the noble class secured for the kings a position which the outward respect and superstitious docility accorded to the priests could not shake.

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¹ Zimmer, pp. 197 et seq.

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The *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* ² states that ‘ there is nothing above the royal power ’ (*Kshatra*); it hastens to explain that, being produced by the creative energy of the ‘ religious power ’ (*Brahma*), it must respect this as its own source; the admission is none the less perfectly clear. In Buddhism social superiority is readily attributed to the military class.³ It is because of this superiority, we are assured, that Śākyamuni was born of a royal family. Coming from a Buddhist source, the testimony is less suspect than we might be inclined to imagine. The *Dhammapada*, a Buddhist book, and one of the oldest and most authentic, extols the Brahman in a series of eloquent strophes, taking him over and over again as personifying the very ideal of human perfection. At the time of the Brāhmaṇa, as in the time of Buddhism, the caste-system reigned supreme.

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² XIV, 4, 2, 23.

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³ Cf., for example, the verse *Mājjh. Nikāya*, ed. Trenckner, I, p. 358.

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Neither the traces of conflicts between nobles and Brahmans, nor certain exceptional transfers (supposing them authentic) from one group to another, prove that the caste was in a rudimentary state at the period to which the testimony dates back. Class-struggles and conflicting influences belong to all epochs, and are grafted on the most diverse of social constitutions. These incidents in no way exclude, any more than they inherently imply, the contemporaneous existence of the caste.

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The first documentary evidence that we possess of the existence of the caste is the appearance of the system which professed to regulate it. It manifests itself in the most remote period of sacerdotal literature, and even in the most recent strata of the Vedic hymns.

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Naturally, the system is later than the facts which it professes to codify and revise. When it appears, it is because the caste is already the recognized social order; but for how long has it been so? This is what we are unable to ascertain exactly. Not only did the caste exist, but everything indicates that it existed in a condition fundamentally identical with that of to-day.

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The texts of themselves would no doubt be inadequate to demonstrate this, but in order to understand them clearly it is enough to throw upon them what, as I have said, they so sorely need—the light derived from our experience of the present.

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Theory has concealed and falsified reality in them. Correlating, by a more or less artificial compromise, actual facts with the tradition of a vanished past, it identifies caste-distinctions with the old distinctions of class, and superimposes the one upon the other, giving to those classes that it represents as castes a borrowed name which at first denotes a racial division. If it allows some hint of the real complexities and confusion to peep through all this symmetrical and systematic construction, it is relegated to the background, and concealed, as in the theory of mixed castes, under an artificial regularity.

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Literature, then, is insufficient for our purpose. It has preserved neither sound historical sequence nor conclusive traces of the past. If I have been obliged to demonstrate this at some length, the attentive student will perhaps find compensation in discovering here an instructive example of the obscurity peculiar to Hindu tradition, the difficulties which it presents to our curiosity, and the caution which its use demands.

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We have now no other resource than to broach the question of origins directly.

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the *Goths*, the *Vandals*, the *Suevi*, the *Burgundians*, the *Alani*, the *Huns*, the *Franks*, the *Saxons*, the *Thuringians*, the *Rugians*, and the *Heruli*. The names of these tribes are familiar to the reader, but their origin, their migrations, and their settlements are involved in the deepest obscurity. The most probable opinion is that they were all of German or Scythian extraction, and that they had been driven from their native seats by the pressure of the Huns, a formidable nation of Tartars, who had crossed the Volga and the Tanais, and were advancing with rapid strides towards the frontiers of the Roman empire.

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The first of these nations that crossed the Danube was the *Goths*. They were divided into two great branches, the *Visigoths* or Western Goths, and the *Ostrogoths* or Eastern Goths. The Visigoths, under the conduct of Fritigern, implored the protection of the emperor Valens, and were permitted to settle in the province of Thrace. But the perfidy of the Roman governors, and the insolence of the Roman soldiers, soon provoked them to rebellion. They defeated the imperial armies, and Valens himself perished in the battle of Hadrianople.

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The death of Valens was followed by the accession of Theodosius, who, by his wisdom and valour, restored the discipline of the Roman legions, and compelled the Goths to accept a peace, which was rather a truce than a permanent settlement. The Goths, however, remained in the heart of the empire, and their presence was a constant source of danger and alarm. They were no longer the rude barbarians who had first crossed the Danube; they had learned the arts of war and the policy of the Romans, and they were ready to take advantage of any opportunity to assert their independence.

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The reign of Theodosius was the last period of the glory of the Roman empire. After his death, the empire was divided between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius. Arcadius reigned in the East, and Honorius in the West. The division was fatal to the interests of the state. The two brothers were weak and indolent, and they were governed by their ministers and favourites. The Goths, under the command of Alaric, took advantage of the weakness of the government, and invaded Italy. They besieged and took Rome, and the eternal city, which had for so many centuries been the mistress of the world, was plundered by the barbarians.

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The fall of Rome was a shock to the whole civilized world. It was the end of an era, and the beginning of a new and darker age. The Goths, after the death of Alaric, retired from Italy, and settled in Gaul and Spain, where they founded kingdoms which were destined to last for several centuries. The Vandals, under the command of Genseric, crossed into Africa, and established a powerful kingdom, which for a time threatened the security of the Mediterranean. The Franks, under the command of Clovis, conquered Gaul, and laid the foundations of the French monarchy. The Saxons, under the command of Hengist and Horsa, invaded Britain, and established the kingdoms of the Heptarchy.

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