Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s5.27

c7.s5.27

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.