Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v2.c4.s7.265

v2.c4.s7.265

⁶⁷ Cf. Hopkins, India, Old and New, 222. The point is much the same as that at issue between the different schools of opinion as to early English history. Did the Āryans in India occupy the land as a people, driving out or exterminating or enslaving the Dāsas, and themselves carrying on the occupations of a people, or did they merely form a small aristocracy of superior military force, and were the Kṣatriyas the true Āryans? The evidence of the Rigveda is really fatal to the latter alternative hypothesis. (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, i. 2, 23). The Kāṭhaka Saṃhitā, xxviii. 5, says the Kṣatra is over the Brahman, but this is not a usual view. Cf. xxvii. 4. A Brāhmaṇa can get along without a Kṣatriya, but not vice versa (Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, iv. 1, 4, 6), and a Rājanya with a Brāhmaṇa surpasses all other Rājanyas (Taittirīya Saṃhitā, v. 1, 10, 3; Kāṭhaka Saṃhitā, xix. 10; xxvii. 4, etc.).