History of India/Volume 1/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
CASTE IN THE BRAHMANIC AND EPIC AGE
FOUR or five centuries of peaceful residence in a genial climate in the fertile basin of the Ganges and the Jumna enabled the Hindus to found civilized kingdoms, to cultivate philosophy, science, and arts, and to develop their religious and social institutions; but it was under the same gentle but enervating influences that they divided themselves into those separate social classes known as "castes."
We have seen that about the close of the Vedic Period the priests had already formed themselves into a separate profession, and sons stepped forward to take up the duties of their fathers. When religious rites became more elaborate in the Brahmanic and Epic Period, when with the founding of new kingdoms along the fertile Doab kings prided themselves on the performance of vast sacrifices with endless rites and observances, it is easy to understand that the priests who alone could undertake such complicated rites rose in the estimation of the people, until they were naturally regarded as aloof from the ordinary people, as a distinct and superior race—as a caste. They devoted The Monkey Temple at Benares
This temple, erected in honour of the dread goddess Durga by the Queen of Natre in the eighteenth century, derives its name from the myriads of monkeys which throng it and live on the offerings of food given them by those who visit the shrine.
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The very same causes led to the rise of a royal caste. Royalty had not assumed a very high dignity among the Panjab Hindus. Warlike chiefs led clans from conquests to conquests, and the greatest of them were regarded rather as leaders of men and protectors of clans than as mighty kings. Far different was the state of things with the Hindus along the Ganges. Probably in the early days of the martial Kurus and Panchalas caste distinctions had not yet been fully matured. But later, the kings of the peaceful Kosalas and Videhas, surrounded by all the pomp and circumstance of royalty, were looked upon by the humble and lowly people as more than human.
Although the simple origin of caste was obscured in later Hindu literature by strange myths and legends, later Hindu writers never completely lost sight of the fact that it was originally only a distinction based on professions, and this account of its genesis often occurs in the same Puranic works which elsewhere delight in marvellous legends concerning its beginnings.
In the Vayu Purana we are told that in the first, or Krita, Age there were no castes, and that subsequently Brahma established divisions among men according to their works. "Those who were suited for command and prone to deeds of violence, he appointed to be Kshatriyas, from their protecting others. Those disinterested men who attended upon them, spoke the truth, and declared the Veda aright, were Brahmans. Those of them who formerly were feeble, engaged in the work of husbandmen, tillers of the earth, and industrious, were Vaisyas, cultivators and providers of subsistence. Those who were cleansers and ran about on service, and had little vigour or strength, were called Sudras." Accounts more or less similar to this occur in the other Puranas as well.
The Ramayana in its present shape is, as we have seen before, the work of later ages. In its closing sections we are told that in the Krita Age Brahmans alone practised austerities; that in the Treta Age Kshatriyas were born, and then was established the modern system of four castes. Reduced from mythical to historical language, this implies that in the Vedic Age the Hindu Aryans were a united body and practised Hindu rites, but in the Epic Age priests and kings separated themselves as distinct castes, and the people also formed themselves into the lower orders, the Vaisyas and the Sudras.
The Mahabharata also is, in its present shape, a work of later ages, yet there we read that "red-limbed twice-born men who were fond of sensual pleasure, fiery, irascible, daring, and forgetful of their sacrificial duties, fell into the caste of Kshatriyas. Yellow twice-born men, who derived their livelihood from cows and agriculture, and did not practise religious performances, fell into the caste of Vaisyas. Black twice-born men who were impure and addicted to violence and lying, and were covetous and subsisted by all kinds of works, fell into the caste of Sudras. Being thus separated by these their works, the twice-born men became of different castes."
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SHOP OF A MERCHANT OF THE VAISYA CASTE.
Throughout the Epic Period, and throughout the succeeding periods almost to the time of the Mohammedan conquest, the great body of the Aryan people were Vaisyas, although they followed numerous professions. Along with the Brahmans and the Kshatriyas, they formed the Aryan nation, and were entitled to all the rights and privileges and the literary and religious heritages of the nation; The conquered aborigines, who formed the Sudra caste, were alone debarred from the heritage of the Aryans.
This is the cardinal distinction between the ancient caste-system and the caste-system of the present age. Caste reserved some privileges for priests, and some privileges for warriors, in ancient times; but never divided and disunited the Aryan people. Priests and warriors and citizens, though following their hereditary professions from generation to generation, felt that they were one nation and one race, received the same religious instructions, attended the same schools of learning, possessed the same literature and traditions, ate and drank together, intermarried and intermixed in all respects, and were proud to call themselves the Aryan race.
There are numerous passages in the Brahmana literature which show that the distinctions between the castes were by no means so rigid in the early times as at a later period. A remarkable passage, for instance, occurs in the Aitareya Brahmana. When a Kshatriya eats at a sacrifice the portion assigned for Brahmans, his progeny has the characteristics of a Brahman, "ready to take gifts, thirsty after drinking Soma, hungry of eating food, and ready to roam about everywhere according to pleasure." And "in the second or third generation he is capable of entering completely into Brahmanship." When he eats the share of Vaisyas, his "offspring will be born with the characteristic of Vaisyas, paying taxes to another king"; "and in the second or third degree they are capable of entering the caste of Vaisyas." When he takes the share of Sudras, his progeny "will have the characteristics of Sudras; they are to serve the three higher castes, to be expelled and beaten according to the pleasure of their masters." And "in the second or third degree, he is capable of entering the condition of Sudras."
In the same Brahmana we are told of Kavasha, the son of Ilusha, whom the other Rishis expelled from a sacrificial session, saying, "How should the son of a slave girl, a gamester, who is no Brahman, remain among us and become initiated!" But Kavasha knew the gods and all the gods knew him, and he was admitted as a Rishi. Similarly, in the beautiful legend of Satyakama Jabala in the Chhandogya Upanishad, is exemplified the fact that truth and learning opened out in those days a path to the highest honour and to the highest caste. The legend is so beautiful in its simplicity and its poetry, that we feel no hesitation in quoting a portion of it:—
"Satyakama, the son of Jabala, addressed his mother and said: 'I wish to become a Brahmachari (religious student), mother. Of what family am I?'
"She said to him: 'I do not know, my child, of what family thou art. In my youth, when I had to move about much as a servant, I conceived thee. I do not know of what family thou art. I am Jabala by name, thou art Satyakama; say that thou art Satyakama Jabala.'
"He, going to Gautama Haridrumata, said to him: 'I wish to become a Brahmachari with you, sir. May I come to you, sir?
"He said to him: 'Of what family are you, my friend? He replied: 'I do not know, sir, of what family I am. I asked my mother, and she answered, "In my youth, when I had to move about much as a
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BRAHMAN TYPES.
servant, I conceived thee. I do not know of what family thou art. 'I am Jabala by name, thou art Satyakama." I am therefore Satyakama Jabala, sir.'
"He said to him: 'No one but a true Brahman would thus speak out. Go and fetch fuel, friend; I shall initiate you. You have not swerved from the truth.'"
And this truth-loving young man was initiated, and, according to the custom of the times, went out to tend his teacher's cattle. In time he learnt the great truths which nature, and even the brute creation, teach those whose minds are open to instruction. He gained wisdom even from the herd that he was tending, from the fire that he had lighted, and from a flamingo and a diver-bird which flew near him, when in the evening he had penned his cows and laid wood on the evening fire, and sat behind it. Then the young student came back to his teacher, and his teacher said: "Friend, you shine like one who knows Brahma: who then has taught you?" "Not men," was the young student's reply. And the truth which the young student had learnt, though clothed in the fanciful style of the period, was that the four quarters of heaven, and the earth, the sky, the ocean, the sun, the moon, the lightning, and the fire, and the organs and minds of living beings were none other than Brahma, or God.
This legend shows that the rules of caste had not yet become rigid when such legends were composed. We find in the legend that the son of a servant girl, who did not know his own father, became a religious student simply through his love of truth, learnt the lessons which nature and the learned men of the time could teach him, and subsequently became classed among the wisest religious teachers of the time. Surely the caste of that ancient time must have been freedom itself compared to the system of later times, when the Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra were doomed throughout their lives never to rise above the station in which they had been born, though they might sink to the lowest Pariahs if they disobeyed the laws of caste.