Introduction from NWBCW South Asia
Why the Early Caste System Matters for NWBCW South Asia:
The genesis of caste is a critical lens for analyzing the deep-rooted structures of inequality, labor, and social hierarchy that shape our present. D.D. Kosambi’s work provides a materialist framework, demonstrating that caste emerged from major socioeconomic shifts. Its foundations were laid during the transition to settled agriculture, the large-scale clearing of the Gangetic plains, and the consequent need to manage land, resources, and labor. In this context, Brahmanic ideology evolved into a tool for legitimizing a new social order, encoding class divisions into a ritual hierarchy. This system proved dynamic, constantly reshaped by material conditions and the power dynamics of assimilating conquered communities. Grasping this history seeing caste as a human-made institution, not a sacred or static one is essential for our work today. To effectively dismantle caste, we must first understand the historical processes that built it. Its origins in history mean its future is in our hands.
Introduction from the Author
It is not my intention to describe here the Indian caste system as it exists today, for the reader has access to all the documents from which such a treatment would have to be condensed. Modern caste combines loosely several features of tribal and guild organization incorporated into theoretically rigid endogamic groups.
This contemporary division into an almost innumerable set of castes does not, however, agree with the oldest theoretical division into just four:
The priest Brāhmana,
The warrior-ruler Kṣatriya,
The trader-householder Vaiśya, and
The worker Śūdra.
An attempt has been made to identify the older varna (colour) division with classes and the modern but coexistent jati scheme with tribal units. But this suffers from omission of the craftsmen’s guilds, and from a static conception of caste — which is not surprising as caste in itself is an attempt at the negation of history.
On the other hand, it has been denied categorically that the older four-caste system ever existed at any time or place, though so many Indian sources of unquestionable age and authenticity refer to it as a well-known contemporary institution.
2. Misinterpretations of Caste Origins
One book on caste and race in India states:
> “Whatever might have been the Buddha’s own views and practice, it is indubitable that his immediate followers believed in the time-honoured institutions of caste, and being most probably Kṣatriyas themselves, utilized the opportunity offered by Buddha’s revolt, to establish Kṣatriya pre-eminence among the four castes. The complete discomfiture of the Kṣatriyas within the Brahmanic fold had made this course inevitable. Measuring their strength with the Brahmins and failing in the contest, they naturally turned their attention to the masses.”
The statements in this extract, when they convey any meaning at all, are demonstrably wrong.
Buddha’s views are quite well-attested by the earliest texts of the Pāli canon, which the author ignores entirely. Buddha’s “revolt” was against Brahmanic sacrifices, not against the caste system nor for Kṣatriya pre-eminence, which was traditional and acknowledged except in the functions of a priest.
As the Brahmanic fold, strictly speaking, contains only Brahmins, “the complete discomfiture of the Kṣatriyas within it” is meaningless.
Buddha’s immediate followers are all known by name and origin, so that they cannot be made over into Kṣatriyas even by invoking the theory of probabilities.
For example:
Koṇḍañña and the other four who were the first converts were all Brāhmaṇas,
the two principal apostles of the new faith, Sāriputta and Moggallāna, were Brāhmaṇas,
Upāli, founder of the monastic rule (Vinaya), was a barber,
from the lowest castes were recruited Sopāka (= dog-eater) and the scavenger Sunīta, who both reached the final stage of freedom from karma,
the early lay disciples of both sexes were almost all Vaiśyas.
The final sentence of the quotation above is about as accurate as:
> “The Roman patricians, measuring their strength against the Jews and failing in the attempt, naturally turned their attention to the masses.”
The quotation, nevertheless, has great interest as a typical Brahmanic document — in its disregard of sources and facts, in its sweeping but puerile conclusions, and because it is used as a textbook on the subject. Nothing better could have been expected from a study which takes Brahmanic scriptures exclusively and at their face value, without critical attention to age, origin, and context.
3. Method and Sources
In attempting to trace briefly the main features of the earlier caste system down to the age of the Buddha (fifth century BC), we shall have to keep in mind the Brahmanic origin of most Sanskrit texts, and the Brahmanic transmission of all of them.
As far as accurate historical evidence is concerned, most of these are mere verbiage; an occasional reference is all we have to piece out Indian history. The confusion is aggravated by fantastically ignorant late Brāhmaṇa commentators, as well as by the fact that it is a poor Sanskrit word that has less than a dozen meanings.
Most kings of whom any record survives in the literary tradition have several names each, while occasionally the same name has caused sagas of two or more distinct persons to be combined. The ludicrous errors to which the misreading of a single letter can lead are often perpetuated by modern writers as sober historical truth.
Finally, under a deceptive appearance of uniform backwardness, India is a country of enormous variation and long survivals.
Querns that might belong to the Stone Age are still used in our kitchens; red pigment on idols and stones by the roadside symbolizes blood-sacrifices, most of which went out of fashion centuries ago so that the very idea would shock the particular worshippers.
Thus, it is dangerous to attempt, without a lifetime of study, any complete description of an ancient and obsolete system.
The method I follow, therefore, is to utilize a few representative sources (preferably with good published translations) of proved validity, outlining thereby the main developments. Greater detail is not possible without far more criticism, while the result would be unbalanced.
At every stage, I have tried to ask myself the question:
> “What were the means of production implied by this particular bit of evidence?”
This is the only essential in which my approach differs from that of the essays available to me; it will be found to account for most of the differences in the conclusions.
4. The Vedic Basis
The oldest Indian tradition known is supposedly that recorded in the four Vedas; in the order of sanctity and roughly of chronology:
1. Ṛgveda,
2. Yajurveda,
3. Sāmaveda, and
4. Atharvaveda.
These are liturgical books amplified in associated works called Brāhmaṇa and Āraṇyaka. These scriptures concentrate upon ritual — any philosophy or history having to be painfully extracted, as with most early Brahmanic sources.
This contrasts greatly with the much more philosophic (if somewhat later) Upaniṣads, the earliest of which have strongly influenced Buddhism and are undoubtedly of Kṣatriya origin.
It should be kept in mind that each of the Vedas with its associated subordinate works forms in ancient days the property of one particular clan or sect of Brāhmaṇas who developed the tradition over a long period.
The difficult ritual could be mastered by the acolyte only after long study (generally twelve years of celibate life) in the absolute service of a guru, often in the wilderness. Later changes, therefore, are not easy to trace though their existence cannot be denied.
The passing centuries have obliterated a good deal so that certain hymns and words convey no real meaning even to the most optimistic commentator — e.g. RV. X.106.6, which might be of Mesopotamian origin, as also perhaps the insistence upon clay bricks for the fire-altar, hardly to be expected of nomads such as the Aryans were in earlier Vedic times.
The Istasva and Istarasmi of RV. I.122.13 may even be Achaemenid kings of the sixth century BC, which would not invalidate the claim to antiquity for the body of that Veda.
5. The Four Castes in the Ṛgveda
The Ṛgveda speaks of the four major castes, tribes being outside the then localized caste scheme:
> “Brāhmaṇa was his (the Supreme Being’s) mouth,
Kṣatriya made of his arms;
the Vaiśya his thighs,
and the Śūdra generated from his feet.”
— RV. X.90.12 (Puruṣa Sūkta)
Yet the four-caste system is not described as prevalent outside of India, where the earliest division into Ārya and Dāsa was known to persist.
These two racial (or tribal) names later become synonymous with noble or freeborn and subject or slave (RV. IV.28.4; II.12.4), the latter being the general Sanskrit meaning of dāsa, in much the same way as the (contested) etymological change from Slav to slave.
Yet not all the Dāsas of the early period are slaves or enemies. Divodāsa Atithigva is ruler by favour of Indra, who is at once the chief of the gods and historically the titular ruler of the Aryan invaders.
Priestly Divodāsas are also described as writing new hymns in RV. I.130.10, while Sudas is the author of RV. X.133.
Vāmadeva, author of an entire section in the oldest Veda, speaks of bitter times before the ruthless Indra gave him patronage:
> (RV. IV.18.12–13)
“Who made thy mother a widow?
Who sought to slay thee in lying still or moving?
Which deva (god) had compassion for you when thou tookest thy sire by the foot and smashed him?
In extreme need I cooked a dog’s entrails; among the devas I found no comforter.
I beheld my wife in degradation.”
Then the Falcon (Indra) brought me the sweet (mead).”
On the other hand, the third section of the Ṛgveda is ascribed to the great Kṣatriya Viśvāmitra, whose prowess is belittled by whose prowess is belittled by Brahmanic stories of his vain contest with the Brahmana Vasiṣṭha, supposed author of the seventh section of the same Veda.
But the Vasiṣṭha (also called Tṛtsu, RV. VII.83.8) clan is associated in some way with Divodāsa and the Dāsas, hence originally belonged to the subjected population before climbing to the Vedic school.
We see two main points here:
1. The ancient Brahmana had a hard time;
2. The priest class of the Aryan conquerors was largely recruited from the conquered.
The function of Vedic ritual is the celebration of certain animal sacrifices at the fire-altar. The five principal sacrificial animals are, in order of importance: man, horse, bull (or cow), ram, he-goat (SB. VI.2.1.18), and their flesh was to be eaten, as is seen from rubrics for the disposal of the carcasses, as well as by the prohibition that five animals who simulate these are not to be eaten, namely the kimpuruṣa or dwarf, bos gaurus, bos gavaeus, camel, and sarabha (SB. I.2.3).
Cannibalism, however, is extinct except for ritual purposes in the Vedas; human sacrifice is rather a traditional survival, like the Roman formula for capital punishment, sacer esto.
The great Vedic sacrifice is that of the horse. This deserves consideration, for it was the horse that gave the Aryans (as it did the Mongols) their superiority in battle, made possible their mobility as nomads, though the animal was not ridden harnessed to a chariot.
Indra’s chariot is drawn by two tawny horses, yet his weapon, the vajra, is nothing but a stone hand-celt (identified with the thunderbolt when Indra became the synonym of the chief Aryan god) or perhaps a stone-headed mace of Sumerian type.
We know that the principal Vedic weapon was the bow, and that in addition to the horse and the chariot, the Aryan invaders knew the use of iron.
The Indus Valley Civilization knew only copper, weapons found in Mohenjodaro being so poor as to be useless for any except ceremonial purposes.
The Dāsa opposition, therefore, must have been poor, though the Vedas speak of their fortifications (RV. II.19.6; VI.20.10).
The emphasis upon the horse-sacrifice (aśvamedha) must necessarily date from the period when the horse was the most important domestic animal for the Aryans, or the Mongols in historic times. That period, however, had obviously passed on the Vedic age was at its zenith, for the emphasis, as far as productive economy is concerned, is upon cattle, pastured in herds.
Ploughing is comparatively late, mentioned in the SB only for ceremonial purposes; even here, both the ploughed and unploughed ground about the altar site must be sown after watering (SB. VII.8).
The principal cereal is barley (yava), into which the gods had put the essence of all other plants (SB. III.6.1.10), and rice, which was then obtained not by ploughing but by digging (SB. I.2.3.7).
But the priests’ regular fee is payable in battle, as for example at the Daśapeya sacrifice, for which twelve heifers with calf are due (SB. V.4.5.20), occasionally in gold chips, perhaps gold minas.
There is no question whatsoever of Brahmana superiority except at the altar-side. The Brahmana is acknowledged, even by himself, as unsuited for kingship (V.1.1.12).
Moreover, the aśvamedha is pre-eminently a Kṣatriya sacrifice (XIII.4.1.1.), at which apparently a Kṣatriya could officiate himself, the lame explanation being given:
> “…and truly, whosoever sacrifices, sacrifices after being, as it were, a Brahmana” (SB. XIII.4.1.3).
The Brahmana is an object aspected to the king (SB. V.4.2.7), and if the order of handing around the symbolic wooden sword used at the sacrifice makes the king weaker than the Brahmana, it is only to make the king stronger than his enemies (SB. V.4.4.15).
Social functions of caste are clearly set forth when it is stated that the Kṣatriya precedes on the outward sacrificial round, the Brahmana on the return, but never the other two castes:
> “And thus he encloses those two castes (Vaiśya and Śūdra) both sides by the priesthood and nobility, and makes them submissive” (SB. VI.4.4.13).
Final proof that Brahmana superiority was only in ritual is given by the story of king Janaka (SB. XI.6.2), who defeats all the leading Brahmins, including the founder of the SB, Yājñavalkya himself, in interpretation of the philosophy of sacrifice as distinct from the ritual.
The sutra concludes with:
> “Thenceforth Janaka a Brahmana.”
In fact, the Brahmana was worthy of respect only because of connection with the aśvamedha ritual:
> “Those Kṣatriyas who go to the end of (horse-sacrifice) will become (sharers of) the royal power, they will become worthy of being consecrated; but those who do not go to the end of this… will be excluded… And whenever ye meet with any kind of Brahmanas, ask ye them ‘O Brahmanas, how much know ye of the aśvamedha? And those who know naught thereof ye may despoil’” (SB. XIII.4.2.17).
6. Agriculture and Population
For what follows, it is necessary to keep in mind certain general facts of agriculture:
For a given area, the pastoral life will support from a dozen to a hundred times as many people as by hunting.
Cultivation of cereals will support from four to twelve times as many as by grazing cattle for meat and dairy products.
The present Indian population gets along today, admittedly at a very low subsistence level even in good years, on about 0.7 acres of cultivated land per head, while pasture land has long been insufficient for the number of cattle raised on it.
Now, in a given region, as the population tends to increase, they must find a severe natural check, as in the extreme cases of the Arctic or the Kalahari, or must find more land, or change to a more productive form.
The land of the Gangetic basin was swampy or densely forested, while the older means of production developed in the drier Indus basin were profitable to an important class, the Brahmana priests, who had fixed upon certain religious forms which would hinder the development of any primitive community beyond a certain level.
There was no trouble only as long as the system proved itself capable of expansion.
Even in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa days, there was an ideological protest against beef-eating, presumably dictated or at least reinforced by economic necessity:
> “The gods gave the cow and the ox the vigour of all other species; eating their flesh would be, as it were, an eating up of everything… Such a one indeed would be likely to be (re-)born as a strange being (as one of whom there is) evil report, such as he has expelled an embryo from a woman, he has committed a sin… Nevertheless, Yājñavalkya said ‘I, for one, eat it, provided that it is tender’” (SB. III.1.2.21).
The very originator of the SB tradition refuses to budge.
The expansion towards the east is also clearly recorded, as well as its methods:
> “(Agni, the fire, thence went burning along the earth towards east (from the Sarasvatī river); and Gotama Rāhugaṇa and the Videgha Māthava followed after him as he was burning along. He burnt over (dried up) all the rivers. Now that river which is called the overflowing (Sadanirā) flows from the northern (Himalaya) mountain; that one he did not burn over. That one the Brahmanas did not cross over in former times, thinking it has not been burnt over by Agni Vaiśvānara. Nowadays, however, there are many Brahmanas to the east of it. At that time, it (the land east of the Sadanirā) was very uncultivated, because it had not been tasted by Agni Vaiśvānara. Nowadays, however, it is very cultivated, for the Brahmanas have caused (Agni) to taste it through sacrifices. Even in late summer that river, as it were, rages along: so cold is it, not having been burnt over by Agni Vaiśvānara. Māthava Videgha then said (to Agni) ‘Where am I to abide?’ ‘To the east of this (river) be thy abode’, said he. Even now this river forms the boundary of the Kosalas and Videhas; for these are the Māthavas (descendants of Māthava)” (SB. I.4.1.14-17).
The narrative is clear enough: the advance was by clearing land by burning it over, and swampy land thus dried up; the earlier drive was held up when the fire-followers came to a glacier-fed river which did not dry up in the summer.
This means that the advance was not along the banks of major rivers, but along the foothills, and that is precisely what we find by looking through Buddhistic records of settlement.
The riparian lands of the Gangetic basin must, with a few strategic exceptions, have been far too densely wooded and swampy to be cleared by fire alone.
In any case, this type of early clearing would account for so many sacred places being in the Himalayas, as well as for the late transfer of the capital of Magadha (Bihar) from Rajagṛha to Patna.
The Brahmanas of this later period show a corresponding adjustment.
The last of the four Vedas (Atharvaveda) is a much more social document than the rest. From concentration upon the expensive fire-sacrifice, it has come down to everyday witchcraft, designed for personal gain of all social grades, though not to smooth out the difficulties of human intercourse.
There are charms to cure disease and possession by demons of disease; prayers for long life; incantations for the obtaining of a husband or wife, a son; charms for royalty, and for success in battle. Far more important are the charms for harmony and influence in assembly, for they show that Aryan tribal affairs were still regulated by assembly in spite of the conquest (AV. III.30; VII.12, etc.).
Fields, the house, cattle, can be protected by formula; the seed is blessed at sowing (AV. VI.142), exercised of vermin infesting the grain (V. VI.50).
There are prayers for success in taming (AV. IV.38; VII.50), and the merchant has his own prayer for a successful venture (AV. III.15) with a hundredfold gain “of wealth through wealth.”
Naturally, the Brahmana takes smaller fees, generally a porridge (AV. IX.1; II.3) prepared in a special way. But that doesn’t mean that he has given up beef-eating.
Sterile cows must be given away to the Brahmanas; if a heifer that has proved sterile after herding for three years be not given away to mendicant Brahmanas, dire consequences will follow for both herd and owner; gain can only result by giving the creature to the Brahmanas, though what they could do with it except eat it does not transpire; on no account is the owner to roast the barren cow for himself (AV. XII.4)!
Beyond this, the Brahmana has to protect himself and his own cattle by imprecations, and cajolery (AV. V.18.3):
> “Do not, O prince (eat the cow) of the Brahmana: sapless, unfit to be eaten, is that cow.”
Prince here means a knight, any member of the Kṣatriya caste with any sort of local power.
However, there is no question of the Brahmanas turning “their attention to the masses,” except to help in their exploitation.
The Brahmanic idea of the position of the two lower castes is seen in the Aitareya Āraṇyaka (A.B. Keith, H.O.S., vol.25, p.315):
> “…like a Vaiśya, tributary to another, to be eaten by another, to be oppressed at will… like a Śūdra, … the servant of another, to be removed at will, to be slain at will.”
This view of the trader class characterizes the most penal theory of taxation which we find in the Arthaśāstra.
The Kṣatriya here is at the top of the social stratification, for even the Brahmana is only one who receives sacrificial gifts from him; however, the Brahmana can embroil the Kṣatriya with the people by mischief at the sacrifice, so that the nobility have to be careful.
Finally, we may note that the Vaiśya in the Vedas is merely an Aryan whose trade is not that of fighting or fire-priesthood; also, that honoured Vedic professions or crafts such as that of the tanner, weaver, smith, chariot-maker, are confined in later days to Śūdras, who are un-Aryan in the earliest days.
This shows how the early caste system corresponded to the progressive development of a class society, which, with its counterpoise the absolute monarch, developed naturally from conquest and settlement by a democratic or oligarchic tribal organization which originally characterized the racially distinct invaders.
A rudimentary four-caste (=class) system similar to the Indian can also be traced in Iranian tradition.
It should not be forgotten, on the credit side of the caste system, that the early reduction of the Śūdra to serfdom or helotage freed India from slavery and slave-trading on a large scale.
It also allowed new land to be opened up and settled with an early development of a stable agrarian economy, which gave the country its economic power as well as its basic unity in spite of great local variations.
Of course, when expansion stopped, this led inevitably to a static ideal of society, a static philosophy (even to the static yogic system of exercise), hence ultimately to stagnation.
But we are not concerned here with that stage of growth where caste becomes a negation of history.
It seems reasonable to conclude that the lack of private property in human beings also implied the absence of private property in land (except for valuable urban sites) at the early stage with which we are concerned.
As long as the Kṣatriya is one of a numerous conquering tribe, this is perhaps inevitable; the Brahmana has no protection except his own usefulness as priest and the mantle of the witch-doctor.
But with the growth of settlement and kingship on a larger scale, the Brahmana suffers another dialectic change:
> “Listen ye to the high praise of the king who rules over all peoples, the god who is above mortals, of Vaiśvānara Parīkṣit! ‘Parīkṣit has procured for us secure dwelling, when he, the most excellent one, went to his seat.’ (Thus) the husband in Kuru-land, when he founds his household, converses with his wife. ‘What may I bring thee, curds, stirred drink, or liquor?’ (Thus) the wife asks her husband in the kingdom of king Parīkṣit. Like light the ripe barley runs over beyond the mouth (of the vessels). The people thrive merrily in the kingdom of king Parīkṣit’” (AV. XX.127.7-10).
This king Parīkṣit, here raised to the supreme eminence of deified fire, is a historical personage who came to the throne after the great war described in the epic, Mahābhārata (Mbh.).
And the Brahmins who monopolized the Atharvaveda belong to the combined Bhrigu-Angiras clans.
They are comparative late comers in the Vedic period, for the Vasiṣṭhas alone claimed monopoly of the yajña priesthood at one time (Sadvimsa Brāhmaṇa 1.5), and this was disputed by the Bhrigu Jamadagni (Taittirīya Saṃhitā IV.1.7.3).
With this, we turn to the great Indian epic.
—
7. The Mahābhārata
The Mahābhārata epic deals in 100,000 stanzas with a great civil war between the five Pāṇḍava brothers and the hundred Kaurava sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra.
Generally available texts of this work contain substantial additions down to quite recent times, but we are fortunate in possessing a critical edition for the first five books, which strips away later accretions in a manner brilliantly confirmed by fresh discoveries of comparatively old manuscripts.
This critical text represents in the main some kind of a unitary redaction by one or more diaskeuasts of not later than the third century AD, but the subject matter is far older tradition, given in narratives not always properly worked into the structure of the epic.
A good deal of this subject matter was obviously repulsive to the scribes who transmitted the epic manuscript apparatus, but not on that account deleted by them; their method was to dilute the most disagreeable portions by explanatory interpolations, and just ignore the rest.
The continued popularity of the text must have been due in great part to these continually added and readjusted subsidiary narratives, and this popularity was not only very profitable to the reciters but performed an important social function by enabling them to write in a considerable amount of social and religious doctrine, the most important section of this type being the famous Bhagavadgītā.
For us, the use of the Mahābhārata lies in the picture of society that it builds up, though not always in a homogeneous or consistent fashion.
About the preservation of ancient tradition, against the fact of radically changed custom, there can be no doubt at all.
After the great battle, the dead are left to lie on the field.
The princess Mādrī is purchased as a bride for Pāṇḍu without any more ceremony than for a basket of vegetables (Mbh. 1.105.4-5), though a long passage is interpolated in many versions to explain this as an ancient custom of her tribe, the noble Madras.
The Brahmana Drona teaches archery to the princes for money, and this is explained by a brilliant and pathetic interpolation (after Mbh. 1.122.31) as reaction after seeing his little boy, who had never tasted cow’s milk, tricked by richer men’s sons with a mixture of flour and water.
As a matter of fact, however, the desire for money is real and quite straightforward, for a little earlier Drona has learned the decidedly un-Brahmanic trade of arms only because he could not get the alternative, wealth (Mbh. 1.121.18-21), from Parashurāma.
Even more striking is the evidence regarding diverse marriage customs, particularly group-marriages in the older period.
The sage Śvetaketu, son of Uddālaka, is disturbed in his wilderness retreat when a Brahmana drags off his mother by the hand with the words:
> “Let’s go.”
To the angry sage, his unperturbed father gives the explanation:
> “Women of all castes are unrestrained (or naked); like cows, they (breed) progeny within each caste.”
Uddālaka’s simile, we remark parenthetically, receives some support from the etymology of gotra (clan), which means “cowpen.”
Śvetaketu then establishes the rule by force (baldly) that women shall be monogamous, and men shall not violate a virgin, a chaste woman, or a continent one.
All of this is given as a tradition (Mbh. 1.1.13.9-20).
But this is not the only curious tradition, for Mbh. 1.112 is devoted to the unattractive story of king Vyusitasva, whose childless queen Bhadra finally conceives from his corpse.
A survival of group marriage customs seems to me to be a better explanation of the five Pāṇḍava brothers’ polyandrous union with the princess Draupadī than the hypothesis that these Pāṇḍavas were Tibetan invaders.
In fact, Yudhishṭhira says to his shocked prospective father-in-law, who regards polyandry as being against common usage and the Vedas, that he (Yudhishṭhira) doesn’t claim to know the finer points of region, but:
> “We wish to follow the ancient traditional path” (Mbh. 1.187.26-28).
The mother of the princes cites the case of the seven sages who had a common wife Jātilā (Mbh. 1.188.14); finally Vyāsa, reputed author of the Mbh., turns up in person to explain the whole affair as inevitable by the convenient hypothesis of a curse in one previous birth!
Clearly, we have here some historic pre-Aryan custom which had to be explained away.
It is not a theological addition, as for example the regaining of her virginity by Kuntī (Mbh. 1.104.12) or by Draupadī (Mbh. 1.191.14), which were necessary if the later official marriages of these ladies were to be valid.
This welter of contradictory traditions, apart from diverting interest, has damaged even the main theme of the war.
The Pāṇḍavas have no less a personage than Kṛṣṇa, incarnated Viṣṇu, on their side, and this god is thereafter one of the most important deities of the Hindu pantheon.
But they win only by consistent cheating and legalitarian quibbles.
The twelve years during which they agree to remain incognito in the wilderness are not really over when they reveal themselves; the noble and venerable Bhīṣma, their own teacher Drona, are killed by deceit; the heroic and generous Karna (actually their brother) treacherously shot down against the rules of war; Duryodhana’s thigh is shattered by a foul blow.
Such dealings, combined with the tradition that Jaimini’s rival version of the Mahābhārata (a fragment of which is still in existence) was destroyed because it did not exalt the Pāṇḍavas sufficiently as against the defeated Kauravas, have led to the theory that the epic has been rewritten from its original form of a lament for the vanquished into flattery for the conquerors.
As a matter of fact, evidence of rewriting is only too noticeable, but the purpose is deeper than mere flattery of some historical dynasty.
The Mahābhārata (like the AV and the law-code Manusmṛti) also was property of the Bhārgava clan, who rewrote it for their own purpose.
Their hero, the Bhārgava Pārashurāma, seems to have been the only authentic Bhārgava who could fight (his traditional weapon being the curved axe parasu) and who annihilated the Kṣatriyas no less than twenty-one times.
This superfluous killing is really a form of overcompensation, or psychological revenge; for it is clear that the Bhārgavas were generally trampled down, the Kṣatriyas not annihilated, and that a single annihilation should have sufficed.
The revenge is carried further in unconvincing fashion by stating that successive generations of Kṣatriyas had to be begotten by Brahmanas from Kṣatriya women.
The fact of the matter is that the Brahmanas were helpless; when Bhṛgu was offended by the Śrñjaya Vaitahavyas or a Brahmana’s cow taken, it was the slaughtered cow herself and not the owner that took revenge upon the transgressors (AV. V.18.10-11; V.19.1).
The Bhārgus appear as a historical people in the RV, but only three or four times.
They are undoubtedly associated with the Druhyus, though whether as warriors or as priests is not clear, for the Bhārgava chariot appears in RV. IV.16.20.
Moreover, they were on the losing side, for the king of the Druhyus was killed in battle against Sudas.
We have here one possible mechanism by which the conquered sages could appear as priests of the conquerors, for by this time the Aryans had unquestionably begun to fight against each other, having advanced as far east as the Yamuna river.
Still, we see from the Pārashurāma legend that the Brahmanas at one time attempted fighting against the Kṣatriyas, and this should lend support to the conjecture that the Brahmanas belong to an older type of society than the invading Aryan Kṣatriyas.
How could they have developed any sort of culture had they always been living in the wilderness, either solitary or each sage with his women and a handful of celibate disciples?
It is at least plausible to assume that these Brahmanas were associated with the rich pre-Aryan Indus valley culture, discovered by our archaeologists; a culture that may have been destroyed by Aryan invaders or died out because of the shift of the Indus.
This passage-over of sections of the conquered as priests to the conquerors would account for the many discrepancies between Vedic and epic records, and for the rewriting of so much Indian tradition.
It would account also for the early systematic development of Sanskrit grammar, generally necessary when a complicated foreign language has to be studied.
In the same way, the astounding development of religious philosophy in India at a very early date again supports the hypothesis of violent assimilation, as it speaks for the unhappy existence of a cultured priest-class.
One notes that though the Aryan system of counting is decimal, if any system can properly be called Aryan, the quadragesimal system is still extant in Indian currency, goes back to the dual weight-system of Mohenjo-Daro, and is reflected in Piṅgala’s work on Vedic metre.
The Brahmana sages in the wilderness correspond to Abraham, who left Ur of the Chaldees for a nomadic life when the days of the city’s glory had passed; of course, the Brahmanas may have been driven out by the ruin of their cities, and had in any case a fairly hard time of it: retreat to the wilderness, particularly in old age, remains thereafter an integral portion of the ideal human life for Hindus.
Naturally, such origins would also account for several features of caste, including endogamy.
For the later stage of rewriting in the Mahābhārata, we see one further immediate reason: the pre-existence of Buddhism.
In the main, all direct reference to Buddhism is carefully avoided in the epic, which does its best to give the (modified) traditions of antiquity.
Still, in the appendix, the Harivaṃśa (cited as Hv. from Kimjavadekar’s edition), we find direct mention of the fact that well got-up Śūdra monks would get religious honour as followers of the Sākya Buddha (Hv. 3.3.15) while Brahmanas took to the woods for fear of taxes.
All such historical events of later date are ingeniously disguised as prophecies; this section of the Hv. has influenced two parallel ‘prophecies’ (Mbh. 3.186-9), about the dark ages, the Kali-yuga, which begins with the coronation of just that king Parīkṣit who was so highly praised in the AV.
Naturally, as part of the prophecy, it is not out of place to mention—indirectly—Puṣyamitra (Hv. 3.2.40) as having performed the horse sacrifice before the end of the Kali age.
One is led to believe that the Kalki (later the future avenging incarnation of Viṣṇu) with whom the Kali-yuga is to end (Mbh. 3.188-9; IV.1.41.164-8) is also a historical personage, some minor leader who locally repelled invaders that pushed into India over the ruins of empire after the first century BC.
He managed to please the Brahmanas by reviving fire-sacrifices.
What speaks most distinctly for the existence of some intermediate form between the Vedic and epic period, however, is the rise of new deities, and the profession of a new philosophy.
The epic is read by or recited to modern Hindus, and in spite of its numerous logical inconsistencies, is within their mental grasp; the Vedas are not.
Vedic deities, Indra and the sacred fire, occur often enough, but in a subordinate position.
Some of the elements that appear can be discounted as ancient survivals, particularly the avatāras of Viṣṇu, which contain a typical later Brahmanic synthesis of various cults—of which the Fish, Tortoise, Boar, may even be Mesopotamian, connected as they are with the legend of the flood, which actually was a historical event according to Woolley’s excavations at Ur.
The dwarf Vāmana may represent some struggle of the Aryans against Assyrians, as perhaps his predecessor the man-lion Nṛsiṃha.
Pārashurāma is a Bhārgava hero, Rāma some ancient Indian hero apparently pre-Aryan, though with him the psychological element may account for the Helen-of-Troy motif.
Psychoanalysts have taught us to regard such themes as Kāma’s being set afloat on the river by his mother and drawn from the waters by his foster-parents as a symbolic representation of birth; this may also account for the sage Markandeya’s vision (prototype of Arjuna’s vision in the Bhagavadgītā) of the divine Babe asleep on the flood (Mbh. 3.186.82-3.187.47).
But the latest avatāra Kṛṣṇa is the dominating religious figure of the Mahābhārata, and his cult, all-embracing faith (bhakti) in the one supreme being, has appeared for the first time in contrast to anything that has preceded.
This Kṛṣṇa, the non-Aryan “dark” hero or god, has appeared in several earlier legends, as Kṛṣṇa-Dionysos, Kṛṣṇa-Herakles, Kṛṣṇa the Lar of the Yadava tribe, even as an opponent of Indra in a contested passage of the Rgveda (RV. VIII.96.13-15), but not in the role of an object for salvation-giving bhakti.
Kṛṣṇa generally appears as an adjective for the “dark people,” the indigenous opponents slaughtered by the Aryans.
It is remarkable that Vṛtra, the demon of darkness for whose killing Indra is praised in the Veda (and as Verethraghna in Avestan tradition) counts as a Brahmana in Mahābhārata times.
That Indra kills his own fire-priest (purohita) Viśvarūpa is surely proof that the Brahmanas are not inviolate in Vedic days.
But the heroes of the epic, the Pāṇḍava brothers, are already a mixed lot, Arjuna being dark, as is also their common wife Draupadī.
Similarly, the all-powerful position of certain Bhārgava sages, who even seem to beget a considerable number of Kṣatriya princes, can be explained psychologically, but not so the strange doctrine of ahiṃsā, non-killing, uttered by a curse-transformed sage:
> “Ahiṃsā is the supreme religion for all living beings, therefore let the Brahmana not kill living things; ahiṃsā, truthful speech, resolute forgiveness, mastery of the Vedas are the highest religion of the Brahmanas” (Mbh. 1.11.12,14).
This has a very strange sound indeed in a huge work dedicated to tales of slaughter, recited at Nāga-killing yajña sacrifices, a work in which the heroes and even the god Kṛṣṇa himself, with attendant Brahmanas in plenty, clear land in the Vedic manner by burning down the entire Khandava forest and killing those who try to escape, in a holocaust which only six living creatures survive (Mbh. 1.214-19).
The explanation of these anomalies is, naturally, the intermediate position of a totally new form of life, that during the Buddhistic age, which necessarily forced changes upon the Brahmanas.
5. Vedic Brahmanism had already become uneconomic in the days of the Buddha. Instead of the moderate fees of Vedic times, we find whole villages given over to the Brahmanas in fief for their services at the sacrifice, though of course it was only the more fortunate Brahmana that would receive such gifts.
In the Dīgha-nikāya 3, 4, 5, 12, we learn that king Pasenadi had given the village of Ukkattha to the Brahmana Pokkharasāti, Malavatika to another, Lohicca; from Bimbisāra, special friend of the Buddha, the Brahmanas Sonadanda and Kutadanta held Campa and Khanumata respectively.
Naturally, the sacrifices implied by such fees are on a much greater scale than those of the Vedas. In the Kosala-samyutta we read of king Pasenadi’s great yajña, where 500 (in early Pali literature the equivalent of “a large number”) each of bulls, male and female calves, goats, rams were tied to sacrificial posts for killing, and the king’s slaves, messengers, workmen go about their duties shedding tears, in fear of punishment; for, apparently, the beasts were taken without compensation from the surrounding countryside.
The Buddha himself speaks of five great traditional yajñas: the aśvamedha, the human sacrifice, the samyakpāśa, the vajapeya, and the nirargala. Of these, the first two are Vedic, and even the fourth is known to Vedic literature, though more complicated. But the remaining two are not generally known, and there is no reason to doubt that sacrifices were growing in complexity and magnitude.
The Buddhist protest is therefore against sacrifices rather than against caste as such, though naturally it would affect the caste that lived by sacrificial fees, the Brahmanas. On the other hand, these sacrifices imply other types of killing than at the fire-altar, for their main purpose is success in war.
The older type of society has passed. Aryans are no longer migrants or wanderers, with the possible exception of a tribe like the Vajjis, who also preserve the older tribal institutions, including supreme power for the oligarchic assembly (upon which the Buddhist monastic order of peripatetic almsmen was modelled in its own way), and are much admired by the Buddha himself.
For the rest, the tribes have dissolved into loose organizations of landholding and land-farming overlords, and because of this dissolution, newer types of kingship on a large scale are growing up. For example, Buddha’s own people, the Sakkas, are not independent, being subordinate to king Pasenadi of Kosala (Dīgha-nikāya 27); while Buddha’s father is so small a princeling that he engages in ploughing, perhaps of a ceremonial nature, but in the fields and not for the fire-altar.
The Sakkas still elect a tribal chief, who seems to have had very little to do. The gotra divisions for Kṣatriyas clearly corresponded to the gens elsewhere, and was adopted (and retained to this day) by the Brahmanas if they did not have it themselves in earlier times. It is significant that a considerable number of gotra names are animal totems: kausika = owl, kasyapa = tortoise, bharadvāja = skylark, gotama = best bull, while the oldest Brahmanas like the Vasus can at most be assigned descent from the sun, and the Bhrgus have no animal totem to explain their ancestor.
Similarly, the pravara is clearly the original phratry, its confused position being more easily explained if the whole gens-phratry organization was borrowed by the Brahmanas from the Kṣatriyas after the conquest.
The Buddhistic world is divided into small cities grouped under sixteen kingdoms (Aṅguttara-nikāya III.7.70; trans. I, p. 192), some of which have already lost their independence and the rest of which are constantly fighting to increase their rules, whence the need for fire-sacrifices that bring victory.
The centre of expansion is Magadha (the eastern part of modern Bihar), itself peripheral in the older Aryan-Brahmanic expansion. It is Ajātasattu, parricide son of Bimbisāra, who finally breaks the Vajjis and extends his dominion to the whole Gangetic basin; in the Samaṇṇaphala-samyutta, he is praised as a wise ruler, one who would have reached the highest degree of spiritual attainment—but for the sad fact of his having murdered his own father.
Clearly, the traders and householders needed a settled rule, peace, and freedom from robbers who infested the jungles between city-states—some form of “universal” monarchy; it must again be noted that Buddhism and the other non-killing religion Jainism are most popular with this class, which is otherwise silent in Indian history.
The existence of the protest we have already seen in the Satapatha Brahmana passage against beef-eating, though beef continued to be sold in the open market in Buddha’s time (Satipaṭṭhānasutta).
The original proponent of the new ideas for society was the Jaina Tīrthaṅkara Pārśva, who laid emphasis, two centuries before the Buddha, upon the active social practice of non-killing, truthfulness, and non-violence.
There were other lines of teachers who had developed from the ascetic hermits whom Brahmanism itself regarded so highly, and Buddhist as well as Jain teachers found the pre-existing ascetic form of life one which gave the preacher greatest influence.
Jain ahiṃsā was carried to unpractical extremes for society as a whole, while the Buddhist applied primarily to human beings and agricultural animals: for the Buddha says in the Brahmanadhammika-sutta of the Suttanipāta,
> “Cattle are our friends just as parents and other relatives; for cultivation depends upon them. They give food, strength, freshness of complexion, and happiness. Knowing this, ancient Brahmanas did not kill cattle.”
But the greatest power of the Buddhist doctrine springs from its social nature as against the rugged individualism or greedy opportunism of other systems.
In the Kutadanta-sutta (Dīgha-nikāya 5) the Buddha relates the story of a supposed king Mahāvijita, who gained happiness and prosperity for his people not by yajña but by supplying capital to the trader, employment to the State servant, seed to the farmer; “for then the robberies will vanish.”
In the Cakkavatti-sīhanāda-sutta we find the same theme enlarged upon. The poor take to robbery, and the function of the cakravartin, the universal monarch, is to prevent robbery; it cannot be suppressed by violence, nor can its cause—poverty—be bribed out of existence with bounties. Poverty is to be decreased by creating employment. This, surely, is a sound and remarkably modern view of the problem.
While the Buddhist emperor Aśoka did not go so far as this, his very first edict sets the example of non-killing.
To the question of why the new form had to arise, we have answered that the older was uneconomic after the change from nomadic pasturing to settled agriculture.
Why it had to take on a religious aspect is clear enough, for the older form was bound up with the very existence of a class that lived by sacrifice; hence, the validity of the sacrificial idea, of killing itself, had to be denied.
The revolution, inevitably in primitive times, had to take on a religious aspect. The actual mechanism of the change is by preaching through the mouths of respected ascetic teachers.
But there is something more to the change than this. In the first place, it occurs in marginal lands, where the Vedic forms are not well-established and where the tendency to universal monarchy is growing rapidly.
The Brahmanas themselves show strong divergence from Vedic practices, for Magadhan Brahmanas are referred to with special contempt as Brahma-bandhu, being definitely associated with extra-Vedic Vratyas, while it is not generally noticed that the Puranas refer to kings of the line to which Bimbisāra and Ajātasattu belong as kṣatrabandhu, the termination bandhu having the force of the Italian “-accio.”
Brahmanas are themselves penetrating into hitherto unknown regions as pioneers, which is seen from the story of Buddha’s disciple Bavari, who had founded a Brahmanic refuge on the banks of the Godavari; but this expansion takes place without a corresponding Kṣatriya conquest, which should account for the existence of only two major castes (Brahmana, Śūdra) in South India.
Clearly, such civilization as existed had managed to develop expansionist tendencies in a larger population in a way that the cattle-breeding Vedic period could not do.
Magadhan is synonymous with trader in Manusmṛti 10.47.
The cow does not thrive in wet lands, though it could have done well enough in the Indus valley. The cow is not hardy enough to hold out against wild beasts in the forest. The swampy lower territory of the Gangetic basin could only have been opened out for a new type of agriculture, wet-rice cultivation, by a new animal, the less edible water-buffalo.
I suggest that the period of this change also corresponds to the change from the older Brahmanism to non-violent religions, though such changes have left virtually no trace in literature.
Vedic rice is vṛhi, while the general Vedic term for cereal is yava, barley, and the Vedas speak also of godhīma, wheat. The famous sāl variety of rice, though known early in the Punjab (where the grammarian Pāṇini comes from the village of Salatura), seems to be principally cultivated in Bihar, even as late as the time of the Chinese traveller Hiuentsang.
The buffalo is not a Vedic animal at all, and must have been a terrifying beast in earlier times, for Yama, the god of death, comes riding on it to
Claim the souls of human beings at their final moments; Yama himself, with his twin sister Yami, shows definite Mesopotamian affinities or possibly origin. The goddess Kali or Durga, afterwards synthesized by Brahmanas with Parvati, consort of Siva, saves mankind by killing the buffalo-demon, an act still commemorated by buffalo-sacrifices at her festival. The buffalo is rare while the horse does not occur on Mohenjo-Daro seals, where the bull is common. Mahisa in the Vedas is an adjective, meaning powerful, and mahislmrgah means just the ‘powerful beast’. But by the time of Panini, mahismat ‘rich in buffalos’ is a term of respect. The Kasyapa samhita represents a forlorn Brahmanic attempt to preserve the superiority of the cow, in that the buffalo is a wilder creature, feeding in the woods on leaves that might bear insects and spoil its milk. But it is known to all modern observers that in reality the buffalo is far the cleaner feeder of the two, the cow (like the pig) being a scavenger in densely settled localities. By the opening centuries of the Christian era, the buffalo is bred regularly for profit, ranking in this above the cow and below the horse, according to the Pancatantra (V.8). It is the change-over to this new productive method that would enable Brahmanic control of ritual to be overcome in times when ritual was all-important, for the Brahmanas hadn’t then troubled to develop any ceremony connected with the buffalo in the same way as the Vedic ritual is related to the cow.
Thus we get the dark ages of the Brahmanas, though a few of them gained wealth as ministers, while four even ruled as kings after the end of the Suriga dynasty; but a disastrous period for most of them by reason of the decay of fire-sacrifices. It would be centuries before Buddhism in its turn became uneconomic by growth of rich monasteries, and useless to the masses by its isolation. In that interval, the Brahmana had learned to adjust himself to reality without facing it. New deities had been found, and many local deities synthesized by the avatara theory or as synonyms for one of the major gods. The power of the synthetic method is shown by Buddha himself being counted as the ninth avatara of Visnu. On the other hand, Buddhist monasteries were already becoming huge uneconomic foundations. The increasing number of Brahmana converts led by the second century to a change from the peoples’ languages to Sanskrit for Buddhist writings; the writings themselves deal with abstract philosophical speculations which show that the monk had developed from the peripatetic almsman visualized by Buddha as a teacher of society into a parasite whose existence was bound up with that of the exploiting classes. Control of ritual always vested in the Brahmanas, the Buddhist never having disputed it nor the cults of deities (of whom the Buddha is not one though Vedic gods are made to do him honour in Buddhist legends); caste, after all, we have seen to correspond to social classes, when viewed as a whole. New tribes could be enrolled by writing new scriptures, rewriting old ones, or treating them as new castes, explained at first as generated by various mixtures of the older four. On the other hand, what resistance there was to invaders after the ruin of the Suriga empire, particularly in the first century BC seems to have been supported by fire-sacrifices if not inspired by the Brahmanas in the name of religion, while there is no possibility, or at least no records of Buddhist monks having done so. The Brahmana had personal property and a family. He had the ritual for success in battle. He also had some experience of, or at least contact with, administrative problems, as we see from the Arthasastra which is Brahmanic with a tradition of preceding Brahmanic works on statecraft; in fact, the commonest Sanskrit word for minister, mantrin, means the possessor of a magic formula, which implies a Brahmana. The Buddhist monastic order excluded by its very structure all such activities. We have a letter of the Buddhist monk Matrceta to a king asking him to spare animal life (F. W. Thomas, Indian Antiquary, XXXII, 1903, pp. 347-9; 1904, p.21; 1905, p. 145), but there is no question of organizing any resistance. The synthetic method was of great use in absorbing all victorious foreigners except those who, like the Mohammedans, had a strong proselyting religion of their own and could recruit low castes. In fact, many foreigners in later times seem to have used conversion to Jainism or Buddhism as an intermediate (though not indispensable) step towards enrolment a generation or two later as Brahmanas or Ksatriyas, their social position permitting. The Brahmana could ignore productive imports or utilize them: paper (like gunpowder) came from China with the Mohammedans, and was used by the Brahmanas for writing, though manufactured usually by Muslims in India. The Mohammedans brought other Chinese influences which do not seem to have spread, as for example porcelain tiles, the unquestionably Sinoidal minarets of the Boli Gumbaz at Bijapur, and possibly, some dome forms. But the rose that they introduced into the country was and is used even by the most orthodox Brahmana in worship (syphilis and tea belong to the European period).
The main Brahmanical readjustment was the doctrine of non-killing engrafted upon the older ritual. The dying out of fire-sacrifice, loss of the heady Soma drink and of beef-eating, did not matter as long as the basic economic unit of the country was the village, and means of production agrarian with primitive methods of peasant cultivation, without private or at least without capitalistic ownership in land. Ritual is preserved hereafter with such changes as were thrust upon it by force of circumstances, but for every innovation we find a claim of antiquity, usually fictitious. Even the Allopanisad and the Ariglapurdna become possible. The reason is that no matter what the form of the ritual, its content and social function is now of a fundamentally different nature. Primitive magic tried to control nature and increase production while later observances and tabus are primarily for the maintenance of the status quo in favour of a definite class. They do their best to stifle criticism, to absorb any destructive excess of social energy. When this stage is reached, we have the static ideal of caste. History loses its meaning.
NOTES
- 1.India Census Reports; E. Senart: Caste in India—Tr. E. Denison Ross, London, 1930; H.H. Risley, Manual of Ethnography for India, Calcutta, 1906; The People of India, Calcutta, 1915; Pick’s comprehensive and attractive work, Die sociale Gliedentng im nordostlichen Indien zu Buddha’s Zeit (1897) is unfortunately based upon the Jataka stories which, though they contain very old legends, can hardly be said to represent the social structure of Magadha at the time of Buddha, having been written much later, perhaps as late as the second century AD.
- 2.Paul Rosas: “Caste and Class in India”, Science and Society, vol. VII, 1943, pp. 141-67 and my own criticism, ibid., VIII, 1944, pp. 243-9.
- 3.The Oxford History of India by V.A. Smith, 2nd edition revised and continued to 1921 by S. M. Edwardes; Oxford, 1922, p. 25.
- 4.Caste and Race in India by G.S. Ghurye, London, 1932, p. 67.
- 5.Ariguttara-nikaya 1.14. English translation by F.L. Woodward: The Book of the Gradual Sayings, vol. I (London, Pali Text Society, 1932), pp. 16-25; and the commentaries thereto.
- 6.Cf. V. V. Mirashi: “Gangeyadeva of Tirabhukti”; Annals of the Bhandarkar O.K. Institute, vol. XXIII, 1942, pp. 291-301.
- 7.Cited as RV; any of the standard translations may be used, even the out-of-print versions of Griffiths or Grassmann.
- 8.Cited as AV, using the translation (if selected portions) by M. Bloomfield, Hymns of the Atharva-veda, Oxford, 1897 (Sacred Books of the East, XLII).
- 9.Of these, I cite for brevity mostly the Satapatha Brahmana (associated with the Yajurveda) as SB from the English translation by J. Eggeling in Sacred Books of the East, vols. XII, XXVI, XIV, XLIII, XLIV; Oxford, 1882–85–94–97–1900. Used and highly recommended for the general reader, but not cited is the Vedic Index of Names and Subjects by A.A. Macdonnell and A.B. Keith, 2 vols, London (Murray), 1912.
- 10.Even in later times, The Buddha says in the Assalayanasamyutta of the Majjhimanikaya, “O Assalayana, in Yona, Kamboja, and such frontier regions, there are only two castes: Arya and Dasa; and sometimes an Arya becomes a Dasa while a Dasa becomes an Arya. Do you acknowledge this?” The young Brahmana Assalayana admits that this is so. For Divodasa Atithigva, cf. H.D. Velankar, Annals of the Bhandarkar O.R. Inst., XXIII, 1942, 657-68. Manusmrti 10.45 implies the existence of Aryan-speaking people outside the fold of caste.
I follow the Brahmanic tradition of Sayana’s gloss and Manusmrti 10.106 in ascribing this to Vamadeva himself, while scholars like Geldner and
Velankar interpret this rk as Indra’s.
12. But king Hariscandra, in fulfilment of a vow to sacrifice his eldest son, begins to sacrifice a human substitute. Kalmasapada is a cannibal (Mahabharata
1.176) because of a curse. Human sacrifice later becomes symbolic just to avoid cannibalism, SB. Xm.6.2.13. The last human was traditionally by
Syaparna Saya-kayana (SB. VI.2.1.37 seq.).
13. On the basis of Sayana’s gloss which cites Amarakosa 1.10.33, this river has been identified with the modern Kurrattee by Weber and others.
However, commentators on the Amarakosa take the Karatoya and the Saddnird as two separate rivers. Prof. D. Kosambi’ s emendation of a
single letter in Sayana’ s text of the Aitareya Aranyaka 2.1.1, to read vangd-magadhdscerapdddh would give excellent meaning to the passage on
which Sayana’s commentary on this and R V. VII. 101.4 is quite absurd. The sense then would be that the people of eastern Bihar and nomads (or
gypsies) did not believe in Vedic ritual.
14. For the actual number, and criticism of the structure of the epic, see my paper on the Parvasamgraha, J. Am. Oriental Soc., vol. 66, 1946, pp. 110-17.
15. By the late Vishnu S. Sukthankar. I cite only this edition, as Mbh. A passable translation exists (though not used here) by P.C. Roy, Calcutta, 1883-
96, but as this is based upon the Vulgate text (Calcutta, 1836), references will not coincide.
16. E.W.Hopkins: The Great Epic of India, New York, 1901. This again refers to the uncritical Vulgate text, but is quite useful’ For the point in question,
see the concluding chapters.
17. For the relationship between the Mbh. and the rewritten Puranas, cf. W. Ruben, J. Royal Asiatic Soc., 1941,pp. 247-56;337-8;F.W. ThomasFestschrift,^.
188 sq. For the most reasonable attempt to reconstruct some historical truth from Puranic records: F.E. Pargiter, Ancient Indian Historical
Tradition.
18. V.S. Sukthankar: Epic Studies VI: The Bhrgus and the Bharata; A Text-Historical Study. Annals of the Bhandarkar O.R. Inst., XVITI, 1-76;
Collected Works, vol. I, 278-337.
19. The special position of the Bhrgus is due to a fact not brought out in Sukthankar’s profound analysis of the Mbh., namely that they were able to
assimilate Ksatriya priests by adoption. Vitahavya becomes a Bhrguid Brahmana by the word of Bhrgu himself, according to Mbh., 15.30
(Vulgate) in spite of the Srnjaya Vaitahavyas being accursed in A Vpassages cited! The canonical Sanskrit writings on gotra and pravara have
been collected by P. Chentsal Rao: Gotrapra-varanibandhakadamba. Mysore (Govt. Or. Lib. Series, Bibliotheca Sanskrita, 25), 1900. The introduc-
tion shows that the last ten of the eighteen official Brahmana clans, i.e. the ‘occasional (kevala) Bhrgus or Angirasas’ adopted Ksatriyas
extensively. The current interpretation is, naturally, that these were originally Brahmanas who had followed the trade of arms for a while and so
had to be readopted into the priesthood, but a look at the genealogies shows conclusively that they are Ksatriya by lineage. This means, clearly,
assimilation of the priest-caste of the conquerors into the Bhrgu-Angiras clan of the conquered.
20. Though it ranks as the appendix, actually this section of the Hv. at least is the prototype of the two prophecies in Mbh., 186-9. A detailed
comparison shows content as well as phrases in common, as for example between Hv. 3.3.12 and Mbh. 3.188.51 = 3.186.36; generally between Hv.
4.3-4 and Mbh. 3.186, 188. The Hv. account is shorter and more coherent, as well as more reasonable. For example, Mbh. 3.188.47-8 paralleled by
Mbh. 3.186.52-3 says on describing the evils of the dark ages that girls would give birth to children at the fifth or sixth year, males would beget them
at seven or eight, and that the limit of life would be sixteen years. The last two figures are 16 and 30 in Hv. 3.3.11 and 3.4.40. The general Pauranic list
of evils of the Kali age is entirely different. The relationship between these sources and the Puranas is very complicated; one possible explanation
would be that various local accounts were later arranged in uniform chronological sequence. Taxing Brahmins is naturally the supreme evil
(Manu-smrti 7.133), no matter how desperate the need!
21. Otto Rank: DerMythusvonderGeburtdesHelden,Versucheir\erpsycho\ogischen My thendeutung [2nd Edition, Wien, 1922]. Matter for the psycho-
analyst are also the excessive ritual purification of the Brahmana, the purely theoretical classification of metres many of which seem never to have
existed, the fantastically large number of years in someyuga systems, the minute divisions of space and time which seem well beyond the power of
definition of any instruments these theorists could even have imagined.
22. Apart from their dark colour, tradition also removes both Krsna and Arjuna from the Ksatriya caste, though they are fighters, cf. Panini 4.3.88-9. Of
course, the commentator here tries to explain this away by saying that being a divinity, Krsna could not be ranked as a Ksatriya.
23. Also, Majjhimanikaya, 51.
24. Against Brahmanic caste-superiority pretensions, cf. the Vasetthasutta which occurs both in the Suttanipata and the Majjhimanikaya. For all
Buddhistic references I have drawn extensively upon the Marathi writings of my father Prof. Dharmananda Kosambi; particularly Bhagavdn
Buddha (Nagpur, 1940—41) and Bauddha Samghaca Paricaya.
25. For the Vajjis or Licchavis, the Mahaparinibbanasutta of the Digha-nikdya. Under vratya, Macdonnell and Keith (note 9) show that
wandering non-ritual Bhrgu himself, according to Mbh., 15.30 (Vulgate) in spite of the Srnjaya Vaitahavyas being accursed in A Vpassages cited!
The canonical Sanskrit writings on gotra and pravara have been collected by P. Chentsal Rao: Gotrapra-varanibandhakadamba. Mysore (Govt.
Or. Lib. Series, Bibliotheca Sanskrita, 25), 1900. The introduction shows that the last ten of the eighteen official Brahmana clans, i.e. the
‘occasional (kevala) Bhrgus or Angirasas’ adopted Ksatriyas extensively. The current interpretation is, naturally, that these were originally
Brahmanas who had followed the trade of arms for a while and so had to be readopted into the priesthood, but a look at the genealogies shows
conclusively that they are Ksatriya by lineage. This means, clearly, assimilation of the priest-caste of the conquerors into the Bhrgu-Angiras clan
of the conquered.
20. Though it ranks as the appendix, actually this section of the Hv. at least is the prototype of the two prophecies in Mbh., 186-9. A detailed
comparison shows content as well as phrases in common, as for example between Hv. 3.3.12 and Mbh. 3.188.51 = 3.186.36; generally between Hv.
4.3-4 and Mbh. 3.186, 188. The Hv. account is shorter and more coherent, as well as more reasonable. For example, Mbh. 3.188.47-8 paralleled by
Mbh. 3.186.52-3 says on describing the evils of the dark ages that girls would give birth to children at the fifth or sixth year, males would beget them
at seven or eight, and that the limit of life would be sixteen years. The last two figures are 16 and 30 in Hv. 3.3.11 and 3.4.40. The general Pauranic list
of evils of the Kali age is entirely different. The relationship between these sources and the Puranas is very complicated; one possible explanation
would be that various local accounts were later arranged in uniform chronological sequence. Taxing Brahmins is naturally the supreme evil
(Manu-smrti 7.133), no matter how desperate the need!
21. Otto Rank: DerMythusvonderGeburtdesHelden,Versucheir\erpsycho\ogischen My thendeutung [2nd Edition, Wien, 1922]. Matter for the psycho-
analyst are also the excessive ritual purification of the Brahmana, the purely theoretical classification of metres many of which seem never to have
existed, the fantastically large number of years in someyuga systems, the minute divisions of space and time which seem well beyond the power of
definition of any instruments these theorists could even have imagined.
22. Apart from their dark colour, tradition also removes both Krsna and Arjuna from the Ksatriya caste, though they are fighters, cf. Panini 4.3.88-9. Of
course, the commentator here tries to explain this away by saying that being a divinity, Krsna could not be ranked as a Ksatriya.
23. Also, Majjhimanikaya, 51.
24. Against Brahmanic caste-superiority pretensions, cf. the Vasetthasutta which occurs both in the Suttanipata and the Majjhimanikaya. For all
Buddhistic references I have drawn extensively upon the Marathi writings of my father Prof. Dharmananda Kosambi; particularly Bhagavdn
Buddha (Nagpur, 1940—41) and Bauddha Samghaca Paricaya.
25. For the Vajjis or Licchavis, the Mahaparinibbanasutta of the Digha-nikdya. Under vratya, Macdonnell and Keith (note 9) show that
wandering non-ritual Bhrgu himself, according to Mbh., 15.30 (Vulgate) in spite of the Srnjaya Vaitahavyas being accursed in A Vpassages cited!
The canonical Sanskrit writings on gotra and pravara have been collected by P. Chentsal Rao: Gotrapra-varanibandhakadamba. Mysore (Govt.
Or. Lib. Series, Bibliotheca Sanskrita, 25), 1900. The introduction shows that the last ten of the eighteen official Brahmana clans, i.e. the
‘occasional (kevala) Bhrgus or Angirasas’ adopted Ksatriyas extensively. The current interpretation is, naturally, that these were originally
Brahmanas who had followed the trade of arms for a while and so had to be readopted into the priesthood, but a look at the genealogies shows
conclusively that they are Ksatriya by lineage. This means, clearly, assimilation of the priest-caste of the conquerors into the Bhrgu-Angiras clan
of the conquered.
20. Though it ranks as the appendix, actually this section of the Hv. at least is the prototype of the two prophecies in Mbh., 186-9. A detailed
comparison shows content as well as phrases in common, as for example between Hv. 3.3.12 and Mbh. 3.188.51 = 3.186.36; generally between Hv.
4.3-4 and Mbh. 3.186, 188. The Hv. account is shorter and more coherent, as well as more reasonable. For example, Mbh. 3.188.47-8 paralleled by
Mbh. 3.186.52-3 says on describing the evils of the dark ages that girls would give birth to children at the fifth or sixth year, males would beget them
at seven or eight, and that the limit of life would be sixteen years. The last two figures are 16 and 30 in Hv. 3.3.11 and 3.4.40. The general Pauranic list
of evils of the Kali age is entirely different. The relationship between these sources and the Puranas is very complicated; one possible explanation
would be that various local accounts were later arranged in uniform chronological sequence. Taxing Brahmins is naturally the supreme evil
(Manu-smrti 7.133), no matter how desperate the need!
21. Otto Rank: DerMythusvonderGeburtdesHelden,Versucheir\erpsycho\ogischen My thendeutung [2nd Edition, Wien, 1922]. Matter for the psycho-
analyst are also the excessive ritual purification of the Brahmana, the purely theoretical classification of metres many of which seem never to have
existed, the fantastically large number of years in someyuga systems, the minute divisions of space and time which seem well beyond the power of
definition of any instruments these theorists could even have imagined.
22. Apart from their dark colour, tradition also removes both Krsna and Arjuna from the Ksatriya caste, though they are fighters, cf. Panini 4.3.88-9. Of
course, the commentator here tries to explain this away by saying that being a divinity, Krsna could not be ranked as a Ksatriya.
23. Also, Majjhimanikaya, 51.
24. Against Brahmanic caste-superiority pretensions, cf. the Vasetthasutta which occurs both in the Suttanipata and the Majjhimanikaya. For all
Buddhistic references I have drawn extensively upon the Marathi writings of my father Prof. Dharmananda Kosambi; particularly Bhagavdn
Buddha (Nagpur, 1940—41) and Bauddha Samghaca Paricaya.
25. For the Vajjis or Licchavis, the Mahaparinibbanasutta of the Digha-nikdya. Under vratya, Macdonnell and Keith (note 9) show that
wandering non-ritual Aryans were meant, and this seems to be equivalent to the Vajjis, though naturally the Brahmanic connotation of vratya later
comes to be a low person, while the Licchavis remain Ksatriyas very high in social rank, even to a thousand years later, cf. Oxford Hist. Ind., 147-
8, and Samudragupta’s inscriptions in Fleet’s collection. See also J.W. Hauer: Der Vratya: Untersuchungen iiber die nicht-brahmanische
Religion Altindiens’, vol. i: die vratya als nichtbrahmanische Kultgenossenschaften arischerHerkunft (Stuttgart, 1927). It may be noted in this
connection that the noblest truths, aims, ways are indicated by the adjective arya in Buddhist scriptures. The new religion founded by the Buddha
looked to that branch of the Aryan tradition which (in spite of A V. XV) was not penetrated by the Brahmanas.
26. For the non-hereditary Sakka chief (king), see the story of Bhaddiya in the Cullavagga (vii) of the Vinaya Pitaka (Tr. H. Oldenberg, Sacred Books
of the East, Oxford, 1885, vol. xx, pp. 227-30); for Suddhodana and all his ‘courtiers’ setting their own hands to the plough, the introduction
(Nidana) to the Jataka stories (C. Warren, Buddhism in Translations, H.O.S., vol. 3, 1922, p. 54).
27. Remnants of totemism or an attempt to assimilate totems of invaders to preexisting gods may perhaps be seen in the animal vahanas of Hindu
gods.
28. Foraccounts of six othersects contemporary with the Buddha, cf. the Culasaropa-masutta of the Majjhima-nikaya; also the Samannaphalasamyutta;
the 63 sects of the Brahmajdlasutta represent a much later account.
29. F. E. Pargiter: The Purana Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age, Oxford, 1913, p. 22, v. 16, Pargiter himself is puzzled by rajanah ksatrabandhavdh
which he mistranslates on p. 69 as ‘kings with Ksatriya kinsfolk’.
30. Yama and the three flood-avataras are not the only such Indo-Mesopotamian affinities from literary sources. For example, timingila and
timingilagila, where the reduplicated ending must originally have been gala. The earliest Asuras are, of course, to be understood as Assyrians.
The Jatakas mention sailing to Babylon (Baveru); on the other hand, the Puranas show an acquiantance with the sources of the Nile which
surprised even their discoverer, Speke, but these documents were rewritten at a period much later than the one under discussion.
31. Canakya is the most famous of Brahmana ministers. For the Kanvayana kings, Pargiter, loc. cit., pp. 33-5, 71.
32. The seventh century emperor Harsa was Buddhist enough to pardon one who attempted to assassinate him, and his drama Nagananda is
Buddhistic; but he and members of his family also followed the cult of the goddess Gauri.
33. D.R. Bhandarkar, Indian Antiquary, XL, 1911, 7-37. The passing-over even to a higher caste is sanctioned by Manusmrti 10.64-5.
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