The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6)

When victory has been won, the law advises the king, however weary he may be, to follow it up quickly. According to the regulations of the Veda, gold and silver found in the booty belong to the king, everything else to the man who has taken it. If the enemy's land is conquered an attempt must be made to secure the possession of it. The king must issue a proclamation to relieve all the inhabitants from alarm; he must worship the deities worshipped by the conquered land, and pay respect to the virtuous Brahmans in it. Under certain circumstances it is good to make distributions to the people; to carry off treasures arouses hatred, to distribute them excites love; each is worthy of praise or blame according to circumstances. Finally, the book utterly disregards the possible result of the excellent advice given by laying down the rule that the king may hand over the conquered district to a prince of the royal blood, and prescribe certain conditions with which he is to rule there as a vassal king. It is obvious that such relations must soon end in revolts. The position of the vassal king is too strong for obedience, and his strength is a temptation to acquire complete freedom and independence. Manu's doctrines are intended for these vassal kings also; they may apply them like the chief kings for their own benefit.

No regulations are given in the book for the succession to the throne. It only requires that a consecration shall take place on the accession of a new king. If the king feels that his end is near, he must distribute his treasures to the Brahmans; hand over the kingdom to his son, and seek death in battle; if there is no war, the old king must end his life by starvation. The precept that the king should seek death in battle is again a remnant of the old feeling; he must live and die like a Kshatriya.

The Epos and legends of the Brahmans are in complete agreement with the book of the law as to the necessity of monarchy, its objects and duties. It has been mentioned already how the Brahmans created a new king out of the body of the dead king Vena (p. 149), as a protection against the robbers who rose up on all hands. A land without a king, we are told in the Ramayana, is like a cow without a bull, a herd without a herdsman, a night without a moon, a woman who has lost her husband. There is then no property; men consume each other as one fish eats another. When there is no king Indra does not water the plains, the fields are not sown, the son does not obey the father, No rich man builds houses and lays out parks; no priest skilled in sacrifice brings offerings to the gods. The people do not dance at the festival, the minstrels are not surrounded by an audience. No maiden adorned with gold walks in the evening in the gardens, no elephant sixty years old stands in the ways with tusks adorned with bells. The peasant and the herdman cannot sleep securely with open doors; the traders are not safe in the streets. When there is no king the ceaseless sound of archers practising for battle is never heard.286 In the Mahabharata we are told of Yudhishthira's reign at Indraprastha that he ruled with great justice, protected his subjects as his sons, and conquered his enemies round about, so that every one in the land was without fear or distress, and could apply his whole mind to the fulfilment of religious duties. The kingdom received an abundance of rain at the proper time; all the inhabitants were rich, and testified to the virtues of the king in the abundance of the harvests, in the increase of the flocks, and in the great growth of trade. There was neither drought nor inundation; the parrots did not eat the corn; there were no swindlers, liars, or thieves in the land.

In the Epos also we find the kings dwelling in fortified cities and citadels. According to the Ramayana, Ayodhya is a city surrounded by high walls, with broad and deep trenches and strong gates; the gateways and the towers on the walls are occupied with archers; in the midst of the city was the royal citadel surrounded by walls, so lofty that no bird could fly over it, watched by a thousand warriors strong and courageous as lions. In the three first of the five courts of this citadel, young soldiers kept watch; in the two last, where the king and his wives dwelt, were old men. In the Epos the kings when old lay aside their crowns, as the book commands, and resign them to their sons. The aged Dhritarashtra of Hastinapura resigns the throne to Yudhishthira; Daçratba of Ayodhya wishes to give it up to Rama. Dhritarashtha and Yudhishthira end their days in the wilderness as Vanaprasthas, or penitents, in the manner prescribed in the book for every Dvija in his old age (p. 184). The ceremonial of consecration required by the book is described at great length in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Rice, white flowers, clods of earth, pieces of silver and gold, and precious stones are brought to Yudhishthira; he touches them in the traditional manner. Then fire, milk, honey, curdled milk, purified butter, the holy goblets, leaves and twigs of the sacred trees, and vessels with consecrated water are placed before the king. When the sacrificial fire has been kindled, Yudhishthira with Draupadi seats himself before it on a tiger's skin; the consecrating Brahman pours the libations into the sacrificial fire – cow's milk, sweet and curdled, and melted butter – and in order to purify the king and queen he pours the urine of cows on their heads and then lays cowdung upon them. Then the consecrated water is poured over them, and after this the music begins to sound, and the minstrels sing the praises of Yudhishthira and his ancestors. At the consecration of Rama the golden throne is set up, the yellow parasol and the two flappers of buffalo-tails, the tiger-skin, bow and sword are brought forward. The four-yoked chariots, the elephants, the great white buffalo, the lion with strong mane, the cows with golden ornaments on their horns, the flowers and the jars filled with water from the Ganges and the holy springs and pools, are made ready.287 Rama and Sita place themselves in beautiful garments in the portico of the palace, their faces to the east, and the people cry aloud: Long live the Maharaja (great-king) Rama; may his reign be prosperous and continue for ever! Then the Rishis come with jars full of consecrated water, say the solemn words, and pour the water upon the heads of Rama and Sita. Then the Brahmans do the same, the Kshatriyas, Vaiçyas, and Çudras, and all the remaining classes of the people. When Rama and Sita have changed their garments they return to their place in the portico; the yellow parasol is spread over Rama, and he is fanned with the two flappers. And the Brahmans and the people of Ayodhya came to bless Rama, and scattered rice in the husk and kuça-grass on his head, and Rama sent away the Brahmans with rich gifts, and the minstrels and dancers and dancing-girls were rewarded. The sutras of the Buddhists mention as the symbols of monarchy the turban and tiara, the sword, the yellow parasol, the flappers of buffalo-tails, and the parti-coloured shoes.288 In the Ramayana, Bharata, the younger brother, will not accept the throne in the place of his elder brother Rama, though commanded to do so by his father. Then Rama takes off the gilded shoes and hands them to Bharata, a symbol of his renunciation of the throne, which was in use even among the Germans.289 The virtuous Bharata is now compelled to reign; but he places the shoes on the throne, holds the yellow parasol over them, and causes them to be fanned by the first ministers, and before these shoes of his brother he takes counsel and administers justice.

The lecture which Rama gives his brother on the art of government is in complete harmony with the doctrines of the book of the law. He asks Bharata whether he is protecting the city of Ayodhya and all the cantons of his kingdom in a proper manner; whether he pays due respect to householders and proprietors, whether his judges give them justice? Is an accused chief set at liberty through bribery? Are the judges in any matter of law between rich and poor raised above the desire of gain? O Bharata, the tears shed by those who have been condemned unjustly, destroy the children and the flocks of him who governs with partiality. He asks further whether Bharata despises the Brahmans who are so given up to the satisfaction of the senses and the enjoyment of the world that they do not trouble themselves about the things of heaven – whether he despises men eminent in useless knowledge, and those who profess to be wise without having learned anything: whether he prefers one learned man to a thousand of the unlearned; ten thousand of the ignorant multitude will not be able to render him any service in his government. Does he employ distinguished servants in great matters, men of lower degree in smaller affairs, and the lowest in the least important? In affairs of great moment he must employ only those who have served his father and grandfather, who have not opened their hand to bribes; heroic and learned men, who are masters of their senses, and able to untie a knot. Dost thou despise the counsel of women, and conceal from them thy secrets? Or do thine own counsellors contemn thee, and the people, oppressed by excessive punishments? Dost thou honour those who are bold and skilful? Do thy servants and troops receive pay at the proper time? Are thy fortresses well provided with corn, water, weapons, and archers? Is the forest, where the royal elephants are kept, well chosen? Art thou well equipped with horses and female elephants? Hast thou store of young milch-cows? Is thy expenditure less than thy income? Dost thou bestow thy wealth on Brahmans, Kshatriyas, needy strangers? or lavish it on thy friends? Dost thou wake at the right time? Canst thou overcome sleep? Dost thou divide thy time properly between recreation, state business, and religious duties? Dost thou think at the end of the night on the way to become prosperous? Dost thou take counsel with thyself and with others also? Are thy resolutions kept secret? Do other princes know thy aims? Art thou acquainted with that which they would undertake? Are the plans formed in the councils of other princes known to thee and thy counsellors? The concealment of his counsels by his ministers is the source of success for a prince. He who does not remove an ambitious and covetous minister, who maligns others, will be himself removed. Is thine envoy a well-instructed, active man, able to answer any question on the moment? Is he a man of judgment who knows how to deliver a message in the words in which it is given to him? Art thou certain that thy officers are on thy side, if sent into foreign lands, and if none knows the commission given to another? Dost thou think lightly of enemies who, though weak and expelled from their country, may easily return? Dost thou seek to obtain land and wealth by all honest means? Dost thou bow down before thy spiritual leaders; before the aged, the penitent, the gods, strangers; before the holy groves and all instructed Brahmans? Dost thou sacrifice wealth to virtue, or virtue to wealth, or both to favouritism, covetousness, and sensuality? The prince who rules a kingdom with justice, when surrounded with difficulties, wins heaven when he leaves this world.

We can only fix in a very general way the date at which these prescripts of the book on the art of government, and the doctrines of the Epos so completely in agreement with them, came into existence. The sutras of the Buddhists and the accounts of the Greeks from the end of the fourth century B.C. exhibit to us the kingdom of India occupied with efforts which correspond in some degree to the views of the book and the descriptions of the Epos. If however we were to conclude from the despotic power to which the monarchy attained in the states on the Ganges, that the subject populations at that time or later were disconnected and reduced, without independent movement in any sphere of life – our conclusion would be completely wrong. As traditions, modes of worship and customs of the ancient time maintained themselves beside and in spite of the new doctrine of the Brahmans, so did remains of the old communities, of the old social and political life, maintain themselves against the omnipotence of the kings. These were the clans of the minstrels, formed naturally or by the adoption of pupils – which brought the old invocations from the Indus and preserved them – which on the Ganges sang the heroic songs, the Epos in its earliest form, and afterwards became combined into the priestly order, out of whose meditations rose the new system. These clans continued in the new states. The names represent in part different traditions of the doctrine, various schools and views. But even the clans of the Kshatriyas and Vaiçyas, united by the common worship of ancestors, existed on the Ganges. Only in them or in close local communities could those customs of law grow up and perpetuate themselves, to which reference is so frequently made in the book of the law. The spread of the system of castes, the accompanying tendency to perpetuate what has once come into existence, was not likely to injure the continuance of these clans. They exercised a very important supervision over the members; and by bringing the Brahmans to the funeral meals of the families, as prescribed in the book (p. 163), this supervision became an advantage to the new doctrine, and in any case assisted the Brahmans essentially in carrying out their system, just as to this day it helps in a higher degree to maintain that system. The book of the law lays down detailed regulations who is to be invited to the funeral feasts and the festivals for the souls of the departed, and who is to be excluded. Those are to be excluded who are not true to the mission of their caste, and neglect its obligations, who do not fulfil their religious duties, who pursue forbidden and impure occupations, e. g. the burying of the dead for hire, dancing as a trade, dog-breaking, buffalo-catching, etc.; those who suffer from certain bodily infirmities, and finally those who lead an immoral life; usurers, drunkards, gamblers, keepers of gambling and drinking houses, adulterers and burglars, thieves and incendiaries, every one of bad reputation and character.290 In this way the clans under the guidance of the Brahman assessors possessed the most complete censorship over the lives of the members, and a power of punishment from which there was no escape. The families could impose expiations and fines on any member who transgressed or failed to fulfil his religious, moral, or caste duties; if he refused to submit to these they could at a certain time expel him for ever out of the community, by excluding him from the funeral feast. The latter resolution of the family deprived the person on whom it fell of his entire social position; in fact, of his economical existence. It implied exclusion from the caste. No one could have any dealings with a person so expelled, otherwise he became infected by communion with him. He could not get his children married; after his decease no sacrifice for the dead assuaged the punishments which awaited him in the other world. Now as ever, the clans perform the ceremony of adopting the young Dvija into the caste and family by investiture with the sacred girdle; they still exercise this jurisdiction, and as a penalty for breach of the arrangement of castes, neglect of religious duties, drunkenness, slander, and other moral errors, they impose exclusion from the family and caste by overturning the water-jar and exclusion from the funeral feast. A sentence of social extinction is thus pronounced upon the expelled person. He is civically dead and despised. No one associates with him in any one relation; no one holds any communion with him. The members of his own family will not give him a draught of water after his expulsion; no member even of the lowest order shelters him, for by doing so he would break the law of caste. It is only by this self-government, this censorship of the clans, that the system of caste has been able to strike such deep roots, to resist every new doctrine, and the severest attacks of foreign tyranny; that the religion, character, and civilisation of the Indians continue to exist after centuries of oppression.

The corporate form of the village communities were not of a much later date than the authority of the clans over their members. Its early stages must go back at least as far as the settlement of the Aryas in the land of the Ganges, for we find it in the same form in the districts which were not occupied by the Aryas till later, in Malava (Malva), Surashtra (Guzerat), and to a considerable extent in the provinces of the Deccan. The village community possesses a definite property (mark) consisting of arable land, pasture, forest, and uncultivated soil. The book of the law orders the overseers of districts to take care that the boundaries of the properties are marked out by the planting of trees, by wells and altars. If a contention arises between two villages about the borders, they must be marked out afresh, according to the traces which can be discovered, and the declaration of witnesses taken in the presence of inhabitants of the village. These witnesses must take their oaths in red garments, with crowns of red flowers on their heads. If witnesses cannot be found in the contending neighbouring villages, the people who dwell in the open land, or the forest, must be taken; the cowherds, fishermen, hunters, bird-catchers, snake-hunters; and on their declaration the borders must be fixed and set down in writing.291 The community has its overseers, and the office is hereditary. He divides the quotas among the villagers, according to the measure and productiveness of the land; he also divides the uncultivated land and fixes the share in water allotted to each. He settles differences between the villagers, and manages the police, having even the power of imprisonment. As a reward for the labours of the office the overseer is in possession of a larger share in land, and receives taxes from the villagers, one or two handfuls, as a rule, from every measure of corn or rice in the harvest. But the overseer does not govern the community by his own power; he exercises all his functions surrounded by the community, who assemble under the great tree, and provide him with assessors, or deputies for settling quarrels. Beside the overseer the community has its Brahman, who has to point out the proper time for beginning every business – without such certainty the Hindu undertakes nothing – who narrates stories to the peasants from the Epos and legends, and in modern times at any rate is the school-master of the village. There are also other officers, the smith, and guardian of the soil, and even a dancing-girl, to whom, along with the overseer, land and taxes are allotted.292 In the sutras of the Buddhists we also hear of resolutions of the communities in cities, and corporations of merchants, who compel the members to pay respect to their rules by imposing fines;293 and Megasthenes tells us that the cities in the kingdom of Magadha were governed by six independent colleges. From this we may assume that the impulse to form associations and corporations was not unknown to the cities on the Ganges: we are however without any information as to the extent of these corporations, or the length of time during which they were able to maintain themselves against the power of the kings. The advice of the book that the king should place chief overseers over the cities has been mentioned above (p. 215). On the other hand, the village communities remain intact in their old form till this day, and they with the clans form the principal entrenchment behind which the old Indian character has maintained itself against native and foreign despotism. The change of princes or government has little influence on the village communities; they manage their own affairs independently: the business rarely amounts to more than an increase or diminution in taxes. The violence of the princes fell on the surrounding districts, not on quiet humble villages; it was only the tax-gatherer and the overseer of the districts that they had to fear. But even if specially bad times came, if invasion reached and devastated the village, and the inhabitants were slaughtered or driven out, all who survived the sword and famine returned, or their children returned, to the land they had left, rebuilt their huts, and began again to cultivate the fields which their fathers had cultivated from immemorial antiquity.

In spite of the violence and barbarity of native kings and foreign conquerors, and the severe claims made upon them here and there, the Indians in their clans and village communities possessed a considerable share of freedom and self-government in the personal relations of life; this was the case with the majority of the cultivators of the soil, and the householders of all the upper castes. From the worship of the ancestors, the combination of families, there grew up within the castes of the Brahmans, the Kshatriyas, and the Vaiçyas a pre-eminence and favoured position for those families which claimed to be not only of purer, but also of older and nobler origin than the rest. In the circles of the separate castes this aristocracy took the place of the ancient aristocracy of the Kshatriyas. However little weight might be attributed to it by the kings, the example and pattern of these families had great influence on the lower members of the caste. In later centuries the importance of this aristocratic element was strengthened by the fact, that in the land of the Ganges the office became hereditary to which the princes had to transfer the collection of land-taxes or taxes generally in the various districts of the land. Thus the tax-gatherers were enabled to perpetuate their functions in these families; they oppressed the village communities, from which they took the taxes till they became their serfs, and thus in course of time they reached an influential and important position, which they were able to maintain with success, and have maintained in all essentials to this day.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CASTES AND THE FAMILY

The book of the law was the canon of pure conduct, and the holy order of the state and society, which the Brahmans held up before the princes and nations on the Ganges. They made no attempt to get the throne into their own hands; they had no thought of giving an effective political organisation to their caste; they did not seek to set up a hierarchy which should take its place by the side of the state, or rise superior to it, and thus secure such obedience for their demands among clergy and laity as would ensure the carrying out of the commands of the book. For this the Brahmans had not sufficient practical or political capacity; they were too deeply plunged in their hair-splitting and fanciful speculations, in their ceremonial and their penances. They were content with demanding the place of assessor or president at the funeral feasts in the families of the Kshatriyas and Vaiçyas, the influence of which position went far beyond their expectations; with recommending members of their order as ministers, judges, and magistrates to the king; with requiring that he should protect the Brahmans as his sons, provide for their support, be greatly liberal to them, abstain from imposing taxes on learned Brahmans, and maintain their advantages and rights against the other classes. If a Brahman had no heirs, the king must not take his property, but present it to the members of the order, and give to a Brahman any treasure which he may happen to find. In the epic poetry an exaggerated attempt is made to bring this liberality plainly before the mind: the Brahmans acquire hundreds of thousands of cows, treasures without end, and the whole earth.294 But all these commands are only wishes; as a fact the Brahmans had no other status as against the kings than the respect which their educational knowledge of the doctrine, their acquaintance with the forms and ritual of sacrifice, gave them: they had only the moral influence which their dogma and their exhortations could exercise on the heart of the king, the power of the faith which they could excite in their disciples. Their power, as we have seen, they knew how to support by their views on the merit acquired by the king in this and the next world by reason of his good works towards the Brahmans, by the fear of the punishments in hell and the regenerations, with which the book of the law so liberally threatens all who despise Brahmans. But they had no external means for enforcing obedience to their law, respect for their purifications, expiations, and penances, in case it was not rendered willingly. They did not extend their power beyond the limits of the conscience of the king and the people. They were as absolutely the subjects of the king as the other orders; no political limitations, no institutions, checked the authority of the king in its operations on the Brahmans; and the knowledge of the Veda and the law was accessible to him. The princes held up in the Epos as patterns are praised for their knowledge of the holy Scriptures and the law. The kings, not the Brahmans, offer the great sacrifices; but they cannot offer them without the Brahmans, the Purohita (p. 202), and other priests. This position of the Brahmans at the side of the king, and that which they subsequently obtained by the side of the people in the clans, enabled them by moral means, by conviction and faith, to shape the life and politics of the Indians according to their system, and establish a lasting dominion over them.