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

If the Brahmans had no rights upward, they had at any rate forced the Kshatriyas out of the first place; and they did not intend that the aristocratic position which they had obtained over the other orders, their privileges and advantages in regard to those beneath them, should rest on moral authority merely. The book of the law is never weary of impressing in every direction the pre-eminence of the Brahmans, the subjection of the other orders. But as the wisdom of the Brahmans was throughout unacquainted with the foundations and supports used by aristocracies elsewhere to acquire and maintain their position – as they were unable to create institutions of this kind – only one real and effective means remained for legalising and securing their importance, position, and privileges – and this was the exercise of penal jurisdiction. In the division of penances and punishments, according to the various orders, they attempted to bring the pre-eminence of their own order into a position recognised and established by law. This fact no doubt helped in causing the Brahmans to estimate the power of punishment so highly. "Punishment alone," says the book, "guarantees the fulfilment of duties according to the four castes; without punishment a man out of the lower caste could take the place of the highest." But here again there was a difficulty; it was not the Brahmans but the kings who in the first instance had to dispense justice; the application of the law depended on the princes.

Though, in general, it is a supreme principle of law that it shall be administered without respect of persons, that the same punishment for the same offence shall overtake every offender, be his rank and position what it may, the system of caste leads to an arrangement diametrically opposite. Throughout, the book of the law measures out punishment unequally, according to the rank of the castes, so that in an equal offence the highest order has as a rule to undergo the least punishment. This apportionment of punishment according to the castes is most striking in the case of injuries and outrages inflicted by members of the lower orders on the members of the higher. The Brahmans, and in a less degree the Kshatriyas and Vaiçyas, are protected by threats of barbarous punishments. The Çudra who has been guilty of injuring a Dvija by dangerous language, is to have his tongue clipped; if he has spoken disrespectfully of him, a hot iron is to be thrust into his mouth, and boiling oil poured into his mouth and ears. If a Çudra ventures to sit on a seat with a "twice-born," he is to be branded; if he lays hold of a Brahman, both hands are to be amputated; if he spits at a Brahman, his lips are cut off, etc. In actual injuries done to members of the higher castes by the lower, the members of the latter are doomed in each case to lose the offending member: he who has lifted up his hand, or a stick, loses his hand; he who has lifted up his foot, loses the foot. For slighter offences of language against a Brahman the Çudra is whipped, the Vaiçya is fined 200 panas, the Kshatriya, 100. If, on the contrary, a Brahman injures one of the lower castes he pays 50 panas to the Kshatriya, 25 to the Vaiçya, and 12 to the Çudra. If members of the same caste injure each other in word, small fines of 12 or at most 24 panas are sufficient. More unfair still are other privileges secured by the law to the Brahmans, – that in suits for debt they are never to be given up as slaves to the creditors; that no crime or transgression on the part of a Brahman is to be punished by confiscation of his property, or by corporal punishment. He is never, even for the worst crime, to be condemned to death; at the utmost he can only be banished.295 On the other hand, as has been remarked in the case of theft, the fine increases according to the caste of the offender, so that here we have a gradation in the opposite direction: the Brahman is fined eight-fold the sum paid by the Çudra in a similar case; and in loans the Brahman is allowed to receive only the lowest rate of interest – two per cent. In courts of law the Brahman was addressed differently, and asked to give his evidence differently, from the other orders; his oath is given in different terms. With Brahmans, who naturally come to maturity sooner than the other orders, the consecration by investiture takes place in the eighth year, with the Kshatriyas in the eleventh, with the Vaiçyas not till the twelfth. The holy girdle, the common symbol of the Dvija as opposed to the Çudra, must consist with the Brahmans of three threads of cotton, with the Kshatriyas of three threads of hemp, with the Vaiçyas of three threads of sheep's wool. The Brahman wears a belt of sugar-cane, and carries a bamboo staff; the Kshatriya has a belt of bow-strings, and a staff of banana-wood; the Vaiçya a girdle of hemp, and a staff of fig-wood. The staff of the Brahman reaches to his hair, that of the Kshatriya to the brow, that of the Vaiçya to the tip of his nose. This staff must be covered with the bark, must be straight, pleasing to the eye, and have nothing terrifying about it. The Brahman wears a shirt of fine hemp, and as a mantle the skin of the gazelle; the Kshatriya a shirt of linen, and the skin of a deer as a cloak; the Vaiçya a woollen shirt, and a goat-skin. Any one who is inclined to do a civility, must, says the book, ask the Brahman whether he is advancing in sanctity, the Kshatriya whether he suffers in his wounds, the Vaiçya whether his property is thriving, the Çudra whether he is in health.296

We cannot exactly ascertain what position the old nobility, the Kshatriyas, took up after the establishment of the new system. The increased power of the kings, the elevation of the priesthood, the change in the whole view of life, diminished their importance to a considerable degree. If in some small tribes the warlike nobility on the Ganges maintained its old position so far as to prevent the establishment of the monarchy, or removed it altogether, this was an exception.297 In the Panjab, which did not completely follow the development achieved in the regions on the Ganges, it was more generally the case that the nobility overpowered the monarchy, and drove out the old princes. This took place, no doubt, when the latter showed a desire to take up a despotic position. In the fourth century we find among "the free Indians," as the Greeks call them, numerous noble families in a prominent position. The book of the law allows that the Brahmans cannot exist without the Kshatriyas, but neither could the Kshatriyas without the Brahmans; salvation is only to be obtained by a union of the two orders: by this were Brahmans and Kshatriyas exalted in this world and the next.298 We have already remarked, that within their own caste the old families of the Kshatriyas occupy a prominent place.

According to the book, the members of all the castes, like every created being, fulfil duties imposed upon them, i. e. carry on the occupations allotted to them. The life of the Brahmans is to be devoted to the Holy Scriptures, the sacred services, the teaching of the Veda and the law (the latter could be taught by none but Brahmans), and, finally, to contemplation and penance in the forest. But how was it possible to keep the whole order of the Brahmans to the study of the Veda, to sacrifice and worship, when it was also necessary for them to find support? How could the whole order disregard the care of their maintenance, especially when it was a duty to bring up a numerous family, or give up every desire to amass property? True it is, that liberality to the Brahmans was impressed on the kings and the other castes as a supreme duty; the pupils of the Brahmans were bidden to support their teachers by gifts; and the law permitted the Brahmans to live by gifts, to beg, to gather corn or ears of rice. From the Buddhist sutras we know that the kings followed the commands of the law, and that a multitude of Brahmans lived at the royal courts. We also know from the Greeks that every house was open to the wandering Brahman, and in the market they were overburdened with presents of the necessaries of life. Greek and Indian accounts inform us that troops of Brahmans wandered through the land – a mode of life which in India is not the most unpleasant; and it is certain that a considerable number lived as anchorites in the forests. But these habits required that a man should give up all thoughts of wife and child, house and home; and this all could not undertake to do. On what, then, were the Brahman householders to live, who possessed nothing, and were without land sufficient for their support? There were only two means for keeping the whole order to the study of the Veda and the performance of sacrifice; either they must be provided with sufficient land, or they must be maintained at the cost of the state. Among the Egyptians the priesthood lived on the land of the temples; among the Phenicians and Hebrews, on the tithes of the harvest, paid to the temples; in the middle ages our hierarchy lived on its own land and people, on tithes and other taxes: but all these were political institutions, and the Brahman lawgivers had neither the capacity to discover them, nor had their states the power to establish and maintain them. Still less could refuge be taken in a law forbidding to marry; all Brahmans could not be allowed to live from youth up as anchorites in the forest, if the Brahmans were to continue to exist as a caste by birth, and it was on superiority of blood that their whole position rested.

Practical life bid complete defiance to doctrine. The law must be content to moderate in part, and in part to give up entirely the ideal demands, the principles and results of system in favour of the necessity for maintenance. It must allow that the Brahman householders, who possessed no property, might lead the life of the Kshatriya. This permission has been and is still used; at this time a great part of the native Anglo-Indian army consists of born Brahmans. If a Brahman could not earn a livelihood by service in war, he might lead the life of a Vaiçya, and attempt to maintain himself by tilling the land and keeping flocks. But if possible the Brahman must avoid tilling the field himself; "the work of the field depends on the help of cattle; the ploughshare cleaves the soil and kills the living creatures contained in it." If the Brahman cannot live as a farmer, or a herdman, he may live even by the "truth and falsehood of trade." But in regard to certain articles of trade, the book is inexorable, and though it cannot threaten trade in these with punishments from the state, it holds up the melancholy consequences of such an occupation as a terror. Trade in intoxicating drinks, juices of plants, perfumes, butter, honey, linen and woollen cloths, turns the Brahman in seven nights into a Vaiçya: trade in milk makes him a Çudra in three days. The Brahman who sells sesame-seeds will be born again as a worm in the excrement of dogs; and the punishment will even come upon his ancestors. The Brahman merchant, like the Vaiçya, must never lend money on interest – in other places, as has been mentioned, the law allows a low rate of interest (p. 240) – no Brahman must attempt to gain a living by seductive arts, singing and music, and he must never live by "the work of the slave – the life of the dog."299 The same exceptions are allowed by the law for the Kshatriya as for the Brahman, if he possesses no property and cannot acquire anything by the profession of arms. The Vaiçya, who cannot live by agriculture, or trade, or handicraft, is allowed to live the life of a Çudra. Hence there are the Brahmans of the Holy Scriptures and Brahmans by birth,300 and also Kshatriyas and Vaiçyas who belong to these orders by birth only, not by occupation. Thus new distinctions arose which must soon have become fixed and current.

If the law is compelled to make these large concessions, so contradictory to the system, it seeks in the opposite direction to maintain the distinctions of the castes as strongly as possible; the higher castes may descend to the lower, but no lower caste can ever engage in the occupation of the higher. Such interference is punished with confiscation of property and banishment. Still, even here, the law allows an exception, and that in favour of the lowest caste, the Çudras, whom the law rigidly keeps in the servitude imposed upon them by force of arms. The Çudra is meant for a servant; he who is not born a slave is to serve voluntarily for hire; he must first seek service with a Brahman, then with Kshatriyas, then with Vaiçyas. Blind submission to the command of his master is the duty of the Çudra. Yet if he cannot find service anywhere, he may support himself by handicraft; but the law adds, "it is not good for a Çudra to acquire wealth, for he will use it in order to raise himself to an equality with the other orders." The impure castes among the Çudras are not, for this very reason, to be employed among the Dvijas for labour in the house and field.

In the law the four castes are races divided from each other by creation. As in all distinctions of orders, so in India, the separation first applied to the men. The final point was not reached, the rigidity of the order was not complete, the caste did not exist, till the women also were included in the division, till the marriages between the orders ceased and were forbidden, till the free circulation of blood among the people was thus checked, and the classes stood towards each other as distinct races and tribes of alien blood. In the book of Manu we find two views on the connubium of the orders existing side by side, one more strict than the other. From the nature of the case, and the position which it occupies in the book of the law, the milder view is the older, the more strict the later. According to the older view caste is determined by descent from the father; a man belonging to the three upper castes, i. e. a Dvija, may take a wife from the Brahmans, Kshatriyas, or Vaiçyas, as he pleases; Çudra women only are excluded. In this sense the law lays down that Çudra wives are not suitable for men of the three upper classes, and wives of the three upper castes are not suitable for Çudra husbands. In order to transform this, the current custom, into a more severe practice, the law does not indeed forbid marriage with women from any other of the three higher castes, but it recommends that a maid of a man's own caste should be taken as his first wife; and after this he may proceed according to the rank of the castes. This recommendation met with more favour, it would seem, because a Çudra woman could be taken as a second wife. It is obvious that only a wife of equal birth could perform the sacrifices of the house with the lord.301 A Çudra woman could not be the first, i. e. the legitimate wife; the Brahman who married a woman of that caste would be expelled from his own.302 The essential rule, by which the later and stricter view seeks to remove the connubium existing among the three castes of the Dvijas is this: in all orders, without exception, the children born of women of that order remain participators in the order of the father. When this rule was carried out, the castes were finally closed. The law supported it by the doctrine that the children of mixed marriages, according as the father or mother belonged to this or that order, formed new divisions of the people. These divisions are impure because arising out of a sinful union, and they perpetuate the stain of their origin.303 The law mentions by name a whole series of impure castes of this kind, which must have been already in existence; it shows from what combinations they have arisen, and sets them up as a warning example against mixed marriages.

These impure castes, which are said to have arisen from the mutual connubium of the orders, were really, in part, tribes of the ancient population, who did not submit, like the majority of the Çudras, to the Aryas, and accept their law and mode of life, but either amalgamated with them and lived on in poverty after the manner of their fathers, or preserved a certain independence in inaccessible regions; in part they were Aryan tribes, which did not follow the development on the Ganges, and never adapted their mode of life to the Brahmanic system. These tribes are commanded by the law to carry on occupations which did not become the Dvijas,304 for some it prescribes that they must only make nets and catch fish; for others, that they must occupy themselves with hunting;305 from which it is clear that these were the original occupations of such branches of the population. From the marriage of a Brahman with a Vaiçya wife spring, according to the law, the Ambashthas,306 who in the Epos are spoken of as nations fighting in the ancient manner with clubs.307 From the marriage of a Brahman with a Çudra woman spring the Nishadas, whose vocation, according to the law, it is to catch fish.308 From the marriage of a Kshatriya with Çudra wives come the Ugras, who are to catch and kill animals living in holes;309 from the marriage of a Brahman with an Ambashtha, the Abhiras, whom we have already mentioned as cowherds at the mouths of the Indus;310 from the marriage of a Çudra with a Brahman woman comes the Chandala, "the most contemptible mortal." The Chandalas are a numerous non-Aryan tribe on the Ganges. The book lays down the rule that they are not to live in villages or cities, or to have any settled habitation at all. A Brahman is polluted by meeting them; they are distinguished by marks fixed for them by the king; and must not come into the towns except in the daytime, in order that they may be avoided. They cannot possess any but the most contemptible animals, dogs and asses, nor any harness that is not broken; they can only marry with each other. No one can have any dealings with them. If a Dvija wishes to give food to a Chandala beggar, he may not do it with his own hand, but must send it by a servant on a potsherd. Executions – which in the minds of the Aryans and the Brahmans were impure actions – were to be carried out by Chandalas, and the clothes of the persons executed are to be given to them; these and the clothes of the dead are the only garments which they may wear.311

We can easily see that the rank, allotted by the law to the so-called mixed castes, is taken from the degree of impurity assigned by the Brahmans to the mode of life followed by them. By excluding them from the other orders they compelled them to pursue these occupations for ever, and so kept them in their despised condition. As they were all branded with the stain of sinful intercourse between the castes, men shrank from marriages outside their own caste, and if such connections did take place, the children were thrust into the ranks of these despised orders, they were compelled to adopt their modes of life and occupations, and transmit them to their descendants. According to the theory lying at the base of these regulations on the mixed castes, the mixture is comparatively less impure in which men of higher castes are connected with women of lower, and that mixture is the worst and most impure in which women of the highest castes are united with men of the lowest. The children of a Brahman by a wife of the Kshatriya caste stand on the highest level, those of a Çudra by a Brahman on the lowest.312 The mixed castes, in their disposition and character, correspond to the better or worse combination, just as in their duties the vocation of the paternal caste is to be preserved in a descending line, and lower degree, e. g. the Ugra – the son of a Kshatriya by a Çudra – is to live by hunting, which is the vocation of a Kshatriya, but he is only to hunt animals which live in holes, etc. The mixture of the impure castes with the pure and other impure castes produces in turn new classes of men with special duties and special dispositions, such as the Abhiras. The system of mixed and consequently impure origin could not be very well applied to nations which, though notoriously of Arian origin, or forming independent states, led a life unsuited to the Brahmanic law; these the law allows to be of a pure stock, but considers that they are corrupted by neglect of their sacred duties. Among the degraded families of the Kshatriyas the law-book reckons the Cambojas, the Daradas, and the Khaças.313 The Cambojas were settled in the west, the Daradas to the north of Cashmere; the Khaças must be sought to the east of Cashmere in the Himalayas.314

With these views and fictions, with the actual and legal consequences assigned to them, the system of castes was consistently developed and extended over the whole population. All modes of life, classes, and occupations were brought into its sphere; the remnant of the natives, the refractory tribes of the Aryas, received their position in the Brahman state; and the Çudras were followed by a long list of orders in a yet more degraded position.

From the contradictory views of the book on the connubium of the orders it follows clearly that the castes were not completely closed at the time when the book was finished; but they were closed, and, it would seem, not long after. When the advantage of blood has been once brought into such striking significance it must go on making further divisions; new circles, distinguished by descent or vocation, must be marked off from others as superior, and form an order; similar vocations, when the occupation has once been connected with the caste, and the vocation with descent, combine within the castes into new hereditary corporations. This tendency to make new separations is supported by the law when it arranges those tribes as new castes beside the four orders, and allots to them on a certain system the descendants of mixed marriages, thus creating a number of new castes by origin and descent. This was further increased by a division of vocations within the chief orders. The Brahmans, who also clung to the Veda and the worship, naturally regarded themselves as in a better and higher position than those who descended to the occupations of the Kshatriyas and Vaiçyas, and kept themselves apart. The opposition between the schools which inevitably grew up among the priestly Brahmans in course of time, gradually caused the adherents of one school to close their ranks against the adherents of another. The Kshatriyas, who remained warriors, stood apart from those who became husbandmen; among the Vaiçyas, the merchants, the handicraftsmen, and the husbandmen formed separate classes. Hence the different professions and schools of the Brahmans and the Kshatriyas: the merchants, smiths, carpenters, weavers, potters, etc. separated themselves each from the other as hereditary societies, and as they only married within the society, they became in turn subordinate castes, in reference to each other. And as in spite of all commands marriages took place outside the castes, those who were rejected in consequence of such marriages, and the children of them, could only rank with others in a similar position, and must form a new caste. If the marriage took place outside the main caste the descendants of the person thus excluded from his old caste must join the impure castes, which were, or were supposed to be, of similar origin. The hereditary professional societies within the four castes remained members of them in so far as they carried on occupations approved by the book of the law; but such members as pursued forbidden and impure trades and transmitted them to their descendants, stood outside and far below the main castes, like the castes arising out of mixtures, partly real and partly fictitious. At present the Brahmans are divided into twenty-five different societies, which do not intermarry, and in part refuse to eat with each other; the Kshatriyas are divided into thirty-six societies similarly closed; the pure and impure Vaiçyas, the better and worse Çudras, are divided into some hundred groups.315 On a rough calculation it is assumed that now only about a tenth of the Brahmanic population of India carries on the occupation assigned in the law to the four great orders; the great majority in these castes has descended to the permitted vocations, and the greater part of the whole population belongs to the classes below the four chief orders.

We have already stated how closely the clans held together. The weight given by the caste system to pure blood did not suppress even among the Brahmans the pride in ancient and distinguished family descent. In the fourth century B.C. the Brahmans who continued to be occupied with the Veda and the sacred worship fell into forty-nine clans, which claimed to be derived from the saints of old time: Jamadagni, Gautama, Bharadvaja, Viçvamitra, Vasishtha, Kaçyapa, Atri, and Agastya. They were arranged in eight large tribes (gotra) named after these progenitors. At the consecration of the sacrificial fire the members of these clans invoked the series of their ancestors.316 We may assume the same pride in descent among the Kshatriyas. We shall see how definitely the book of the law and the forms of ritual require that the ancestors should be mentioned up to the great-great-grandfather in the suit for any maiden, and at this day the wealthy families in all the castes are desirous to conclude alliances with houses of ancient origin for their children.