No More Learning

110 (#144) ############################################

110
(CH.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
were
the Buddha and who therefore reigned in the sixth century B. c. But the
suggestion is not a happy one. In the Buddhist text Ajātasattu never appears
as king of any other place than Magadha, and the name is merely an
epithet, 'he who has no foe,' which could be applied to any king, though it
may well be that the Ajātasattu of Magadha gladly borrowed an epithet
which a king of Kāçi had made famous. Other kings of Kāçi were Dhrita-
rāshtra, whose defeat by a Bharata has been mentioned above, and
Bhadrasena, a descendant of Ajātaçatru.
It is very noticeable that the relations of Kāçi and the Bharatas seem
to have been those of war; and there is evidence of some aversion existing
between the Kosala-Videhas and the Kāçis on the one hand and the Kuru-
Pañchālas on the other. It is clear enough that the Brāhmanical tradition
came to the Kosala-Videhas from the Kuru-Pañchāla country; but the
question remains whether the Āryan tribes, who occupied Oudh and Tirhut,
a branch of the Kuru-Pañchālas or men who originally settled
in the Kuru-Pañchāla country or on its borders and were pushed eastwards
by the pressure of the Kuru-Pañchālas. The evidence is not sufficient to
pronounce any opinion on either view, and, as we have seen, still less to
show that the Kurus were distinct from the Pañchālas as a different branch
of the Āryan invaders of India.
Much more definitely still beyond the pale were the people of
Magadha, which serves with Anga in the Atharvaveda as a symbol of a
distant land. The man of Magadha is dedicated, in the account of the
symbolic human sacrifice given in the Yajurveda, to ‘loud noise', suggesting
that the Magadha country must have been the seat of minstrelsy, an idea
supported by the fact that in later literature a man of Magadha is the desig-
nation of a minstrel. If, as has been suggested, the Kikațas of the Rigveda
were really located in Magadha, the dislike of the country goes back to the
Rigveda itself. The cause must probably have been the imperfect Brāh-
manisation of the land and the predominace of aboriginal blood, which
later in history rendered Magadha the headquarters of Buddhism. It is
significant that the Buddhist texts show a subordination of the Brāhman to
the Kshatriya class which has no parallel in the orthodox literature. It is
clear however that Brāhmans sometimes lived there, but that their doing so
was a ground for surprise.
The man of Magadha is brought into close connexion with the Vrātya
in a mystical hymn in the Atharva veda which celebrates the Vrātya as a
type of the supreme power in the universe. A more connected account of
the Vrātya is found in the Pañchavimaça Brāhmaṇa of the Sāmaveda and
a
1
1
1 See Hoernle Osteology, p. 106. For arguments against, see Keith, Z. D. M. G. ,
vol. LXII, pp. 138. 9.


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V]
SOCIAL CHANGES
111
the Sūtras of that Veda? . It is clear that, as their name suggests, they were
persons regarded as outcasts; and ceremonies are described intended to
secure them admission into the Brāhmanical fold. The description of the
Vrātyas well suits nomad tribes; they are declared not to practise agricul-
ture, to go about in rough wagons, to wear turbans, to carry goods and a
peculiar kind of bow, while their garments are of a special kind. Their sense
of justice was not that of the Brāhmans, and their speech, though it seems
Āryan, was apparently Prākritic in form, as is suggested by the significant
remark that they called what was easy of utterance hard to speak ; for the
Prākrits differ from Sanskrit essentially in their efforts to avoid harsh conso-
nantal combinations. Where they were located is not certain; for their habits
would agree well enough with nomads in the west, but the little information
which we have seems fairly enough to lead to the conclusion that some at
least of the Vrātyas were considered to be dwellers in Magadha.
There is little to be said of other tribes. The Vidarbhas are known
through one of their kings who received certain knowledge from the mythi-
cal sages Parvata and Nārada, and through a special kind of dog found in
their country. The list of kings who performed the horse-sacrifice includes
the Çvikna king, Rishabha Yājñatura. Mention has been made above of
,
the Pārāvatas, who were found on the Jumna ; and the Kekayas with their
prince Açvapati, and the Balhikas were located in the far north. The
temptation to transform the name of the latter into a sign of Irānian influ-
ence must be withstood, as it rests on no sure basis and we have seen
Balhika as part of the name of a Kuru prince. An early Sūtra refers to
Çaphāla, the kingdom of Rituparna. The Andhras, and other tribes men-
tioned by the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa as outcasts, were probably still Dravidian
in blood and speech, though Mundā speaking tribes may have been mingled
with them as the name Çabara suggests. The Angas, too may have been
comparatively little affected by the influence of the Āryan culture. It has
been conjectured that in Magadha the wave of Āryan civilisation met with
another wave of invasion from the east; but tempting as the suggestion is,
it cannot be supported by anything in the Vedic literature. 2
As was to be expected, society was far from unchanged in this period
of active Aryan expansion. As we have seen, there is good reason to believe
that in the period of the Rigveda the priesthood and the nobility were here-
ditary. This view receives support from the fact that similar class distinc-
tions are to be found in other Indo-European communities, such as the
patrician gentes in Rome, the Eupatridae of Athens, the nobles of early
1 Charpentier, V. 0 J. , vol. XXV, pp. 355 sq. , sees in the Vrātyas the precursors
of Civaites of to-day. But see Keith, J. R. A S. , 1913, pp. 155 sq.
2 See Pargiter, J. R. A. S. , 1908, p. 852. Oldenberg, Buddha), p. 10, thinks that
the Añga, Magadha, Kāci, Kosala, and Videha tribes were earlier Aryan immigrants.


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112
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC. [CH.
Germany, the earls of the Anglo-Saxons, and the still closer parallel of the
Irānian classes of Athravas and Rathaesthas, 'priests' and 'warriors. It
may even be that these distinctions are earlier than the severance of the
Indo-Irānians, if not as old as the union of the Aryan peoples. But in this
period there comes into existence a new factor, the introduction of divisions
among the ordinary freemen, the Vaiçyas, and the development of a large
and complicated system of caste which converts the simple distinction of
Vaiçya and Çūdra into an ever-increasing number of endogamous hereditary
groups practising one occupation or at least restricted to a small number of
occupations. This result was certainly far from being reached in the period
of the Brāhmaṇas, but the tendency of social or racial distinctions to harden
into castes is already apparent. In this development there must have been
two main influences : the force of occupation is later revealed clearly enough
in the Pāli texts, and another interesting case is supplied by the Brāhmaṇas
themselves. In the Taittiriya Brāhmaṇa the Rathakāras, ‘chariot makers,'
appear as a special class along with the Vaiçyas ; and in this special position
we can see how the chariot makers, the type of skilled workers in the
Rigveda, have, through their devotion to a mechanical art, lost status as
compared with the ordinary freeman. The influence of the aborigines must
also have been very strong, as intermarriage proceeded. To be born of a
female Çūdrā was a disgrace with which Kavasha and Vatsa were taunted
by their priestly contemporaries : contact with the aborigines seems to have
raised questions of purity of blood very like those which at present agitate
the Southern States of the United States or the white people in South Africa.
In the Rigveda, restrictions on intermarriage seem to have been of the
simplest kind, confined to rules such as those prohibiting marriage of
brother and sister or father and daughter. In the Sūtrās the rules are still
not quite rigid ; but they insist that there shall be no marriage with agnates
or cognates, and they require that a man must either marry in his own caste,
or if he marries out of his caste, it must be into a lower caste. But while
some authorities so lay down this rule as to allow the Brāhman to marry
into the next two lower castes, the Kshatriya and the Vaiçya, and the
Kshatriya to marry into the Vaiçya caste, others also permit marriage with
Çūdrās, and therefore allow a Vaiçya to marry into that caste.
As might be expected, the Brāhmaṇa period presents us with a stage
intermediate between the rules of the Sūtras and the laxity of the Rigveda.
The rule as to marriage within the circle of the cognates and agnates seems,
by the time of the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa, to have extended only to the prohi-
bition of marriage with relations of the third or, according to others, of the
fourth degree. Similarly in the Brāhmaṇas, while we have no reason to
doubt that priesthood and nobility were hereditary, these castes seem to have
been free to intermarry with the lower castes including the Çūdra, as the


## p. 113 (#147) ############################################

V ]
THE FOUR GREAT CLASSES
113
>
cases of Vatsa and Kavasha cited above indicated. The marriage of a
Brāhman with the daughter of a king is attested by the case of Sukanyā, the
daughter of Çaryāta, who married the seer Chyavana.
The question how far change of caste was possible raises difficult
problems. The evidence of any change is scanty in the extreme. The most
that can be said is that it does not seem to have been, impossible. Thus in
the Rigveda, as we have seen, Viçvāmitra is a priest, the Purohita of
the king Sudās, but in the Pañchavimça and the Aitareya Brāhmaṇas he is
treated as of royal descent, of the family of the Jahnus. The Pañchavimça
Brāhmaņa also speaks of certain persons as royal seers, and the later
tradition, preserved in the Anukramaņi or 'index' to the composers of the
Rigveda, ascribe hymns to such royal seers, in some cases at least without
any real foundation. Yāska, in one instance, represents a prince, Devāpi,
as sacrificing for his brother Çamtanu, the king ; but here we can see from
the passage of the Rigveda on which his narrative is based that he has no
warrant for this theory. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa a king, Tiçvantara
sacrifices without his priests, the Cyāparņas; but the case has no cogency,
for the mention of other priests in the context suggests the natural
inference that he used one or other of these groups. Some kings are
mentioned in the Panchaviņça Brāhmaṇa and elsewhere as having been
great sacrificers ; but this may mean no more than that they were the patrons
of the sacrifice, the normal part of the king. We, come nearer to contact
with fact in the concurrent stories of the Upanishads which show kings like
Janaka of Videha, Açvapati king of the Kekayas in the Punjab, Ajātaçatru
of Kāçi and Pravāhaņa Jaivali of Panchāla disputing with and instructing
Brāhmans in the lore of the brahman, the unity which is the reality of the
world. Very possibly this attribution is mainly due to considerations of the
advantage of conciliating the kings who were the patrons of the new
philosophy ; but, in any case, there is no reason to deny that kings could
and did take interest in intellectual movements, and we cannot from such
facts infer that there was any possibility of interchange of caste : we cannot
say that, if a king became a seer, as the Jaiminīya Upanishad Brāhmaṇa
asserts in one case, it really meant that he was regarded as ceasing to
belong to the kingly caste, any more than we can say that, if a priest became
king, as was not unknown later at least, he thereby suffered any loss of his
priestly position. One case of interest remains, that of Satyakāma Jābāla
who was accepted as a pupil by a distinguished priest because he showed
promise, although all he could tell of his ancestry was that he was the son of
a slave girl ; but, evidently, his father might have been a Brāhman, and the
case is only of value as negativing the idea of any natural rigidity of
institutions in the Vedic age. The history of later India shows how rigid
distinctions might be in theory but how ingeniously they might in practice be
a


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114
[CH.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHM AŅAS, ETC.
evaded in the individual case. What is more significant, perhaps, is that
there is no instance recorded in the Vedic texts of a Vaiçya rising to the rank
of priest or a prince: the two upper hereditary classes might to some degree
permit close relations, but they seem to have regarded the commoner as
definitely beneath them.
The relations of the four great classes of castes are summed up from
the point of view of the Brāhman in a passage of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa'.
In that passage the Kshatriya is taken as the norm, and the other castes
are defined according to the relations which they bear to him.
The Brāhman is 'a receiver of gifts, a drinker of the Soma, a seeker of
food, and liable to removal at will. ' We can distinguish in this period two
classes of Brāhmans, the priests who, as Purohitas of the king or belonging
to his encourage, took part in the vast sacrifices, some of them lasting for at
least a year, which they offered for their masters, and the priests of the
village who lived a humble and more restricted existence, except when they
might be called on to serve at the sacrifice instituted by some rich noble or
merchant. In both cases the priest was, in the long run, at the mercy of the
political power of the king. To the spiritual claims of the Brāhmans, so
proudly asserted at the ceremony of the royal consecration, when the king is
announced to the people as their king but it is added that the Soma is the
king of the Brāhmans, must be opposed the practical power of the king.
The Vaiçya is described as 'tributary to another, to be lived on by
another, and to be oppressed at will. From the point of view of the
Kshatriya this indicates the fact that the exactions of the king from the
commoners of the tribe were limited only by practical considerations of
expediency: the commoner had no legal right to his landholding or
to his private property if the king decided to take them from him ;
and, if he was allowed to retain them he paid for them in tribute and in
the duty of supporting others. This refers, no doubt, to the king's
privilege of assigning to his nobles the right to receive food from the
common people, and thus of making provision for the maintenance of
the nobility who assisted him in the protection of the country, and in the
administration and the conduct of justice. By this means the nobles came
more and more to occupy the position of landholders under the king,
while the Vaiçyas approximated to the position of tenants. Moreover, the
nobles may well have received from the king, as a result of successful on-
slaughts on the aborigines, grants of conquered lands and slaves, which they
would hold in full proprietorship, subject to the political authority of the
king. Among the Vaiçya, again, distinctions were growing up: that originally
the agriculture was carried on by Aryan tillers is certain ; but in the period
of the Brāhmaṇas, the position was changing gradually; and, for the peasant
1 l'edic Index, vol. II, p. 255.


## p. 115 (#149) ############################################

V]
THE ÇŪDRAS
115
working on his own fields, was being substituted the landowner cultivating
his estate by means of slaves, or the merchant carrying on his trade by the
same instrumentality, though we cannot with any certainty say how far
this process was proceeding. The industrial workers, like the chariot
makers, the smiths, the tanners, the carpenters, were sinking in estimation
and forming distinct castes of their own.
On the other hand, the Çūdra was approximating more and more to
the position to which the humbler freeman was being reduced. In the
passage referred to, he is still described as 'the servant of another, to be
expelled at will and to be slain at will’; but in the Sūtras we find that while
the Vaiçya has a wergeld of 100 cows, the Çūdra has a wergled of 10 cows ;
and, even if we assume that this is merely for the benefit of his master—which
is very doubtful- still unquestionably the growing complication of the social
scheme was abolishing the relation of simple slavery. Slaves proper there
were, as we see in Buddhist texts ; but, where whole tribes were reduced to
subjection, the tendency must have been to assign villages and their inhabi.
tants to the king and to the nobles, sometimes, perhaps, also, though in a less
degree to the commoners who at this period must still have formed the bulk
of the army. While some of the aboriginal inhabitants would thus become
slaves pure and simple, the rest would rather stand in the relationship of serfs ;
and as we have seen, there is reason to suppose that in many cases the true
Vaiçyas also were approximating to the position of tenants of the nobles.
There is an interesting parallel in the early history of England, where the
ordinary freeman gradually fell into feudal dependence on his superiors, while
the slave has gradually acquired the position of a serf, and became more
and more assimilated to the position to which the freeman had sunk.
This ambiguous position of the Çūdra is amply recognised in the Vedic
texts : on the one hand, he is emphatically regarded as being impure and
not fit to take part in the sacrifice : after consecration, in some cases, the
mere speaking to a Cúdra is absolutely forbidden. He was not allowed even
to milk the cow for the milk needed for the offering to Agni. In the
Vājasaneyi Samhitā illicit connexions between Āryan and Çüdra are severely
reprobated ; but, in other places, sin, against Ārya and Çūdra is referred to,
prayers are uttered for the glory of Arya and Çūdra, and we learn of rich
Çūdras. The Sūtras, while they emphasise many points not attested by the
Brāhmaṇa texts, such as the danger of sitting near Çūdras, their exclusion
from the study of the Veda, and the prohibition of eating food touched by
them, yet recognise that they may be merchants or indeed exercise any trade.
It seems probable enough that among the çudras themselves there
were rules of endogamy; for we may generally assume, in the absence of any.
thing to the contrary in the texts, that the Vedic Indians and the aborigines
alike married within the tribe. The Çūdras seem often to have been subju.
2


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116
[ch.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
gated by whole tribes, such as the Baindas, the Parņakas, the Paulka sas,
and perhaps the Chandālas, who may originally have been members of small
and degraded tribes living mainly by fishing or hunting : such tribes have
survived in the Central Provinces and near the Himālayas until the present
day, and they must have been much more numerous in the first millennium
BC. Thus from below as well as from above, from the practices of the
conquered aborigines as well as from the class prejudices of the Āryans,
may have come the impulse to the development of caste.
From the political point of view the chief characteristic of the new
order was the growth in the power of the king. We must not assume that,
even in this period, there were great kingdoms. It is true that the horse-
sacrifice as reported in the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa and in the royal consecra-
tion of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, both of which passages are late, presuppose
that the kings who performed it set up claims to imperial dignity, and that
they had won the proud title of conquerors of the whole earth, which is
applied to them. But real conquest seems not to have been meant ; and,
though the evidence above given proves that there was considerable
amalgamation of tribes and the formation of larger kingdoms than those in
the period of the Rigveda, yet it is significant that even the Kuru-Pañchālas,
and still less the Kosala-Videhas, never amalgamated into single kingdoms.
We may, however, safely hold that the king now ruled in many cases a much
larger realm than the princes of the Rigveda. The hereditary character of
the monarchy is clearly apparent : in one case, that of the Sțiñjayas, we
hear expressly of a monarchy which had lasted ten generations. The term
Rājaputra, ‘son of a king,' is now found together with the older Rājanya,
‘son of a king,' is now found together with the older Rājanya, which
probably covers the nobles as well as the king and his family. The
importance of the kingly rank is emphasised by the elaborate rite of
the royal consecration, the Rājasūya. The king is clad in the ceremonial
garments of his rank, is formally anointed by the priest, steps on a tiger
skin to attain the power of the tiger, takes part in a mimic cattle raid,
assumes the bow and arrow, and steps as a conqueror to each of the four
quarters, an action paralleled in the coronation of the Hungarian king. A
game of dice is played in which he is made the victor. A list of kings who
were thus consecrated is given in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa: in all but details
it coincides with the list given in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa of those
who performed the horse-sacrifice.
At the royal consecration the entourage of the king played an
important part. The list of Ratnins 'jewels,' given by the Taittirīya, texts,
consists of the Brāhman, i. e. the Purohita, the Rājanya, the Mahishi, the
first wife of the four allowed to the king by custom, the Vāvātā, ‘favourite
wife, the Parivșiktī, 'discarded wife,' the Sūta, “charioteer,' the Senāni,
a


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V]
OFFICIALS
117
‘commander of the army,' the Grāmaņi, 'village headman,' the Kshattri,
‘chamberlain,' the Samgrahītņi, 'charioteer' or 'treasurer,' the Bhāgadugha,
'collector of taxes' or 'divider of food,' and the Akshāvāpa, 'superintendent
of dicing' or thrower of dice. ' The Çata patha Brāhmaṇa has also the
‘huntsman' and the 'courier,' while the Maitrāyaṇi Samhitā adds the
Takshan, 'carpenter,' and Rathakāra, ‘chariot-maker. ' In an older list of
eight Viras, 'heroes,' given in the Panchavimça Brāhmaṇa Care found
the brother, son, Purohita, Mahishi, Sūta, Gramani, Kshattſi, and Sam-
grahitri. We are faced, in the interpretation of the names of several of
these officers, with the doubt whether we are to recognise in them merely
courtiers or public functionaries. The Sūta is according to native tra-
dition the 'charioteer' ; but it seems much more probable that he was at
once a herald and a minstrel, and to this conclusion the inviolability, which
in one passage is attributed to him, clearly points. The Grāmaņi has
already been met with as a military official in the period of the Rigveda.
Probably at this epoch a Grāmaņi was, both for civil and military purposes,
at the head of each village, owing, it may be conjectured, his position to
the king, while the Grāmaņi par excellence presided over the city or village
where the royal court was situated. It is also far from unlikely, despite
the silence of the texts, that the civil functions of the Grāmaņi were the
more important ; for the post is emphatically declared in several places
to represent the summit of the ambition of the Vaiçya. If later analogy
is to help us, we may conjecture that the Grāmaņi formed the channel
through which the royal control was exercised and the royal dues received.
It may well be then that the household officers, besides their more primitive
functions, carried out the important duties of receiving and disbursing
the revenues which the king thus obtained ; and on them must have fallen
;
the duty of seeing that the supplies, which the Vaiçyas were required to
provide for the maintenance of the king's household, were duly forthcoming.
The condition of these officers is indeed probably to be compared with
that of the household of the early English and Norman kings.
An officer, not included in the list of the Ratnins but often mention-
ed in the texts of the period, was the Sthapati ; and we learn that it was
the Sthapati of Dushtaritu who restored him to the kingdom of the Sținja-
yas after he had been expelled thence by his subjects. He may have been
a governor of part of the kingdom , but the more likely interpretation of
the term is 'chief judge,' an official who doubtless combined executive as
well as judicial functions. Later however in the Sūtras we hear of a Nishā.
da-Sthapati which may mean a governor of Nishādas,' apparently the ruler
of some outlying aboriginal tribes, who had been reduced to subjection and
placed under the royal control.


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118
[CH.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
Of the actual functions of the king we here little detail. He still led
in war, the Kuru-Pañchāla princes sallied forth to raid in the dewy season
and returned in the hot weather as a matter of coursebut the Senāni
appears as leader in charge under him. From the Sūtras and from a stray
reference in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, he seems to have taken a very active
part in the administration of the criminal law. There can be no doubt
that he controlled the land of the tribe. It is not, however, necessary
to ascribe to this period the conception of the r. yal ownership of all the
land, though it appears in the Greek sources from the time of Megasthenes
downwards, and is evidenced later by the law-books of the time. He
had, it is true, the right to expel a Brāhman or a Vaiçya at will,
though we do not know expressly that he could do this in the case of a
Kshatriya. But these considerations point to political superiority rather
than to ownership proper ; and we may assume that, when he gave grants
of land to his retainers, he granted not ownership but privileges such as the
right to receive dues and maintenance from the cultivators. There is a
clear distinction between this action and the conferring of ownership ; and
it
may
be doubted if the actual gift of land was approved in this epoch :
the only case of which we hear is one reported in the Çata patha and the
Aitareya Brāhmaṇas, in which the king Viçvakarman Bhauvana gave land to
the priests who sacrificed for him, but the Earth itself rebuked his auction.
It is more probable that, at this time, the allotment of land was determined
by the king or the noble to whom he had granted rights of superiority
according to customary law, and that gifts not in accordance with this
law were disapproved. It is hardly necessary to point out the close
similarity between such a state of affairs and that existing at the present
day in parts of West Africa, where kings have introduced for purposes of
personal gain the practice of dealing as absolute owners with lands, which,
according to the strict system of trible law, they had no power to allocate
save in accordance with the custom of the tribe. Nor is it inconsistent
with this view that the king had an arbitrary power of removing a subject
from his land. That power flowed from his sovereignty, and though
disapproved was acquiesced in, we may presume, just as in West Africa ;
while the dealing of kings with the land by way of absolute ownership
was regarded as a complete breach of the tribal law, the actual removal
from his land of any individual was recognised as a royal prerogative, even
if the power were misused.
In curious contrast with the comparative wealth of information regard.
ing the king, is the silence of our texts on the assembly of the people. the
samiti or the sabhā is not rarely mentioned in these texts ; and we cannot
assume that the assembly had lost its power, though it may have diminish-
ed importance. Even this, however, we cannot absolutely assert ; for we


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V]
JUDICIAL PROCEDURE
119
hear so often of expelled kings that we must believe that the people were
far from obedient to a yoke which rested on them too heavily. But there
must have been in the extension of the realm a tendency to diminish the
possibility of frequent meetings of the samiti, and accordingly some
diminution in its control over the state. At any rate, there are indications,
if no conclusive proof, that there was growing up within the members of
the sabha a distinction between those who attended only at the great
meetings and the sabhāsads, or 'assessors', who attended regularly; and it
may be that for judicial purposes the activity of the sabhā was entrusted
to a smaller number, the Homeric gerontes, unless indeed we are to trace
judicial functions to an origin in voluntary arbitration. 1
On judicial matters we learn but little more than in the preceding
period. Serious crimes like killing an embryo, the murder of a Brāhman,
and the murder of a man occur in lists of sins together with minor defects,
such as the possession of bad nails. Other more serious crimes mentioned
are stealing gold and drinking the surā, while treachery to the king is
recognised as a capital offence. There are traces of a growing sense of
justice in the discussions which are recorded in the case of the accidental
death of a boy through the carelessness of the king and the Purohita, who
were driving in a chariot. But the procedure in cases of crime is still quite
uncertain : the king may have presided and the tribe or the assessors may
have judged ; but for this result we can rely only on the fact that the king
is said to wield the rod of justice, and that in the case of the accidental death
of the boy the matter is stated to have been referred to the Ikshvākus
who decided that an expiation was due. In the case of theft in the
Chhāndogya Upanishad we find the axe ordeal applied, apparently under
the direction of the king ; but this is the solitary case of an ordeal known
in Vedic literature as a part of criminal procedure. In the Sūtras we hear
of the king with his own hand striking a confessed thief. On the other
hand, beside the public organisation of criminal justice, there was still the
system of private vengeance tempered by the wergeld. The Sūtras fix the
wergeld of the Kshatriya at 1000 cows, of the Vaiçya at 100, and of the
Çūdra at 10, with a bull over and above for the king, according to the text
of Baudhāyana. This seems to indicate a stage when the royal power had
extended sufficiently to secure that the wergeld should be accepted, and that
the insult to the royal peace required the appeasement of the king and his
reward for his intervention by the gift of a bull. The lower position of
women is shown by one text which assigns in her case only the same
1Bonner (Classical Philology, vol. VI, pp. 12-36) finds in Homer no criminal
law, except in the form of the punishment by the whole people of an offender whose
wrong.
doings involved the whole people in danger of reprisals ; the function of the king
or Gerontes he traces in civil cases to voluntary arbitration. It is of interest that Homer
(p. 32) knows nothing of witnesses ; the Vedic texte likewise seem to ignore them.


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120
[ch.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
1
1
wergeld as for a Çūdra. Unhappily, the texts are so vague that we cannot
be certain whether the payment in the case of a Çūdra was always required
or whether he might be slain with impunity by his master, as the term 'to
be slain at pleasure' applied to him in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa suggests.
We have also very lit les information regarding civil law. The use of
an ordeal in this connexion is attested only by the case of Vatsa who
proved his purity of descent, which was assailed, by walking unharmed
through fire. Presumably, civil cases might be decided by the king with
assessors ; but this view rests only on the analogy of other peoples and on
the later practice in India itself. We know for certain that a Brāhman had
preference in his law cases ; but whether because it was a moral duty of the
witnesses to bear testimony in his favour, or for the judges to give judgment
for him, cannot be decided from the passage of the Taittiriya Samhită
which records the preference. As regards the substance of the law we learn
the outlines of the law of succession : a father might in his lifetime divide
his property among his sons, in which case he seems to have had a free
hand as to their shares : if he grew old and helpless, they themselves might
divide it, while in the division among the sons on his death the older son
received the larger share. Women were excluded from the inheritance.
Similarly, a woman had no property of her own : if her husband died, she
passed to his family with the inheritance like the Attic epiklero8. Her earn-
ings, if any, were the property of husband or father. The Çūdra seems in
law to have been also without capacity of owning property in his own right.
As in the period of the Rigveda, there is no evidence of joint family owner-
ship of any property, even in the case of land, through, as we have seen,
land at this epoch was not considered a suitable form of gift. There is a
clear reference on the other hand to the allotment of land by the Kshatriya,
presumably in accordance with the customary law. There is no trace of
the development of the law of contract : much work was doubtless done
by slaves or by hereditary craftsmen who received customary remuneration
from the villagers, not payment for each piece of work.
On the whole,'there seems to have been some decline in this period
in the position of women : as has been seen, in one of the Sūtra texts her
wergeld is assimilated to that of a Çūdra and her lack of proprietary power
must have tended to decrease her prestige. The polygamy of the kings is
now fully established ; and, presumably, the practice of the sovereigns was
followed by the richer of their subjects. In a number of passages in the
Brāhmaṇas it has been sought to find proof that female morality was not
highly estimated ; but this cannot be established ; and it is a mistake to
suppose that the exposure of female children was practised. On the other
hand, the preference for sons becomes more and more pronounced : 'a
daughter is a source of misery, a son a light in the highest heaven. '


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V]
AGRICULTURE
121
.
>
Generally speaking, the increased complexity of society seems to have been
accompanied by an increase of crime and moral laxity, as appears from the
curious litany in the Yajurvedas where Rudra is hailed as the protector of
every kind of thief and ruffian.
In agriculture and pastoral pursuits progress was doubtless made.
The plough was large and heavy: we hear of as many as twenty-four
oxen being harnessed to one : it had a sharp point and a smoothed handle.
In addition to irrigation, which was known in the Rigveda, the use of
manure is referred to several times. In place of the indeterminate yava
of the Rigveda many kinds of grain are mentioned, and yiva is restricted,
in all probability, to the sense 'barley. Among those nemes are wheat,
beans, corn, sesamum from which oil was extracted, Panicum miliace um
frumentaceum, and italicum, Wrightia antidysenterica, Dalichos uniflorus,
Ervum hirsutum, Coix barbati, and various others. Rice, both domesticated
and wild, was much used. The seasons of the different grains are briefly
summed up in the Taittiriya Samhitā : barley, sown no doubt, as at present,
in winter, ripened in summer : rice, sown in the rains, ripened in autumn :
beans and sesamum, planted in the time of the summer rains, ripened in
the winter and the cold season. There were two seasons of harvest according
to the same authority and another text tells us that the winter crops were
ready in march. The farmer had, as now, constant troubles to contend with :
moles destroyed the seed, birds and other creatures injured the young shoots;
and both drought and excessive rain were to be feared ; the Atharvaveda
provides us with a considerable number of spells to avoid blight and secure a
goods harvest. Cucumbers are alluded to, perhaps as cultivated ; but there
is no certain reference to tree culture though frequent mention is made of the
great Indian trees like the Açvattha, the Ficus religiosa, and the Nyagrodha,
the Ficus indica, and the different forms of the jujube are specially named.
Even more striking is the great development of industrial life and
the sub-division of occupations. The list of victims at the symbolical
human sacrifice of the later texts of the Yajurveda provides us with a large
variety of such occupations ; and, after making all allowances, it is
impossible to doubt that the lists represent a good deal of fact. We hear
of hunters, of several classes of fishermen, of attendants on cattle, of fire-
rangers, of ploughers, of charioteers, of several classes of attendants, of
makers of jewels, basket-makers, washermen, rope-makers, dyers, chariot-
makers, barbers, weavers, slaughterers, workers in gold; cooks, sellers of
dried fish, makers of bows, gatherers of wood, doorkeepers, smelters,
footmen, messengers, carvers and seasoners of food, potters, smiths and so
forth. Professional acrobats are recorded, and players on drums and flutes.
Beside the boatman appears the oarsman, and the poleman ; but there is
still no hint of sea-borne commerce or of more than river navigation, though


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122
[CH.
LATER SAMHITAS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
we need not suppose that the sea was unknown, at least by hearsay, to the end
of the period. There is a trace of police officials in the Ugras who occur in
one passage of the Bțihadāraṇyaka Upanishad; and a Grāmyavādin or village
judge appears to have held a court for petty cases in the village. Among
the priests themselves, we find the sub-division of Chhandogas, the singers
of Sāmans, while the Charakas were wandering students, a special branch of
whom are said to have founded the schools of the Black Yajurveda. More-
over, in accordance with the tendency to sub-divide and formulate, the
life of the priest is now more rigidly regulated : he must pass as a
preliminary through the apprenticeship of being a Brahmachārin. In this
stage he is taught by a master, for whom in return he does all the necessary
work of the day and for whom he begs or otherwise provides food. Two
important features of later village life in India appears in the forms of the
astrologer and the barber. Of women's work we learn of the dyer, the
embroiderer, the worker in thorns, and the basket-maker. The merchant
is often mentioned, and the usurer has a special name : it is of interest that
the term Çreshțhin several times occurs, denoting at least a wealthy
merchant, and possibly already the word has its later technical sense of the
head of a merchant gild.
The advance of civilization is seen also in the more extended know.
ledge of the metals ; as compared with the gold and the ayas, of doubtful
meaning, of the Rigveda, this period knows tin, lead, and silver of which
ornamented bowls are made, while ayas is differentiated as red ayas,
presumably copper, and dark or black ayas, which must be iron. Another
sign of the new era is the definite references to the keeping of tame
elephants, the guarding of elephants being one of the occupations occurring
in the Yajurveda texts. But there is no hint that the elephant was yet used
for war as it was already in the time of Ctesias. The use of horses for riding
had certainly become more common; but no clear reference is made to the
employment of cavalry in war, though that was usual by the time of
Alexander's invasion.
Little change can be traced in the social life of the time. The use of
houses of wood continued ; and, as a result, we have not a single relic
remaining of the architecture of the period. Nor have we any coins : it is
not probable, indeed, that a regular coinage had begun though the path to
this development was already opened by the us of the krishnala, the berry
of the Abrus precatorius, as a unit of weight. We hear in the Brāhmaṇas
of the çatamāna, a piece of gold in weight equivalent to a hundred
krishnalas ; and such pieces of gold were clearly more or less equivalent to
currency and must have been used freely by the merchants, of whose
activities we hear so little in the sacred texts. The nishka, originally a gold
ornament, was also at this time a suit of value ; and the cow as a unit was
1
1
I


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V]
SOCIAL LIFE : MEDICINE
123
probably in course of supersession. The style of clothing seems to have
continued unchanged, though we hear more of the details ; among other -
things we are told of woollen garments, robes dyed with saffron, and
silk raiment. The food of the Indian remained unaltered : the eating
of meat is, indeed, here and there censured, as for instance in a hymn
of the Atharvaveda where meat eating is classed with the drinking of
the sura as a sinful act, and meat might be avoided like other things by
one who was keeping à vow. But it was still the custom to slay a
great ox or goat for the entertainment of a guest, and the great sage
Yājñavalkya ate meat of milch cows and oxen, provided that the
flesh was amsala, a word of doubtful import, rendered either ‘firm' or
'tender by various authorities. The doctrine of ahimsā, which forbids
the doing of injury to any animal, was indeed only in embryo in
this period, and was not fully developed until the growth of the belief in
transmigration came to strengthen the philosophic tenets of the Brāhmaṇas
to the unity of all existence. The amusements of the day were, as in the
period of the Rigveda, the chariot race, dicing, of which we have several
elaborate but not very clear accounts, and dancing. The term Çailūsha
appears in the list of victims at the human sacrifice, and the sense 'actor'
has been seen in it. Taken in conjunction with the dozen or so of hymns
which show a dialogue from it has been supposed to indicate that the
Rigveda knew of a ritual drama, the direct precursor of the drama of later
India. But the evidence adduced is insufficient to bear the strain of the
hypothesis.
In one respect there seems to have been a distinct retrogression since
the age of the Rigveda. In that Samhitā there is frequent mention of the
physician's skill, and wonderful deeds are ascribed to the Açvins as healers
of diseases. As early as the Yajurveda Samhitā, however, the physician
appears to be held in less esteem ; the Açvins were said to have made them-
selves inferior to the other gods by their practice of medicine, by which
they made themselves too familiar with all sorts of people. The
Atharva veda contains much which gives a sad picture of the medical
practice of the day : against the numerous diseases which it mentions it had
nothing better to oppose than the use of herbs and water accompanied by
strange spells, based on sympathetic magic. The number of diseases
recorded by differing names is large : the most frequent was fever, no doubt
the malaria which still haunts India ; and others mentioned are consump-
tion, haemorrhoids, abscesses, scrofula, dysentery, boils, swellings,
1. See von Schroeder, Mysterium und Mimus im Rigveda, Leipzig, 1908 ; Hertel,
V. 0. J. , vol. XVIII, pp. 59 sq. , 137 sq. , XXIII 273 sq. , XXVIV 117 sq. ; Winternitz,
V. 0. J. vol. XXIII, pp. 102 sq. ; Keith, J. R. A. S. , 1911, pp. 979-1009.


## p. 124 (#158) ############################################

124
[сн.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMANAS, ETC.
1
tumours on the neck, convulsions, ulcers, scab, rheumatism, tearing
pains, headache, leprosy, jaundice, cramp, senility, and others less easy
to identify. Various eye diseases were known ; and the use of a sand bag
to stop bleeding is recorded. The dissection of the animal victims at the
sacrifices gave the opportunity to acquire knowledge of the bones of the
body', but on the whole the facts recorded, especially in the Atharvaveda
and the Çatapatha Brābmana, give us no very elevated opinion of the
accuracy of the Vedic physician in this regard.
On the other han l, a distinct advance was unquestionably made in
regard to astronomical knowledge. The Rigveda knows, only, so far as
we can see, the year of 360 days divided into twelve months of thirty days
each, which is six diys longer than the synodic lunar year, and nearly
five and a quarter days too short for the solar year. To bring the year into
something like order, intercalation seems to have been attempted quite
early : we hear in a riddle hymn of the Rigveda (I, 164) of the intercalary
month, the thirteenth. In the Sambitās the system is slightly more deve-
loped ; and possibly some efforts were being made to arrange intercalation
in a cycle of five years in such a manner that the years and the seasons
would be made to coincide ; but it is fairly clear that a satisfactory
method had not yet been obtained. The Samhitās, however, give us the
names of the twelve months arranged very artificially in six seasons and
they introduce to us the important doctrine of the Nakshatras, or Junar
mansions,' groups of stars selected as roughly indicating the parts of the
sky in which the moon appeared in the course of a periodic month of
27-38 days. In the Rigveda the term Nakshatra seems usually to mean no
more than 'star'; and it is only in the admittedly late marriage hymn
;
(x, 85) that the names of two of the Nakshatras proper are found though in
altered forms: The number of the Nakshatras is variously given as
twenty-seven in the Taittiriya Samhitā and the Kāthaka lists and usually
later, and as twenty-eight in the lists of the Maitrāyani Samhitā and the
Atharvaveda. As the periodic month has between 27 and 28 days, the
variation may be primitive : of the allied systems the Chinese Sieou and the
Arabic Manāzil have twenty-eight : the missing star Abhijit in the smaller
enumeration may have fallen out for a variety of causes ; and it seems
easier to assume this than to regard it as a latter addition. The use of the
Nakshatras offered a simple and effective means of fixing dates by the
conjunction of the new or full moon with a particular Nakshatra, and
in the Brähmana period a further step was taken : on some arbitrary
basis which we cannot now determine, twelve of the Nakshatra names in
adjectival form were chosen to represent the months. It might have been
expected that the months represented by these names would be lunar, but
they are, as a matter of fact, the twelve months of the traditional year of
1. See Hoernle, Osteology, Oxford, 1907.
1
1


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V]
LEGEND OF THE FLOOD
125
360 days. The whole series of the new names is not found until the Sūtra
period ; but the vitality of the new system is adequately proved by the
fact that the old series of twelve given in the Samhitās corresponding
to the six seasons is practically ignored in the later literature.
The origin of the Nakshatras has formed the subject of most lively
controversy; it is clear that the Vedic Indian knew very little about
astronomy, for it is extremely doubtful whether the planets were known at
all in the Brāhmaṇa period. But it is not impossible that, even at this
epoch, the Nakshatras could have been discovered, for the achievement is
a rude one. The question is, however, complicated by the exister ce of the
Arabian Manāzil and the Chinese Sieou. The Manāzil are better chosen
as lunar mansions than the Indian Nakshatras : borrowing on the part of
India from Arabia cannot be proved in view of the late date of the
Arabian evidence, while the superiority of the Arabian system seems to
make it improbable that it should have been derived from India. The
Chinese evidence is early enough to allow of borrowing: and the depend
ence of India on China has been maintained by Biot and de Saussure ;
but the difficulties in the way of this view are really insuperable. It
remains therefore as the most plausible view that the Nakshatras are
derived from Babylon, though direct proof of the existence of the
Nakshatras there has yet to be discovered.
Compared with the case of the Nakshatras there is little other
evidence of the contact of India with other civilisations in this period.
In the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa for the first time there appears the legend of
the flood and the saving of Manu by a great fish ; and it is most unlikely
that we are to see here any reminiscence of the former Āryan home
and the crossing of the Hindu Kush. It is therefore possible that the
legend may be of Semitic origin ; but, if so, as usual the Indians have
completely appropriated the motive, so that the borrowing cannot be
proved. It has been suggested? that the knowledge of iron was derived
from Babylon : but this is merely a conjecture which has at present no
support in evidence. A sea-borne commerce with Babylon cannot be
proved for this epoch either by the evidence of Vedic literature or by the
references in the Book of Kings to a pes and peacocks by names which are
believed to have had an Indian origin. The history of the alpha bet has
been used by Bühler: to show that it wos borrowed by traders from a
1 This is held by Weber, Indische Studien, vol. I, pp, 163 sq. ; see Muir Original
Sanskrit Texts, vol. II, p, 323.
2 See Vincent Smith, Indian Antiquary, vol. XXXIV, p. 229 ; Imperial
Gazetteer, vol. II, p. 98.
3 Indische Palaeographie, pp. 17 sq. Bühler relied on references to sea trade in the
Sūtras (Baudhyanā, 1, 2, 4 ; II, 2, 2 ; Gautima, X. 33) and in the Jātakas and believed
these to be authorities for the sixth century B. C. ; see Indian Studies, no. III, pp. 15 sq.
But neither Sūtras nor Jātakas can be relied on for information regarding so early a date.


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126
[CH.
LATER SAMHITĀS BRĀHMĀŅAS, ETC.
South Semitic source via Mesopotamia about 800 B. C. ; but we cannot lay
any stress upon this date. It seems, indeed, most probable that writing
was introduced by traders and that it was only gradually adopted into
its proper form for the expression of the Sanskrit language. At what date
this took place is not really susceptible of proof : there is no certain
reference to writing in the literature of a date earlier than the fourth
century B. C. ; and the real development of writing belongs in all likelihood
to the fifth century B. C. It was the end of the sixth century that saw the
invasion of Darius and the annexation of the territory round the Indus;
and, prior to that event, there is no strong evidence of a really active
contact between India and the outer world. It is, indeed, probable
enough that even before the time of Darius, Cyrus had relations with the
tribes on the right bank of the Indus, and Arrian asserts that the Assakenoi
and the Astakenoi were subject to the Assyrian kings'; but everything
points to the fact that, in the period of the Brāhmaṇas, relations with the
Gandhāras and other tribes in the remote north-west were very slight.
It is also significant that there is no really certain case of inscription of
any sort in India before the third century B. c.
The development in religion and philosophy in the period is remark-
able. The ritual has grown to very large proportions; and with the ritual
the number of the priests required at a sacrifice had increased until sixteen
or seventeen are enumerated as taking part in the more important offerings
The mere offerings of vegetable food and milk are comparatively unimport-
ant; but the animal sacrifice is increasingly elaborated, and the Soma
sacrifice has developed largely. In addition to the simplest form of the Soma
sacrifice occupying one day, there are innumerable other forms culminating
in the Sattras which might last any time from twelve days to a year or years
It is significant that, at the bottom of this priestly elaboration, is much really
popular religion. Thus the Rājasūya, or loyal consecration, is funda-
mentally a popular rite for the anointing of the king: the l'ājapeya betrays
a popular origin in the prominence in it of a chariot race, once probably
the main element; the Gayāmayana, a Sattra lasting a year, is distinguished
by the ritual of the Mahāvrata day in which long since was recognised a
primitive performance celebrating the winter solstice. The horse-sacrifice is
at bottom the elaboration of a simple rite of sympathetic magic; but it has
been so elaborated as to combine everything which could make an appeal
to the warrior Indian king and induce him to distribute abundant largesse
on the celebrators. But beside these and other popular festivals, which the
priests have worked over, stands one of the highest interests to the pri st,
which seems to reflect a new conception of theology. It is building of the
See Duff, Chronology of India, p. 5; Arrian, Indici, I, 3 (trans. M Crindle,
I
!
:
1
p. 179).
Vincent Smith, Early History of India, p. 16.


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V]
PHILOSOPHY OF EXISTENCE
127
altar for the sacred fire ; in one sense no doubt this was an ancient and
simple rite, accompanied as so often by the slaying of a man in order to
secure the abiding character of the structure : the Brāhmaṇa texts avoid
requiring any such actual slaughter, though they record it as a deed of the
past ; but they elaborate the building out of all reason and utility. The
only explanation of this action must he that offered by Eggeling, that, in
the building up of the fire alter, the Brāhmans sought to symbolise the
constitution of the unity of the universe. As we have seen, in the Purusha
hymn of the Rigveda occurs the conception of the creation of the universe
from the Purusha, and in the theology of the Brābmaņas the Purusha is
indentified with Prajāpati, 'lord of creātures,' and the sacrifice is conceived
as constantly recurring in order to maintain the existence of the universe.
To render this possible is the end of fire altar, the building of which is the
reconstruction of the universe in the shape of Prajāpati. Prajāpati, again,
is identified with Agni, the fire of the altar, and both Prajāpati and Agni
are the divine counterparts of the human sacrificer. But Prajāpati is him.
self Time, and Time is in the long run death, so that the sacrificer himself
becomes death, and by that act rises superior to death, and is for ever
removed from the world of illusion and trouble to the world of everlasting
bliss. In this the true nature of Pajāpati and of the sacrificer is revealed
as intelligence, and the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa urges the seeker for truth to
meditate upon the self, made upof intelligence and endowed with a body of
spirit, a form of light and an ethereal nature.
The same doctrine appears in another form in the Upanishads which
are engaged with the discussion of the underlying reality. They agree in
this that all reality in the ultimate issue must be reduced to one, called
variously brahman, 'the holi power,' or ātman, 'the self'. Moreover, the
Upanishads agree in regarding the absolute to be unknownable, and though
they ascribe to it intelligence they deprive that term of meaning by emptying
it of all thought. If the real is the absolute alone, the existence of the
appearance of this world must be explained ; but naturally enough the
Upanishads do not successfully attempt this task ; and it was not until the
time of Çankarāchārya in the beginning of the ninth century A. D. that it
was found possible to reconcile the doctrines of the different texts by the
view that all existence is merely illusion. This is perhaps a logical develop-
ment of the doctrine of the Upanishads ; but the Upanishads were groping
after truth and did not attempt to deduce all the consequences of their
guesses at the nature of reality.
There was one consequence which followed so clearly from the new
conception of existence that it is enunciated, though not very decidedly,
in the Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad, namely that there was no consciousness
after death in the case of him who realised the true nature of the self as in-
telligence without thought. But this conception plays a very small part in
See Sacred Books of the East, vol. XLIII, pp. xiv ,xxiv.


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128
[сн.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRAHMAŅAS, ETC.
the texts compared with the new theory of transmigration. There is no
real sign of this doctrine in the Brāhmaṇas proper, but there is certain
amount of preparation for its appearance in the gradual, development of the
doctrine that not even after death is the horror of death ended : a man may
die repeated deaths in the next world. If conception be transferred to the
present world, then the doctrine of transmigration is produced, and in the
Upanishads this doctrine is clearly and expressly enunciated. The
Chhāndogya and Brihadāraṇyaka agree in the main outlines of the new
belief: the forest ascetic who has realised the nature of Brahman after death
goes by the way of the gods to be absorbed in brahman and never again to
be born : the man who has done good deeds but has not attained the sav.