THE TRIUMPH OF BRAHMANISM 267
of religions in more than one sense. It has produced out of its own resources, a number of distinctive systems and sects…..
In another sense India is a land of religions. Nowhere else is the texture of life so much impregnated with religious convictions and practices... ” [1]
These observations contain profound truth. He would have given utterance to truth far more profound and arresting if he had said that India is a land of warring religions. For indeed there is no country in which Religion has played so great a part in its history as it has in the history of India. The history of India is nothing but a history of a mortal conflict between— Buddhism and Brahmanism. So neglected is this truth that no one will be found to give it his ready acceptance. Indeed there may not be wanting persons who would repudiate any such suggestion.
Let me therefore briefly recount the salient facts of Indian history. For it is important that everyone who was able to understand the history of India must know that it is nothing but the history of the struggle for supremacy between Brahmanism and Buddhism.
The history of India is said to begin with the Aryans who invaded India, made it their home and established their culture. Whatever may be the virtues of the Aryans, their culture, their religion and their social system, we know very little about their political history. Indeed notwithstanding the superiority that is claimed for the Aryans as against the Non-Aryans, the Aryans have left very little their political achievements for history to speak of. The political history of India begins with the rise of a non-Aryan people called Nagas, who were a powerful people, whom the Aryans were unable to conquer, with whom the Aryans had to make peace, and whom the Aryans were compelled to recognize as their equals. Whatever fame and glory India achieved in ancient times in the political field, the credit for it goes entirely to the Non-Aryan Nagas. It is they who made India great and glorious in the annals of the world.
The first land mark in India’s political history is the emergence of the Kingdom of Magadha in Bihar in the year 642 B.C. The founder of this kingdom of Magadha is known by the name of Sisunag [2] and belonged to the non-Aryan race of Nagas.
From the small beginning made by Sisunag, this Kingdom of Magadha grew in its extent under the capable rulers of this Sisunag dynasty. Under Bimbisara the fifth ruler of this dynasty the kingdom
1 The Religion of the Veda p. 1.
2 His name is also spelt as Sisunak.