THE TRIUMPH OF BRAHMANISM 275
not cared to deal in a pointed manner with questions that quite naturally arise: questions such as, who were the Sungas, Kanavas and Andhras; why did they destroy the Buddhist India which was built up by the Mauryas, nor has any attempt been made to study the changes that Brahmanism after its triumph over Buddhism brought about in the political and social structure.
Failure to appreciate this aspect of India’s history is due to the prevalence of some very wrong notions. It has been commonly supposed that the culture of India has been one and the same all throughout history; that Brahmanism, Buddhism, Jainism are simply different phases and that there has never been any fundamental antagonism between them. Secondly it has been assumed that whatever conflicts have taken place in Indian politics were purely political and dynastic and that they had no social and spiritual significance. It is because of these wrong notions that Indian history has become a purely mechanical thing, a record of one dynasty succeeding another and one ruler succeeding another ruler. A corrective to such an attitude and to such a method of writing history lies in recognition of two facts which are indisputable.
In the first place it must be recognized that there has never been such as a common Indian culture, that historically there have been three Indias, Brahmanic India, Buddhist India and Hindu India, each with its own culture. Secondly it must be recognized that the history of India before the Muslim invasions is the history of a mortal conflict between Bramhanism and Buddhism. Any one who does not recognize these two facts will never be able to write a true history of India, a history which will disclose the meaning and purpose running through it. It is a corrective to Indian history written as it is and to disclose the meaning and purposes running through it that I was obliged to recast the history of the Brahmanic invasions of Buddhist India and the political triumph of Brahmanism over Buddhism.
We must therefore begin with the recognition of the fact: Pushyamitra’s revolution was a political revolution engineered by the Brahmins to overthrow Buddhism.
The curious will naturally ask what did this triumphant Brahmanism do? It is to this question that I will now turn. The deeds or misdeeds of this triumphant Brahmanism may be catalogued under seven heads.
(1) It established the right of the Brahmin to rule and commit regicide.
(2) It made the Bramhins a class of privileged persons. (3) It converted the Varna into caste. (4) It brought about a conflict and anti-social feeling between the different castes. (5) It degraded the Shudras and the women (6) It forged the system of graded inequality and (7) It made legal and rigid the social system which was conventional and flexible.