THE TRIUMPH OF BRAHMANISM 325
right of promiscuous sexual intercourse with the women folk of the other Classes. This happened particularly in Malabar. There [1]
“The Brahman castes follow the Makatyam System that is the system by which the child belongs to its father’s family. They contract, within their own caste regular marriages, with all the ordinary legal and religious sanctions and incidents. But the Brahmin men are also in the habit of entering into Sambandhan-Unions with women of the lower castes.”
This is not all. Observe further what the writer has to say:
“Neither party to a Sambadhan Unions becomes thereby a member of the other family; and the offspring of the Union belong to their mothers tharwad (family) and have no sort of claim, so far as the law goes, to a share of their father’s property or to maintenance therefrom.”
Speaking of the origin of this practice the author of the Gazetteer observes that the origin of this institution:
“ Is found in the claim of the Bhu-devas ” or “ Earth Gods” (that the Brahmanas) and on a lower plain of the Kshatriyas or the ruling classes, to the first fruits of lower Caste Womanhood, a right akin to the medieval droit de Seigneurie.”
It is an understatement to say that it is only a right to first fruits as the ‘right to the first night’ was called in the middle ages in Europe. It is more than that. It is a general right of the Brahmin against the lower caste to claim any woman of that class for mere prostitution, for the mere satisfaction of sexual appetite, without burdening the Brahmin to any of the obligations of marriage.
Such were the rights which the Brahmins the spiritual precepts claimed against the laity!! The Borgese Popes have been run down in history as the most debauched race of spiritual preceptors who ascended the throne of Peter. One wonders whether they were really worse than the Brahmins of India.
A purely intellectual Class, free to consider general good and having no interest of a class to consider, such as the one contemplated by Buddha is not to be had anywhere. For the limitations resulting from property on the freedom of intellect of the elite have not been generally recognized until very recently. But this want of an intellectual class has been made good in other countries by the fact that in those countries each Strata of Society has its educated class. There is safety, if no definite guidance, in the multiplicity of views expressed by different educated classes drawn from different strata of society. In such a multiplicity of views there is no danger of Society being misguided or
1 Gazetteer of Malabar and Anjengo District by Mr. C. A. Innes Vol. I. p. 95