THE TRIUMPH OF BRAHMANISM 331
Kshatriya and befriend him and make with him a common cause and suppress the growing menace of the Vaishyas and Shudras? Brahmanism after it was exhausted in the wars with the Kshathyas chose the second alternative. It sought to befriend their worthwhile enemies the Kshatriyas to work for a new ideal namely to enslave and exploit the two classes below them namely the Vaishyas and the Shudras. This new ideal must have taken shape some time when the Satpatha Brahmana came to be composed. It is in the Satpatha Brahmana we find the new ideal expressed it was well established. The language in which it is expressed, and the subject to which it is applied are so telling that I feel it should be quoted in its original terms. Says the author of the Satpatha [1] :
“They then make the beast return (to the Ahavaniya [2] ) the he-goat goes first of them, then the ass, then the horse. Now in going away from this (Ahavaniya) the horse goes first, then the ass, then the he-goat—for the horse corresponds to the Kshatra (nobility), the ass to the Vaishya and Shudra, the he-goat to the Brahman and in-as-much as, in going from here, the horse goes first, therefore the Kshatriya, going first, is followed by the three others castes; and in-as-much as, in returning from here, the he-goat goes first, therefore the Brahman, going first, is followed by the three other castes. And in-as-much as the ass does not go first, either in going back from here, or in coming back from there, therefore the Brahmana and Kshatriya never go behind the Vaishya and Sudra; hence they walk thus in order to avoid a confusion between good and bad. And, moreover, he thus encloses those two castes (the Vaishyas and Sudra) on both sides by the priesthood and the nobility and makes them submissive.”
Here is the explanation of the puzzling attitude of Manu towards the Kshatriyas, attitude of willing to wound but afraid to strike, of wishing to dictate but preferring to befriend.
It is these wars and the compromise that had taught Manu that it was no use trying to coerce the Kshatriyas to submit to the domination of the Brahmin. It may be an ideal to be kept up. But as practical politics it was an impossible ideal. Like Bismark, Manu knew that politics was the game of the possible. What was possible was to make a common cause and to build up a common front between the Brhamins and the Kshatriyas against the Vaishyas and the Shudras and this is what Manu did. The pity of it is that it was done in the name of religion. This need not shock anybody who has studied the soul and spirit of Brahmanism. With Brahmanism religion is a cloak to cover and hide its acquisitive politics.
Eggeling Sathapatha Brahmana. Part III. pp. 226-27.
Avavaniya.
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