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APPENDIX I
superior to justice. Therefore the weaker seeks (to overcome) the stronger by justice, as by a king. This justice is truth. In consequence they say of a man who speaks truth, ‘he speaks justice;’ or of a man who is uttering justice, ‘he speaks truth.’ For this is both of these.
- This is the Brahma, Kshattra, Viz. and Sudra.
“Through Agni it became Brahma among the gods, the Brahman among men, through the (divine) Kshattriya a (human) Kshattriya, through the (divine) Vaisya a (human) Vaisya, through the (divine) Sudra a (human) Sudra. Wherefore it is in Agni among the gods and in a Brahman among men, that they seek after an abode.”
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The Taittiriya Brahmana has the following explanations to offer. First is in the following terms [1] :
“This entire (universe) has been created by Brahma. Men say that the Vaisya class was produced from rich-verses. They say that the Yajur-Veda is the womb from which the Kshattriya was born. The Sama-Veda is the source from which the Brahmans sprang. This word the ancients declared to the ancients.”
The second refers only two varnas—only Brahman and Sudra and says [2] :
“The Brahman caste is sprung from the gods; the Sudra from the Asuras”
The third explains the origin of the Sudras in the following terms [3] :
“Let him at his will milk out with a wooden dish. But let not a Sudra milk it out. For this Sudra has sprung from non-existence. They say that that which a Sudra milks out is no oblation. Let not a Sudra milk out the Agnihotra. For they do not purify that. When that passes beyond the filter, then it is an oblation”
The next thing would be to see what explanation the Smritis have to offer for the origin of the Varna system. This is what Manu has to say in his Smriti [4] :—
“He (the self-existent) having felt desire, and willing to create various living beings from his own body, first created the waters, and threw into them a seed. 9. That seed became a golden egg, of lustre equal to the sun; in it he himself was born as a Brahma, the parent of all the worlds. 10. The waters are called narah, for they are sprung from Nara: and as they were his first sphere of motion he is therefore called Narayana. 11. Produced from the imperceptible eternal, existent and non-existent, cause, they male (purusha) is celebrated in the world as Brahma. 12. After dwelling for a year in the egg, the glorious being, himself, by his own contemplation, split
1 Muir I. p. 17
2 & 3 Muir’s Sanskrit Texts Vol. I p. 21.
4 Muir’s Vol. I pp. 36 and 37.