190 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
(xi) Threatening a Brahmana with assault, or striking him or drawing blood from his body is an offence.
(xii) For certain offences the Brahmana must receive a lesser punishment than members of other classes.
(xiii) The king should not summon a Brahmana as a witness where the litigant is not a Brahmana.
(xiv) Even when a woman has had ten former husbands who are not Brahmanas, if a Brahmana marries such a woman, it is he alone who is her husband and not a Rajanya or a Vaishya [1] to whom she may have been married.
After discussing these pretensions and privileges claimed by the Brahmanas, Mr. Kane says : [2]
“Further privileges assigned to Brahmanas are : free access to the houses of other people for the purpose of begging alms; the right to collect fuel, flowers, water and the like without its being regarded as a theft, and to converse with other men’s wives without being restrained (in such conversation) by others; and the right to cross rivers without paying any fare for the ferry-boat and to be conveyed (to the other bank) before other people. When engaged in trading and using a ferry boat, they shall have to pay no toll. A Brahmana who is engaged in travelling, who is tired and has nothing to eat, commits no wrong by taking two canes of sugar or two esculent roots.”
These privileges have no doubt grown in course of time and it is difficult to say which of them had become vested rights when these conflicts were raging. But there is no doubt that some of the most annoying ones such as (i), (ii), (iii), (viii) and (xiv) had then come into existence. These were enough to infuriate any decent and selfrespecting body of men.
On the side of the Kshatriya kings they could not be supposed to be willing to take things lying low. How could they? It must not be forgotten that most of the Kshatriya kings who came into conflict with the Brahmins, belonged to the solar line. [3] They differed from the Kshatriyas of the lunar line in learning, in pride and in martial spirit. The Kshatriyas who belonged to the solar line were a virile people, while those who belonged to the lunar line were an imbecile lot without any self-respect. The former challenged the Brahmins. The latter succumbed to them and became their slaves. This was as it should be. For while the Kshatriyas of the lunar line were devoid of any learning, those belonging to the solar line were not merely the equals of Brahmins in the matter of learning, they were their
1 No. (xiv) is not mentioned by Kane, but is mentioned in the Atharva Veda V.
8-9; see Muir, Vol. I, p. 280.
Ibid., pp. 153-4.
Only Pururavas and Nahusha belong to the Lunar line of Kshatriyas as may be seen from