The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6). Duncker Max
indifferent the kings, nobles, and peasants may have been to this doctrine of the world-soul and Brahman, these new, severe, and terrible consequences, derived from it by the priests for the life after death, could not be without a deep impression. They operated with immense force on the spirit of the Indians. To endure the torments of hell in continuous heat, while even on earth the warmth of the climate was so hard to bear, was a terrible prospect. But even this appeared only as the lesser evil. Along with and after the torments of hell those who committed grievous sins had to expect a ceaseless regeneration in the bodies of men and animals until they had worked their way up to Brahman. At the same time the priests took care to impress upon the hearts of the people the fate which awaited those who did not follow their ordinances. They reminded them perpetually of "the casting of the soul into hell and hell-torments." The sinner was to think, "what migrations the soul would have to undergo owing to his sin; of the regeneration through ten thousand millions of mothers."178 These endless terrors and torments now in prospect for the man who did not fulfil the vocation assigned to him by the creator at birth, or the prescripts of the priests, were only too well adapted to win respect for their requirements. Who would venture to trespass on the divine arrangement of the world, according to which the first place was secured on earth to the Brahman in preference to the wealthy armed noble, the peasant, and the miserable Çudra, who was only on a level with the higher order of animals? Who would not look up with reverence to the purer incarnation of the world-soul, the holier spirit, which dwelt in the Brahmans? Even though the theory of the world-soul remained unintelligible to the many, they understood that the Brahmans, who busied themselves with sacrifice, prayers, and sacred things, stood nearer to the deity than they did; they understood that if they misconducted themselves towards the sacred race or disregarded the vocation of birth, they must expect endless torments in hell, and endless regenerations in the most loathsome worms and insects, or in the despised class of the Çudras – "those animals in human form."
The priesthood cannot have succeeded in making good their claims to superiority over the Kshatriyas, their new doctrine and ethics, without long-continued struggles and contests. If the two first centuries after the foundation of the states – the period between 1400 and 1200 B.C. – were occupied, as we assumed above, with the arrangement and consolidation of the new kingdom, the establishment of the position of the nobles, and the composition of songs of heroism and victory, we may assign to the next two centuries – from 1200 to 1000 B.C. – the sharper distinction of the Kshatriyas and Vaiçyas, the amalgamation of the families of minstrels and priests into an order; the rise of this order in the states on the Ganges as the preserver of the ancient faith and ancient mode of worship; the combination of the customs, formulæ, and invocations hitherto handed down separately in the separate states. If in the first period the immigrant Aryas separated themselves as a common race from the Çudras, in the next the three orders of the Aryas became distinguished. Only the man who was born a Kshatriya could partake in the honour of this order; only one who sprung from a family of priests could be allowed to assist in the holy acts of sacrifice; and he who was born a Vaiçya must continue to till the field.
At the beginning of the ensuing century —i. e. in the period from 1000 B.C. downwards – the priests, now in possession of all the ancient invocations and formulæ, may have begun their meditations with the comparison of the invocations, the attempt to find out the right meaning of them, and to grasp the unity of the divine nature. The hymns of the latest portion of the Vedas, which are obviously a product of these meditations, may perhaps have arisen in the first half of this period. From the mysterious secret of the worship, the spirit of prayer, and the idea of the mighty, ever-recurring stream of birth and decay in the land of the Ganges, the Brahmans arrived at the idea of Brahman, the world-soul, and from this deduced its consequences. We may with certainty presuppose a long and severe struggle of the nobles against the dominion of the priests – a struggle which went on for several generations. Even the Vaiçyas can hardly have submitted without resistance to all the requirements of the Brahmans. The impassable gulf between the orders, the exclusion of intermarriage, was only carried out, as we can show, with difficulty; and even the ethics of the new doctrine must have met with resistance.
We have already referred to the circumstances which rendered victory easier to the Brahmans, to the changed conditions of life, and the nature of the land of the Ganges. Another fact in their favour was that the new doctrines of the Brahmans did not attack the monarchy. This continued to remain in the order of the Kshatriyas, and no essential limitation of their powers was required by the new doctrine from the princes on the Ganges. It is true that it demanded recognition of the superiority of the Brahmans to the other orders, and acknowledgment of the special sanctity of the order even from the kings; it required reverence, respect, and liberality, towards the Brahmans; yet in all other respects the new system was calculated to increase rather than diminish the power of the kings. The rule of unconditional submission to the existing order must have strengthened considerably the authority of the kings, and assisted them in removing the limitations hitherto, without doubt, imposed upon them by the importance of the Kshatriyas; and we can hardly avoid the conclusion that the kingdom on the Ganges was first raised by the new doctrine to absolute power; on this foundation it became a despotism.
We may feel confident in assuming that the victory of the Brahmans in the land of the Ganges was completed about the time when the dynasty of the Pradyotas ascended the throne of Magadha, i. e. about the year 800 B.C.179 The districts from the Sarasvati eastward as far as the upper Ganges are after that time a sacred land to the Indians. The country between the Sarasvati and the Drishadvati is called Brahmavarta, i. e. Brahma-land. Kurukshetra (between the Drishadvati and the Yamuna), the districts of the Bharatas and Panchalas, of the Matsyas and Çurasenas, i. e. the entire doab of the Yamuna and the Ganges, are comprised under the name Brahmarshideça, i. e. the land of the holy sages. Here were situated the famous residences of the Kurus and Pandus, Hastinapura, Indraprastha, Kauçambi, and on the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges, Pratishthana; here, finally, was the city of Krishna, Krishnapura, and the sacred Mathura on the Yamuna; and elsewhere also in this district we find consecrated places and shrines of pilgrimage. It is maintained that the bravest Kshatriyas and the holiest priests are to be found in this district; the customs and observances here are regarded as the best, and as giving the rule to the remainder. The law-book of the priests requires that every Arya shall learn the right walk in life from a Brahman born in Brahmarshideça, and that, properly, all Aryas should live there.180 It cannot have been any reminiscence of the great war which caused the priests to set such a value on these regions, and make these demands, nor even the fact that these districts were the first occupied by the emigrants from the Indus, so that here first in the new country were consecrated places set up for the worship of the immigrants, and the least intermixture took place with the ancient population. It is due rather to the fact that in these regions the civilisation and culture of the Indians were consolidated in an especial degree; here the priestly reform of the religion, if it did not receive the first impulse, yet acquired the victory and became supreme, owing perhaps to the support of the princes of the dynasty of Pandu, who reigned at Kauçambi. As these were the regions in which the priests first regulated the ancient customs of worship, morals, and justice according to the new doctrine, they could afterwards serve as a pattern for all the rest. If the Brahmans, soon after they had succeeded in carrying through their demands here, revised the Epos of the great war in the light of their new system, they could claim the thanks of the kings of the Bharatas for their support, they could show that the kings who in ancient times had won the dominion in these lands, the ancestors of the race then on the throne, had even in early times obediently followed the commands of the priests, and they could set up the conquerors in that struggle as patterns of the proper conduct of kings to Brahmans (p. 101).
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Manu, 6, 61-63.
In the sixth century B.C. the Brahmanic arrangement of the state was in full force in the cities on the Ganges, and carried out most strictly. Hence it must have obtained the upper hand about 800 B.C. at the latest. It was not only established by law about the year 600 B.C., but the doctrine of the Brahmans had already created scholastic and heterodox systems of philosophy. Before this system could become current, the idea of Brahman must have been discovered; the strong elements of resistance in the ancient life and faith must have been overcome. This would occupy a space of about two centuries, and may therefore have filled the period from 1000 to 800 B.C., as assumed in the text. Buddhism required a space of three centuries in order to become the recognised religion in the kingdom of Magadha. Before the idea of the world-soul could be discovered, the hymns of the Veda must have reached a certain point of combination and synopsis, and the confusing multitude of divine forms must have been sufficiently felt to call forth the opposite idea of unity. From the book of the law it is clear that the three Vedas were in existence before it was drawn up. It refers perpetually to the triple Veda. The evidence of the Sutras proves that four Vedas existed at the time of the appearance of Buddha. If these were in existence in the sixth century the three which are acknowledged to be older must have existed as early as the seventh century B.C.
Manu, 2, 6, 12, 18, 20.