Rajput 04: Relations with Brahmans
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This page is an extract from OR THE CENTRAL AND WESTERN By Edited with an Introduction and Notes by In Three Volumes HUMPHREY MILFORD |
Note: This article is likely to contain several spelling mistakes that occurred during scanning. If these errors are reported as messages to the Facebook page, Indpaedia.com your help will be gratefully acknowledged.
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Rajput 04: Relations with Brahmans
Relations of Rajputs with Brahmans
But this deference for the Brahmans is certainly, with many Rajput classes, very weak. In obedience to prejudice, they show them outward civility ; but, unless when their fears or wishes interfere, they are less esteemed than the bards.
The story of the King Vishvamitra of Gadhipura 1 and the Brahman Vasishtha, which fills so many sections of the first book of the Ramayana,2 exemplifies, under the veil of allegory, the by the Brahman's levies. These reinforcements would appear to have been the ancient Persians, the Sacae, the Greeks, the inhabitants of Assam and Southern India, and various races out of the pale of the Hindu religion ; all classed under the term Mlechchha, equivalent to the ' barbarian ' of the Greeks and Romans.
The King Vishvamitra, defeated and disgraced by this powerful priest, " like a serpent with his teeth broken, like the sun robbed by the eclipse of its splendour, was filled with perturbation. Deprived of his sons and array, stripped of his pride and confidence, he was left without resource as a bird bereft of his wings." He abandoned his kingdom to his son, and like all Hindu princes in distress, determined, by penitential rites and austerities, " to obtain Brahmanhood." He took up his abode at the sacred Pushkar, living on fruits and roots, and fixing his mind, said, " I will become a Brah- man." By these penances he attained such spiritual power that he was enabled to usurp the Brahman's office. The theocrats caution Vishvamitra, thus determined to become a Brahman by austerity, that " the divine books are to be observed with care only by those acquainted with their evidence ; nor does it become thee (Vishvamitra) to subvert the order of things estab- lished by the ancients." The history of his wanderings, austerities, and the temptations thrown in his way is related. The celestial fair were com missioned to break in upon his meditations. The mother of love herself descended ; while Indra, joining the cause of the Brahmans, took the shape of the kokila, and added the melody of his notes to the allurements of Rambha, and the perfumed zephyrs which assailed the royal saint in the wilderness. He was proof against all temptation, and condemned the fair to become a pillar of stone. He persevered " till every passion was subdued," till " not a tincture of sin appeared in him," and gave such alarm to the whole priesthood, that they dreaded lest his excessive sanctity should be fatal to them : they feared " mankind would become atheists." " The gods and Brahma at their head were obliged to grant his desire of Brahman hood ; and Vashishtha, conciliated by the gods, acquiesced in their wish, and formed a friendship with Vishvamitra " [Muir, Original Sanskril Texts, Part i. (1858), 75 ff.].
1 Kanauj, the ancient capital of the present race of Marwar. [This is a myth. ]
2 See translation of this epic, by Messrs. Carey and Marshman [in verse, by R. T. H. Griffith].
contests for power between the Brahmanical and military classes, and will serve to indicate the probable period when the castes became immutable. Stripped of its allegory, the legend appears to point to a time when the division of the classes was yet imperfect ; though we may infer, from the violence of the struggle, that it was the last in which Brahmanhood could be obtained by the military.
Vishvamitra was the son of Gadhi (of the race of Kausika), King of Gadhipura, and contemporary of Ambarisha, King of Ayodhya or Oudh, the fortieth prince from Ikshwaku ; consequently about two hundred years anterior to Rama. This event therefore, whence we infer that the system of castes was approaching per- fection, was probably about one thousand four' hundred years before Christ.
Dates of the Genealogies
If proof can be given that these genealogies existed in the days of Alexander, the fact would be interesting. The legend in the Puranas, of the origin of the Lunar race, appears to afford this testimony.
Vyasa, the author of the grand epic the Mahabharata, was son of Santanu (of the race of Hari),1 sovereign of Delhi, by Yojana- gandha, a fisherman's daughter,2 [30] consequently illegitimate. He became the spiritual father, or preceptor, of his nieces, the daughters of Vichitravirya, the son and successor of Santanu.
The Herakles Legend
Vichitravirya had no male offspring. Of his three daughters, one was named Pandaia 3 ; and Vyasa, 1 Hari-Kula.
2 It is a very curious circumstance that Hindu legend gives to two of their most celebrated authors, whom they have invested with a sacred character, a descent from the aboriginal and impure tribes"of India : Vyasa from a fisherman, and Valmiki, the author of the other grand epic the Ramayana, from a Baddhik or robber, an associate of the Bhil tribe at Abu. The conversion of Valmiki (said to have been miraculous, when in the act of robbing the shrine of the deity) is worked into a story of con siderable effect, in the works of Chand, from olden authority.
3 The reason for this name is thus given. One of these daughters being by a slave, it was necessary to ascertain which : a difficult matter, from the seclusion in which they were kept. It was therefore left to Vyasa to discover the pure of birth, who determined that nobility of blood would show itself, and commanded that the princesses should walk uncovered before him. The elder, from shame, closed her eyes, and from her was born the blind Dhritarashtra, sovereign of Hastinapura ; the second, from the same feeling, covered herself with yellow oehre, called pandit, and henceforth she bore the name of Pandya, and her son was called Pandu ; while the third stepped forth unabashed. She was adjudged not of gentle blood, and her issue was Vidura.
being the sole remaining male branch of the house of Santanu, took his niece, and spiritual daughter, Pandaia, to wife, and became the father of Pandu, afterwards sovereign of Indraprastha. Arrian gives the story thus : "It is further said that he [Herakles] 1 had a very numerous progeny of children born to
1 A generic term for the sovereigns of the race of Hari, used by Arrian as a proper name [?]. A section of the Mahabharata is devoted to the history of the Harikula, of which race was Vyasa.
Arrian notices the similarity of the Theban and the Hindu Hercules, and cites as authority the ambassador of Seleucus, Megasthenes, who says : " This Herakles is held in special honour by the Sourasenoi, an Indian tribe who possess two large cities, Methora and Cleisobora. . . . But the dress which this Herakles wore, Megasthenes tells us, resembled that of the Theban Herakles, as the Indians themselves admit." [Arrian, Indika, viii., Methora is Mathura ; Growse (Mathura, 3rd ed. 279) suggests that Cleiso- bora is Krishnapura, ' city of Krishna.']
Diodorus has the same legend, with some vaiety. He says : " Hercules was bom amongst the Indians, and like the Greeks they furnish him with a club and lion's hide. In strength (bala) he excelled all men, and cleared the sea and land of monsters and wild beasts. He had many sons, but only one daughter. It is said that he built Palibothra, and divided his kingdom amongst his sons (the Balika-putras, sons of Bali). They never colonized ; but in time most of the cities assumed a democratical form of government (though some were monarchical) till Alexander's time." The combats of Hercules, to which Diodorus alludes, are those in the legendary haunts of the Harikulas, during their twelve years' exile from the seats of their fore fathers.
How invaluable such remnants of the ancient race of Harikula ! How refreshing to the mind yet to discover, amidst the ruins on the Yamuna, Hercules (Baldeva, god of strength) retaining his club and lion's hide, stand- ing on his pedestal at Baldeo, and yet worshipped by the Suraseni ! This name was given to a large tract of country round Mathura, or rather round Surpura, the ancient capital founded by Surasena, the grandfather of the Indian brother-deities, Krishna and Baldeva, Apollo and Hercules. The title would apply to either ; though Baldeva has the attributes of the ' god of strength.' Both are es (lords) of the race (kula) of Hari (Hari-kul-es), of which the Greeks might have made the compound Hercules. Might not a colony after the Great War have migrated westward ? The period of the return of the Heraclidae, the descendants of Atrens (Atri is progenitor of the Harikula), would answer : it was about half a century after the Great War. [These speculations are worthless.]
It is unfortunate that Alexander's historians were unable to penetrate into the arcana of the Hindus, as Herodotus appears to have done with those of the Egyptians. The shortness of Alexander's stay, the unknown language in which their science and rehgion were hid, presented an insuperable difficulty. They could have made very little progress in the study of the language without discovering its analogy to their own. him in India . . . [31] but that he had only one daughter.1 The name of this child was Pandaia, and the land in which she was born, and with the sovereignty of which Herakles entrusted her, was called after her name Pandaia " (Indika, viii.).
This is the very legend contained in the Puranas, of Vyasa (who was Hari-kul-es, or chief of the race of Hari) and his spiritual daughter Pandaia, from whom the grand race the Pandavas, and from whom Delhi and its dependencies were designated the Pandava sovereignty.
Her issue ruled for thirty-one generations in direct descents, or from 1120 to 610 before Christ ; when the military minister,2 connected by blood, was chosen by the chiefs who rebelled against the last Pandu king, represented as " neglectful of all the cares of government," and whose deposition and death introduced a new dynasty.
Two other dynasties succeeded in like manner by the usurpa tion of these military ministers, untU Vikramaditya, when the Pandava sovereignty and era of Yudhishthirawere both overturned. 1 Arrian generally exercises his judgment in these matters, and is the reverse of credulous. On this point he says, " Now to me it seems that even if Herakles could have done a thing so marvellous, he could have made himself longer-lived, in order to have intercourse with his daughter when she was of mature age " [Indika, ix.].
Sandrocottus is mentioned by Arrian to be of this line ; and we can have no hesitation, therefore, in giving him a place in the dynasty of Puru, the second son of Yayati, whence the patronymic used by the race now extinct, as was Yadu, the elder brother of Puru. Hence Sandrocottus, if not a Puru himself, is connected with the chain of which the links are Jarasandha (a hero of the Bharat), Ripunjaya, the twenty-third in descent, when a new race, headed by Sanaka and Sheshnag, about six hundred years before Christ, usurped the seat of the lineal descendants of Puru ; in which line of usurpation is Chandragupta, of the tribe Maurya, the Sandrocottus of Alexander, a branch of this Sheshnag, Takshak, or Snake race, a race which, stripped of its allegory, will afford room for subsequent dissertation. The Prasioi of Arrian would be the stock of Puru ; Prayag is claimed in the annals yet existing as the cradle of their race. This is the modern Allahabad ; and the Eranaboas must be the Jumna, and the point of junction with the Ganges, where we must place the capital of the Prasioi. [For Sandrokottos or Chandragupta Maurya see Smith, EHI, 42 ff. He certainly did not belong to the ' Snake Race.' The Erannoboas (Skr. Hiranyavaha, ' gold-bearing ') is the river Son. The Prasioi (Skr. Prachyas, dwellers in the east') had their capital at Pataliputra, the modem Patna (McCrindle, Alexander, 365 f.).]
2 Analogous to the maire du palais of the first races of the Franks. Indraprastha remained without a sovereign, supreme power being removed from the north to the southern parts of India, till the fourth, or, according to some authorities, the eighth century after Vikrama, when the throne of Yudhishthira was once more occupied by the Tuar tribe of Rajputs, claiming descents from the Pandus. To this ancient capital, thus re founded, the new appellation of Delhi was given ; and the dynasty of the founder, Anangpal, lasted to the twelfth century, when he abdicated in favour of his grandson,1 Prithiviraja, the last imperial Rajput sovereign of India, whose defeat and death introduced the Muhammadans.
This line has also closed with the pageant of a prince, and a colony returned from the extreme west is now the sole arbiter of the thrones of Pandu and Timur.
Britain has become heir to the monuments of Indraprastha raised by the descendants of Budha and Ila ; to the iron pillar of the Pandavas, " whose pedestal 2 [32] is fixed in hell " ; to the columns reared to victory, inscribed with characters yet unknown ; to the massive ruins of its ancient continuous cities, encompassing a space still larger than the largest city in the world, whose moulder- ing domes and sites of fortresses,' the very names of which are 1 His daughter's son. This is not the first or only instance of the Salic law of India being set aside. There are two in the history of the sovereigns of Anhilwara Patan. In all adoptions of this nature, when the child 'binds round his head the turban ' of his adopted father, he is finally severed from the stock whence he had his birth. [For the early history of Delhi see Smith, EHI, 386 ff.]
2 The khil, or iron pillar of the Pandus, is mentioned in the poems of Chand. An infidel Tuar prince wished to prove the truth of the tradition of its depth of foundation : " blood gushed up from the earth's centre, the pillar became loose (dhili)," as did the fortune of the house from such im- piety. This is the origin of Delhi. [The inscription on the pillar proves the falsity of the legend, and the name Delhi is older than the Tuar dynasty (IGI, xi.233).]
3 I doubt if Shahpur is yet known. I traced its extent from the remains of a tower between Humayun's tomb and the grand column, the Kutb. In 1809 I resided four months at the mausoleum of Safdar Jang, the ancestor of the present [late] King of Oudh. amidst the ruins of Indraprastha, several miles from inhabited Delhi, but with which these ruins forms detached links of connexion. I went to that retirement with a friend now no more, Lieutenant Macartney, a name well known and honoured. We had both been employed in surveying the canals which had their sources in common from the head of the Jumna, where this river leaves its rocky barriers, the Siwalik chain, and issues into the plains of Hindustan. These canals on lost, present a noble field for speculation on the ephemeral nature of power and glory. What monument would Britain bequeath to distant posterity of her succession to this dominion ? Not one : except it be that of a still less perishable nature, the monu- ment of national benefit. Much is in our power : much has been given, and posterity will demand the result.
