Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

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THE FUNCTION OF TREACHERY
The Function of Treachery
KINGS, from the beginning of Hindu history, as we learn from the Vedic records and all the records since, have always ranked below the caste of the Brāhmans. During the Vedic period and the ensuing feudal age represented in the Mahābhārata they stemmed largely from the warrior clans, the families of Ksatriya caste, but following the disintegration of feudal society in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., when the strength of the Āryan Kșatriyas was greatly diminished as a result of incessant internecine warfare and their power over northern India broken, there came the dark age that we have been describing, during which men of various extractions came into power-both the scions of some of the surviving pre-Aryan regal families, and soldiers of fortune of inferior birth. We know, for example, that Candragupta was an adherent of a non-Vedic creed (that of the Jainas), the roots of which go back to pre-Aryan beliefs in northwestern India which had never been quite eradicated by the Brāhmans.11 And many of the sounders of new dynasties were little better, apparently, than desperadoes. The Brāhman records complain in no uncertain terms that adventurers of the lowest origin were to be found holding thrones in the new age of disorder, and that there were kings who did not support the Brāhmans, the Āryan religion, or even the Āryan style of life. Kingship had forfeited the splendor of the Vedic past when the rulers had been lavish in their subservience to the priest-caste and had received in turn the reflection of orthodox approval. But kingship lacked also the glory of the still more remote days 11 Cf. supra, p. 60, Editor's note, and infra, pp. 181ff.
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