Jainism

Author(s): N R Guseva
Publisher: Sindu Publications P L

Page 20

6
JAINISM
guarantee of mutual assimilation (which will be described in details below):
The Kshatri was that social environment, out of which a military apex grew in the process of these complicated relations. This apex was the future military aristocracy, that Kshatriya caste, which is very widely known in the Indian history.
In some
The process of formation of this apex was more or less similar in the various regions of the Aryan colonization. Janapadas the ruling groups consisted of Kshatri-heads of the families of the first colonisers, who had captured the given regions; in some other Janapadas it consisted of Kshatri-heads of all families in general, including also those Aryans, who appeared here later. The Indian scholar A. S. Altekar writes about the existence of special terms for these two categories of rulers, the first were called Rajas and their descendants (and probably men-at-arms from martial nobility which was being formed)-Rajanya, or Rajanyaka and others—Rajan."
It is possible that the conception of Rajan included within itself the chiefs or the heads of kin-tribal or family-kin groups of local pre-Aryan peoples, with whom Aryan Kshatries encouraged close economic-cultural relations.
Many a historian, studying the Vedic period emphasized that the martial caste in those days was known by the abovementioned names (this term, is widely known, it is found also in Sanskrit dictionaries).8
It is possible to assume that precisely at this stage the words Kshatriya and Raja (and their deviations referred to above) assumed the meaning of synonyms and that since then the word Kshatriya came to mean only the martial caste.
One more term also existed, which cannot be passed over in silence. That term is 'vis' i.e. people, tribe, settlement. Considering everything, the people of Aryan tribes as a whole will called by that form. This word defined the Aryan population of each given region, irrespective of sex, age and origin. The Russian scholar V. Miller' makes a witty and in our view correct
7. A. S. Altekar, State of Government in Ancient India, p. 113. 8. M. Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, pp. 325 (Kshatra), 874-75 (Rajan).
9. V. Miller, Outlines of the Aryan Mythology in Connection with the Most Ancient Culture, p. 50.