Jainism

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

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JAINISM -
to somewhat influential anti-Brahmin ideology. On the borders of the region where Brahmanism was spreading itself, in particular in the north-east, the Kshatriya freemen did not easily give up their own position. Here, in the conditions of the existence of republics, population of which consisted mainly of local peoples, the struggle with Brahminism assumed a sharp and prolonged character. It was inevitably to take the form of struggle against the expansion of the much later Aryan mass and simultaneously struggle for the preservation of kin tribal or republican structure, of any character.18
S. A. Dange contends that new religions which have arisen here were given birth to by the feudal relations which were springing up. 19 The question whether feudal relations were shaping themselves in India in the first millennium B.C. is a subject of discussion in the circles of historians and economists, studying in India. Until there is unanimity, we also cannot delve deeper into this problem here. It is important for us to note that historical conditions for the formation and consolidation of slave-owning process took shape in the first half of the first millennium B.C. The slave-owning process which, irrespective of the extent of ripening of feudalism in that period fell first of all as a heavy burden on the shoulders of the conquered local peoples. These people in their basic mass, excluding their chiefs, military apex and votaries were taken by the Brahmanised Aryans as Shudras—the lowest caste of the society.
Indignation of local peoples as a result of the forcible assimilation and enslavement could very easily find its expression in the republics, where, moreover, were preserved the strongest survivals of commune-kin relations. Precisely in the northeastern regions, not only caste-class struggle took place but also ethnical movements, directed against the march of the Aryan masses. And precisely here, on the borders of the world of the Brahmins, new, anti-Brahmanic faiths were to become the ideological banner of this struggle and these movements.
18. About the various types of such republics, refer to S. A. Dange, India from Primitive Communism to Slavery; G. M. Bongard-Levin, Certain Aspects of Castes Organisation in Ganas and Sanghas of Ancient IndiaCastes in India, pp. 109-32.
19. Ibid., p. 203.