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The Predecessors of The 24th Jina
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the Brahmins the unintelligible prayer-formulas and to make mechanically certain gestures and movements according to the instructions of the Brahmins (which can be presently seen in contemporary India during performance of Puja-prayer offering ceremony).
As distinct from the monarchies in the republic Ganas, administered by the kshatriya aristocracy, the struggle against the growing power of the Brahmins was specially intensive. It was such a powerful and a sharp struggle that many Brahmins did not at once become exclusive categories, they remained more as soldiers, heads of the patriarchal kind and then professional holy priests. The function of holy priests, warrior and mentor of the youth, combined in one person the kindred gana, did not at once get divided between various social groups and hence Brahminwarrior in that transitional period was a strong and influential figure (for example) Drona in Mahabharat, mentor of young heroes of the epic or Vishwamitra, Parashuram and other Brahminwarriors, widely known in the history of Indian culture.
The struggle of kshatriyas with Brahmins in the north west religions, in the centre of the intensive process of class-formation of Aryan society and of the birth of monarchy did not undermine the influence of Brahmins and could not give birth to some-what influential anti-Brahmin ideology. On the borders of 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 Brahmanism 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.
It is important for us to note that historical condition for the formation and consolidation of slave-owning process took shape in the first half of the 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 people. 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.
