Risabha Deva

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Jain Mitra Mandal

Page 41

PUBLIC LIFE
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non-Aryan lands, throughout the long ages that have rolled by. No country in the whole world can show such long stability of indigenous culture as the Abode of the Aryan race!
The downfall of Aryan Culture within recent historical times is due to the failure on the part of the Kshatriyas to maintain their traditions. They were filled with arrogance, and fell fighting with One another oftener than in defending the mother-land. They lost the disposition that would breed amity and good-fellowship, with the result that they could not generally combine against powerful foreign foes, and were cut up individually. Superstition, due to chronic intellectual degeneration, for which the Brahmanas are to be blamed whole-heartedly, as professing to be the sole custodians of the spiritual science, led them often to disregard the rules of good generalshipi and made them look to the dispositions of the stars before marching out against a fce! Fanatical spirit, too, had its part to play in the downfall of the Aryan Empire. Generals are found constantly disregarding the rules of military strategy and sacrificing away their own and their soldiers' lives in sheer madness of impetuosity. Another cause which played no mean part in the disruption of the Aryan Empire was the failure to benefit by experience. The foreign invaders repeatedly gave evidence of their determination to stick at nothing, that is to say, to make no scruples in obtaining the upperhand; yet were they always treated as if imbued with the spirit of Aryan chivalry and true military honour !