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PUBLIC LIFE
monopoly of any one class in the remote past, and no one was denied literary accomplishment.
The merit of the varņa-vyavasthā is great; it enabled the Aryan Culture to rear its proud head over the din and fury of wars and the crash of empires in 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 Brāhmaṇas 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 generalship, and made them look to the dispositions of the stars before marching out against a foe! Fanatical spirit, too, had its part to play in the downfall of the Aryan Empire. Generals
