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In III, 152, we are told that physicians and temple priests and sellers of meat and shop-keepers should be avoided at sacrifices. And R. C. B., A. L—-TIE i Io r ee BUDDHIST PERIOD. —— [BOOK IV. in the same category are placed singers and actors (IIT, 355), makers of bows and arrows (III, 160), trainers of elephants, oxen, horses, and camels, astro- logers, bird fanciers and instructors in arms (III, 162), architects and messengers (III, 163), as well as shep- herds and keepers of buffaloes (III, 166). A, Brahman is prohibited from accepting gifts from butchers, oil-manufacturers, publicans and brothel- keepers, who are classed together! (IV, 84). Similarly he is prohibited from taking food given by a thief, a musician, a carpenter or an userer, by a physician, a hunter, a blacksmith, a stage player, a goldsmith, a basket maker or a dealer in weapons, by a washer- man or an artisan, (IV, 210, 212, 215, 216, 219). In another place a Brahman and a Kshatriya are directed by all means to avoid agriculture, “for the wooden implement with iron point injures the earth, and the beings living in the earth ”! (X, 84). , A This is a pretty comprehensive list! If we exclude physicians, shop-keepers, singers, actors, trainers of animals, bird fanciers, instructors in arms, architects, oil- manufacturers, carpenters, washermen, hunters, gold- smiths, blacksmiths, manufacturersof basketsand arms, all artisans, all shepherds, all agriculturists, who then are left in the nation to receive honor? PRIESTS and KINes!, The results were disastrous, so far as arty were concerned. “Genius was impossible, except among priests and kings. Men held in a perpetual moral bondage \. “CHAP. IX.] SOCIAL MANNERS, &c. 147 and servitude never learnt to aspire after greatness and glory. Men to whom honor was impossible never learnt to deserve honor and distinction. In other countries a Cincinatus might leave his plough and wield the destinies of his nation, or a Robert Burns might give expression to a nation’s sentiments in thoughts that breathe and words that burn; but in India the cultivators fate. was sealed, he could never break through the adamant wall of social rules. Among other people a sculptor, a painter or an architect, like Phoedias or Praxiteles, like Raphael or Michael Angelo, might by the force of his genius win the highest honor in his country. But in India that highest honor was the exclusive privilege of the Brahman and the Kshatriya, honor to an architect or to a sculptor was simply out of the question. Under heaithier in. fluences the humblest artisan or engineer might rise to be a Watt or.a Stevenson, but in India the artisan and the engineer were chained by shackles of steel, which it was impossible for them to break. Held in comparative degradation and contempt, the artisan and the mechanic never learnt to soar beyond the fixed rules of their art, and gave no indications of a great idea, a bold conception, a new invention or an original genius. Hindu architects covered India from Orissa _ and Ellora to Tanjore and Rameswaram with temples and edifices of which we shall speak in a future chapter, The patience, the industry, the attention to minute de- 148 BUDDHIST PERIOD. [BooK 1V, tails, the ingenuity, and the skill displayed in these works will bear comparison with those of any nation, ancient or modern, in the face of the earth. But the concep- tion of a great architect, the genius of a true artist is often wanting in these magnificent edifices. A Brahman poet in Ujjayini has conceived a Sakuntala in verse, but there is no Sakuntala in stone among the millions of sculptured figures in India! By her position and her civilisation India should have been the mistress of the Indian Ocean, as Greece and Rome were of the Mediterranean ; and a Hindu mercantile navy should have swept the seas from China to Egypt. But the genius of Brahmans and Kshatriyas did not descend to the art of navigation ; civilized India depended on the rude Arabians for commerce with the West ; and the imperfect maritime communication which Hindus had with Sumatra, Java and China in the Buddhist Period,—as_ we know from Fa Hian’s pages,—was soon forgotten, and it was considered a sin to cross the seas. Hindu genius struggled against the dishonour cast on arts, Hindu architects and sculptors, and goldsmiths and weavers attained all that it was possible to attain by skill and industry and ingenuity and long training ; but the genius which marks the literature and thought of ancient India is absent in her industria] _arts, her mechanical inventions and her maritime enterprise. No nation has such just reasons to be proud of its HAP, IX,] SOCIAL MANNERS, &C. * 149 past as the Hindus. But the proudest nations of the earth are at the same time those who are the most keenly alive to their shortcomings, and most eagerly assiduous in removing them ; and greatness does not long survive where such endeavour is wanting. India too has had her shortcomings, and it is necessary that we should remember them and seek to remove them, And we should never forget that monopoly is hurtful to those who hold it, as to those whe are excluded from it; and that a monopoly of learniag and honour is the worst kind of monopoly that the world has known. The nation is degraded under a permanent social subjection, and then ’ drags down the monopolists in the common national ruin We have seen before, that in order to make the dis- tinctions of caste immutable, the ancient Sitrakdras had conceived that the diferent castes sprang from the union of men and women of different original castes ; and Manu of course adopts and hands down the childish myth. The following is a list of Manu’s mixed castes, or if we may so. call it, Manu’s theory of the Origin of the : Human Species ! Sons begotten by the first three castes on wives of the next lower castes were considered similar to their fathers, and did not form new castes. Father, \ Mother, Castes formed. Bréhman Vaisya Ambashtha Do. , Sidra Nishada Kshatriya Do. Ugra Do. Brahman Sita Vaisya Do. . Vaideha Brahman _ Do. Do. Nishéda Sddra Kshattri Vaidehaka First three castes From Brahman Vrdtyas J From Kshatriya } Vratyas From Vaisya Vratyas } + * by wives of | their same caste, but not perform- ing sacred rites, BUDDHIST PERIOD. Alother. Kshatriya Vaisya Kshatriya Brahman Ugra Ambashtha Ayogava Sfadra Nishéda Ugra Ambashtha [BOOK Iv. Castes formed, Magadha Ayogava Kshattri Chandila Avrita Abhira Dhigvana Pukkasa Kukkutaka Svapfika Vena 4 | Vratyas. Bhrijjakantaka Avantya Vatadhana Pushpadha Saikha Jhalla Malla Lichchivi Nata Karana Khasa Dravida Sudhanvan Acharya Kérusha Vijanman Maitra Satvata CHAP. IX.] SOCIAL MANNERS, &c. 151 Father. Mother, Castes formed. Dasyu Ayogava Sairindhra Vaideha Do. Maitreyaka Nishada _ Do. . Margava or Dasa or Kaivarta Do. Vaideha Karavara Vaidehika Kéravara Andhra Do, Nishida Meda Chandala = =—-Vaideha Pandusopika Nishada Do. Ahindika Chandila Pukkasa ~ Sopaka Chandala Nishada AntyAvasdyin. As if this list of Non-Aryan races was not suffici- ently long, the great legislator tries to include by a sweeping rule all the known races of the earth! The Paundrakas (North Bengal men), the Udras (Oriyas),, the Dravidas (Southern Indians), the Kambojas (Kabu- lis), the Yavanas (Bactrian Greeks), the Sakas (Turanian invaders), the Paradas, the Pahlavas (Persians), the Chinas (Chinese), the Kiratas (hill men), and the Daradas and Khasas are said to have been Kshatriyas before, but to have “gradually sunk in this world to the condition of Sddras” through omission of the sacred rites and for “not consulting Brahmans /< (X, 43 & 44). On catefully looking over the foregoing list of mixed castes, we find that they include all the aboriginal and foreign races who were known to Manu, but they do not include the profession—castes of the modetn day. We find no mention of Kayasthas and Vaidyas and Gold- 152 BUDDHIST PERIOD. [BOOK Iv. smithsfnd Blacksmiths and Vaniks, and Potters and Weavets, and other artisans who form castes in modern times!} How have these castes sprung? When did they spring into existence? And shall we believe in the myth of a further permutation and combination among} the men and women of Manu’s mixed castes in order tb account for the existence of the scores of new castes/in the modern day ? Again when we survey the modern Hindu castes, we do not in many provinces of India find any trace of the ancient Vaisya caste, which formed the mass of the nation in the days of Manu. Where are those ‘Vaisyas gone? When and how did they disappear from: most provinces of India? And shall we, con- sistently with the myth spoken of before, believe that the Vaisyas were so apt to marry women of other castes, and so little fond of their own women, that they continually formed alliances with other castes, until they simply married themselves out of their caste- existence ? ; ; The student of Indian history i is spared the humilia- ‘tion of accepting such nursery tales! Common-sense will suggest to him that the Vaisyas of Manu have now been disunited into new modern castes according to the professions they follow. Manu knew of goldsmiths and ‘blacksmiths and physicians, and speaks of them as we have seen before, but does not. reckon them as separate castes. They were not castes but prafes- CHAP. IX.] SOCIAL MANNERS, &C. 153 sions in Alanu’s time. Scribes and physicians and artisans, though looked down upon by Manu, ‘eal belonged to the cominon undivided Vaiysa caste.