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Updated: May 29, 2025
In these latter days one can hardly credit the account given of the consternation in Calcutta in 1775, when the equality of men before the law was asserted, and the brahman, Nanda-kumar, was hanged for forgery. Many of the orthodox brahmans shook off the dust of the polluted city from their feet and quitted Calcutta for a new residence across the Hooghly.
The Rarhi Brahmans of Bengal compel a girl at puberty to live alone, and do not allow her to see the face of any male. For three days she remains shut up in a dark room, and has to undergo certain penances. Fish, flesh, and sweetmeats are forbidden her; she must live upon rice and ghee.
The reality of this aspect of Hinduism is manifest in the ease with which it overrides the idea of caste. In theory brahmans are the twice-born caste, the nearest to the Deity and to union with Him. A man of lower caste, in his upward transmigrations towards union with God or absorption into Deity, should pass through an existence as a brahman.
Even as we have it, the text of the canon contains some anomalous forms which are generally considered to be Magadhisms . The Cullavagga relates how two monks who were Brahmans represented to the Buddha that "monks of different lineage ... corrupt the word of the Buddha by repeating it in their own dialect.
Europeans are inclined to call both of them priests, but this is inaccurate for a Bhikkhu rarely deserves the title and nowadays Brahmans are not necessarily priests nor priests Brahmans. He is not a professional man in the sense that lawyers, doctors and clergymen are, but rather an aristocrat.
Therefore in both worlds he dwells in happiness, rolling like a wheel from one world to the other." Thus the Brahmans have settled the problem of the life that follows the life on earth.
The Orientalists may insist as much as they choose on the hypothesis that the Buddhists became again idol-worshipers; it will explain nothing, and contradicts the history of both Buddhists and Brahmans. The Brahmans began persecuting and banishing the Buddhists precisely because they had begun a crusade against idol-worship.
It is true that in reading Sanskrit literature we must remember that most of it is the work of Brahmans and discount their proclivity to glorify the priesthood, but still it is clear that in India the sacerdotal families acquired a position without parallel elsewhere and influenced its whole social and political history.
"Is not that a fatal objection?" For the benefit of non-Hindu readers I may explain that Kayasthas are split into clans probably a survival of the tribal organisation which preceded the family almost everywhere. According to tradition, a King of Bengal named Ádisur imported five Brahmans, and as many Kayastha servants from Kanauj in Upper India.
Even thus do learned Brahmans that are my devoted worshippers and that are very rare sing me in the Aranyakas. In the Adhyaryus I am sung as the Yajur-Veda of six and fifty and eight and seven and thirty branches. Learned Brahmans conversant with the Atharvans regard me as identical with the Atharvans consisting of five Kalpas and all the Krityas.
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