Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 30)

January 19, 2001

Parts 1 to 29 were posted earlier. This is part 30. Your comments are welcome... Vivekananda Centre London

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 30

c) The Caste System, the Indian Method of Social Fusion and Rejection of Competition

1. The Method of Bringing Indian Humanity Together under the Guidance of Spirtualized Intellect

The history of India is a veritable ethnological museum. Possibly, the half-ape skeleton of the recently discovered Sumatra link will be found on search here, too. Dolmens are not wanting, flint implements can be dug out almost anywhere. The lake-dwellers - at least, the river-dwellers - must have been abundant at one time. The cavemen and leaf-wearers still persist. The primitive hunters living in forests are in evidence in various parts of the country. Then there are the more historical varieties - the Negrito-Kolaran, the Dravidian, and the Aryan. To these have been added from time to time dashes of nearly all the known races, and a great many yet unknown - various breeds of Mongoloids, Mongols, Tartars, and the so-called Aryans of the philologists. Well, here are the Persian, the Greek, the Yunchi, the Hun, the Chin, the Scythian, and many more, melted and fused; the Jews, the Parsees, Arabs, Mongols, down to the descendants of the Vikings and the lords of the German forests, yet undigested - an ocean of humanity, composed of these race-waves, seething, boiling, struggling, constantly changing form, rising to the surface and spreading and swallowing little ones, again subsiding.

In the midst of this madness of nature, one of the contending factions discovered a method and, through force of its superior culture, succeeded in bringing the largest number of Indian humanity under its sway. The superior race styled themselves the Aryas or nobles; and their method was the varnashramacharya - the so-called caste. (32)

The warp of Aryan civilization is varnashrama, and its woof, the conquest of strife and competition in nature. (33)

Of course, the men of the Aryan race reserved for themselves, consciously or unconsciously, a good many privileges; yet the institution of caste has always been very flexible, sometimes too flexible to ensure a healthy uprise of the races very low in the scale of culture. (34)

There is a theory that there was a race of mankind in Southern India called Dravidians, entirely differing from another race in Northern India called Aryans; and that the Southern Indian brahmins are the only Aryans that came from the North; the other men of Southern India belong to an entirely different caste and race to those of Southern India brahmins. Now I beg your pardon, Mr. Philologist, this is entirely unfounded. The only proof of it is that there is a difference of language between the North and the South. I do not see any other difference. We are so many northern men here [in Madras in Southern India]; and I ask my European friends to pick out the northern and southern men from this assembly. Where is the difference? A little difference of language. But the brahmins are a race that came here speaking the Sanskrit language! Well then, they took up the Dravidian language and forgot their Sanskrit. Why should not the other castes have done the same? Why should not all the other castes have come one after the other from Northern India, taken up the Dravidian language, and so forgotten their own? That is an argument working both ways. Do not believe in such silly things. There may have been a Dravidian people who vanished from here, and the few who remained lived in forests and other places. It is quite possible that the language may have been taken up, but all these are Aryans who came here from the North. The whole of India is Aryan, nothing else. (35)

Would there have been this institution of varnashrama if the Aryans had exterminated the aborigines in order to settle on their lands?

The object of the peoples of Europe is to exterminate all in order to live themselves. The aim of the Aryans is to raise all up to their own level; nay, even to a higher level than themselves. The means of European civilization is the sword; of the Aryans, the division into different varnas [castes]. This system of division into different varnas is the stepping-stone to civilization, making one re higher and higher in proportion to one's learning and culture. In Europe, it is everywhere victory to the strong and death to the weak. In the land of Bharata [india] , every social rule is for the protection of the weak. (36)

The institution of caste put, at least theoretically, the whole of India under the guidance, not of wealth, nor of the sword, but of intellect, intellect chastened and controlled by spirituality. (37)

2. The Different Vedic Castes

The very basis of Vedic religion and Vedic society is the jati dharma, that is, one's own dharma enjoined according to the different castes - the svadharma, that is , one's own dharma or set of duties prescribed for man according to his capacity and position. (38)

The Vedas teach that he who knows God is a brahmin; he who protects his fellows is a kshatriya; while he who gains his livelihood in trade is a vaishya. (39)

The leading caste in India is the highest of the Aryans - the brahmins. (40)

The Indian climate again gave a higher direction to the genius of the race. In a land where nature was propitious and yielded easy victories, the national mind started to grapple with and conquer the higher problems of life in the field of thought. Naturally the thinker, the priest, became the highest class in Indian society, and not the man of the sword. (41)

Brahminhood was the solution to the varying degrees of progress and culture as well as that of all social and political problems. The great ideal of India is brahminhood: property-less, subject to no laws nor kings, except the moral. Brahminhood by descent - various races have claimed and acquired the right in the past as well as in the present. (42)

It was the knowers [those cultured in mind and intellect] who reclaimed the jungles for cultivation. Then, over that cleared plot of land was built the Vedic altar; in that pure sky of Bharata, up rose the sacred smoke of yajnas [sacrifices]; in that air breathing peace, the Vedic mantras echoed and re-echoed - and cattle and other beasts grazed without any fear of danger. The place of the sword was assigned at the feet of learning and dharma. Its only work was to protect dharma and save the lives of men and of cattle. The hero was the protector of the weak in danger - the kshatriya. Ruling over the plough and the sword was dharma, the protector of all. He is the King of kings; he is ever-awake, even when the world sleeps. Everyone was free under the protection of dharma. (43)

As, during the supremacy of the brahmin and the kshatriya there is a centralization of learning and advancement of civilization, so the result of the supremacy of the vaishya is an accumulation of wealth. (44)

3. Castes Coalesce in the Long Run in Spite of Attempts by the Higher Castes to Preserve Privilege

Though apparently different from the social methods of other nations, on close inspection the Aryan method of caste will not be found so very different, except on two points:

The first is, in every other country the highest honor belongs to the kshatriya, the man of the sword. The Pope of Rome will be glad to trace his descent to some robber-baron on the banks of the Rhine. In India, the highest honor belongs to the man of peace - the sharman, the brahmin, the man of God.

The greatest Indian king would be gratified to trace his descent to some ancient sage who lived in the forest, probably a recluse, possessing nothing, dependent upon the villagers for his daily necessities, and all his life trying to solve the problems of this life and the life hereafter.

The second point is the difference of units. The law of caste in every other country takes the individual man or woman as the sufficient unit. Wealth, power, intellect or beauty suffices for the individual to leave the status of birth and scramble up to anywhere he or she can.

In India, the unit is all the members of a caste community.

Here, too, one has every chance of rising from a low caste to a higher or the highest; only, in this land of the birth of altruism, one is compelled to take his whole caste along with him or her.

In India you cannot, on account of your wealth, power, or any other merit, leave your fellows behind and make common cause with your superiors; you cannot deprive those who helped you to acquire the excellence of any benefit therefrom and give them in return only contempt. If you want to re to a higher caste in India, you have to elevate all your caste first, and then there is nothing in your onward path to hold you back.

This is the Indian method of fusion; and this has been going on from time immemorial. For in India, more than elsewhere, such word as Aryans and Dravidians are only of philological import, the so-called craniological differentiation finding no solid ground to work upon.

Even so are the names such as brahmin, kshatriya, etc. They simply represent the status of a community, in itself continuously fluctuating, even when it has reached the summit; and all further endeavors are towards fixity of the type by non-marriage, by being forced to admit fresh groups from lowers castes or foreign lands within its pale.

Whatever caste has the power of the sword becomes kshatriya; whatever learning, brahmin; whatever wealth, vaishya.

The groups that have already reached the coveted goal, indeed, try to keep themselves aloof from the newcomers by making subdivisions in the same caste; but the fact remains that they coalesce in the long run. This is going on before our eyes all over India.

Naturally, a group having raised itself up would try to preserve the privileges to itself. Hence, whenever it was possible to get the help of a king the higher castes, especially the brahmins, have tried to put down similar aspirations in the lower castes, by the sword, if practicable. But the question is: did they succeed? Look closely into your Puranas and Upapuranas, look especially into the local khanda of the big Puranas, look round and see what is happening before your eyes, and you will find the answer.

We are, in spite of our various castes, and in spite of our modern system of marriage restricted within the subdivisions of a caste (though this is not universal), a mixed race in every sense of the word. (45)

4. There Is No Vedic Sanction for Hereditary Barriers in the Caste System, Which Is to Be Evolved According to Social, Not Religious, Law

The Hindus said in olden times that life must be made easier and smoother. And what makes everything alive? Competition. Hereditary trade kills. You are a carpenter? Very good; your son can only be a carpenter. What are you? A blacksmith? Blacksmithing becomes a caste; your children will become blacksmiths. We do not allow anybody else to come into that trade, so you will be quiet and remain there. You are a military man, a fighter? Make a caste. You are a priest? Make a caste. The priesthood is hereditary, and so on. Rigid, high power! That has a great side, and that side is that it really rejects competition. It is that which has made the nation live while other nations have died - that caste. But there is a great evil; it checks individuality. I will have to be a carpenter because I am born a carpenter; but I do not like it. That is in the books, and that was before Buddha was born. I am talking to you of India as it was before Buddha. (46)

The doctrine of caste in the Purusha Sukta of the Vedas does not make it hereditary. What are those instances in the Vedas where caste has been made a matter of hereditary transmission? (47)

Social customs as barriers [were] founded upon the Smritis, but none from the Shrutis. The Smritis must change with time. This is the admitted law. (48)

Caste is continually changing, rituals are continuously changing; so are forms. It is the substance, the principle, that does not change. It is in the Vedas that we have to study our religion. With the exception of the Vedas, every book must change. The authority of the Vedas is for all time to come; the authority of every one of our other books is for the time being. For instance, one Smriti is powerful for one age, another for another age. Great prophets are always coming and pointing the way to work. Some prophets worked for the lower classes, others, like Madhva, gave to women the right to study the Vedas. Caste should not go, but should be readjusted occasionally. Within the old structures is to be found life enough for the building of two hundred thousand new ones. It is sheer nonsense to desire the abolition of caste. The new method is: evolution of the old. (49)

5. When the Whole World Will Again Attain to the Ideal of the Brahmin, Caste Will Be at an End

The general policy of our national lawgivers was to give the priests... honor. They also had the same socialistic plan [you in the West are just ready to try], that checks them from getting money. What [was] the motive? Social honor. Mind you, the priest in all countries is the highest in the social scale, so much so in India that the poorest brahmin is greater than the greatest king in the country, by birth. He is the nobleman in India. But the law does not allow him ever to become rich. The law grinds him down to poverty - only it gives him... honor. He cannot do a thousand things; and the higher the caste in the social scale, the more restricted are its enjoyments. The higher the caste, the less the number of kinds of food that people can eat, the less the amount of food that people may eat, the less the number of occupations [they may] engage in. To the West, their lives would be only a perpetual train of hardships - nothing more than that. It is a perpetual discipline in eating, drinking, and everything; and all [penalties] which are required from the lower caste are required from the higher ten times more. The lowest person tells a lie; the fine is one dollar. A brahmin must pay, say a hundred dollars, for he or she knows better. (50)

The brahmin or high caste person devotes the first part of his life to the study of the Vedas or sacred books and the latter part of meditating on the divinity, being supposed to have overcome the human in himself, and to be only a soul. (51)

Our ideal of high birth, therefore, is different from that of others. Our ideal is the brahmin of spiritual culture and renunciation. By the brahmin ideal, what do I mean? I mean the ideal brahminness in which worldliness is altogether absent and true wisdom is abundantly present. That is the ideal of the Hindu race. Have you not heard it declared that he, the brahmin, is not amenable to law, that he has no law, that he is not governed by kings, and that his body cannot be hurt? That is perfectly true. Do not understand it in the light thrown upon it by interested and ignorant fools, but understand it in the light of the true and original Vedantic conception. If the brahmin is one who has killed all selfishness and who lives and works to propagate wisdom and the power of love - if a country is altogether inhabited by such brahmins, by men and women who are spiritual and moral and good, is it strange to think of that country as being above and beyond all law? What police, what military, are necessary to govern them? Why should they live under a government? Why should anyone govern them at all? They are good and noble, and they are the men and women of God. These are our ideal brahmins. (52)

The ideal of this world is that state when the whole world will again be brahmin in nature. When there will be no more necessity of the shudra, vaishya, and kshatriya powers, when human beings will be born with yoga powers, when spiritual force will completely triumph over material force, when disease and grief will no more overtake the human body, the sense-Organs will no more be able to go against the mind; when the application of brute force will be completely effaced from men's memory, like a dream of primeval days, when love will be the only motive power in all actions on this earth - then only will the whole of mankind by endowed with brahminical qualities and attain brahminhood. Then only the distinction of caste will be at an end, ushering in the Satya-Yuga (Golden Age) visualized by the ancient rishis. We must adopt only that kind of caste division which gradually leads to this goal. That division into caste which is the best way to abolish caste should be most cordially welcomed. (53)

to be continued....