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An
Approach To Indian History
-Prof. Kittu Reddy |
The Indian Social System
We have seen in the previous chapters that the basis of Indian culture has been spiritual. The Vedas laid down the psychological seed of Indian spirituality on a high mystical level, the Upanishads generalised this knowledge by presenting it in a form which was accessible to the developed intellectual man and the epics brought it through legend and story down to the level of understanding of the common man. The whole society thus became imbued with a knowledge of the spiritual concepts, which have been the basis of Indian civilisation and culture. But if spirituality has to have any life value, it is not enough that the higher mind of man be touched and moved by these ideals; there must be a descent to the lower life, they must permeate the daily life of man, his social relations, his politics, his education and the outermost parts of his being.
However, to bring spirituality into the practical life of man is a difficult endeavour. But Indian culture did make this endeavour and as a result it cast a stamp of spirituality on the general life of man even in the mass.
The Problem
The problem which Indian culture had to solve was to create a firm outward basis in life on which to found the practical development of its spiritual concepts and ideas.
How are we to take the natural life of the average man and while allowing it sufficient scope and variety and freedom, yet subject it to a law, canon, dharma; how are we to create a law of function and a law of type? At the same time how are we to take up the lower parts of the being, each with its actual unideal human tendency and give that too a law; and finally how are we to take up our highest ideals and give them too a means of expression and a law and guiding principle?
In order to solve this problem, Indian culture from an early stage framed a system which was constituted of a triple quartette.
Its first circle was the synthesis and the gradation of the fourfold object of life: vital desire and hedonistic enjoyment, personal and communal interest, moral right and law, and spiritual liberation. The Indian terms are: artha, kama, dharma and moksha.
Its second circle was the fourfold order of society, carefully graded and equipped with its economic functions and its deeper cultural, ethical and spiritual significances. These were the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and the Shudras.
Its third, the most original and indeed unique of its englobing life patterns was the fourfold scale and succession of the succesive stages of life: student, householder, forest recluse and free supersocial man. These were the stages of Brahmacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha and sanyasa.
Thus we see that the fourfold object of life was thrown into the double system of the four Varnas and the four Ashramas,- four graded classes of society and four successive stages of a developing human life.
To sum up, the triple quartette was constitued in the following manner:
The aims: artha, kama, dharma and moksha
The stages: brahmacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha and moksha
The varnas: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra.
This whole system was based on two fundamental or two main truths of our existence which have been the basis of Indian culture. These two truths or fundamental principles of existence may be summed up as the principle of graduality and the principle of complexity.
The two fundamental principles
The first truth is that the human being in his growth has stages through which he must pass; however fast one might grow, one has to go through a series of developing progressions; the swiftest race has its stadia.
Secondly, life is complex and the nature of man is complex. In each life man has to figure a certain sum of his complexity and put that into some kind or order.
Practically, this means that one must recognise that the initial movement of life for almost all human beings is centred around the natural ego of man; self-interest and hedonistic desire are the original human motives – kama, artha. Indian culture recognised this primary turn of human nature; it accepted these powers but also recognised that they have to be put in order. The natural ego life has to be lived and brought to its fulness; but it must be kept from making any too unbridled claim or heading furiously towards its satisfaction. For it is only then that it can get its full results without disaster and be eventually inspired to go beyond itself to a greater spiritual good and bliss.
An internal or external anarchy cannot be the rule; a life governed in any absolute or excessive degree by self-will, passion, sense-attraction, self-interest and desire cannot be the natural whole of a human or a humane existence. Therefore there has to be another power that overtops desire and self-interest and self-will, the power of Dharma.
The Dharma may be described as the deepest law of our nature; it is not just a creed, cult or ethical and social rule. The tendency of man to seek after a just and perfect law of his living finds its truth and its justification in the Dharma. Dharma is fixed in its essence, but still it develops in our consciousness and evolves and has its stages. There are gradations of spiritual and ethical ascension in the search for the highest law of our nature. And this is so because all men cannot follow in all things one common and invariable rule.
Life is too complex to admit of the arbitrary ideal simplicity which the moralising theorist loves. Natures differ, the position, the work we have to do has its own claims and standards; the aim and bent, the call of life and the call of the spirit is not the same for everyone. There is thus a dharma of age, of function, of temperament.
To sum up, it may be said that dharma is an ethic or science arising from the deeper layers of our being which give a restraint as well as a scope to our activities; it gives a standard of perfection and an order to the thing trying to express itself.
In order to fulfill this aim of life, the Indian social system supplied him with a framework; it gave him a scale and gradation for his life which could be made into a kind of ladder rising in that sense. This was provided by the four Ashramas.
Life was divided into four natural periods and each of them marked out a stage in the working out of this cultural idea of living. There was the period of the student, the period of the house-holder, the period of the recluse or the forest dweller, the period of the free super-social man, parivrajaka.
The student life was framed to lay the groundwork of
what the man had to know, do and be. It gave a thorough training in the
necessary arts, sciences, branches of knowledge, but it was still more insistent
on the discipline of the ethical nature and in earlier days contained as
an indispensable factor a grounding in the Vedic formula of spiritual knowledge.
This discipline prepared the student in some degree for the fourfold objects
of his life, artha, kama, dharma and moksha.
He then entered the household stage to live out his knowledge; it was here that was able to serve the three first objects of human objects; he satisfied his natural being and its interest and desires to take the joy of life; he paid his debt to the society and its demands and by the way he discharged his life functions he prepared himself for the last greatest purpose of his existence.
In the third stage he retired to the forest or withdrew from life to go into a certain seclusion, to work out the truths of the spirit. He lived in a broad freedom from the stricter social bonds, and if he so willed gathering the young around him, could leave his knowledge to the rising young generation as an educator or spiritual instructor.
In the last stage of life, he was free to throw off every remaining tie and wonder over the world in an extreme spiritual detachment from all the forms of social life, satisfying only the barest necessities, communing with the universal spirit, making his soul ready for eternity.
As a matter of fact, the great majority never went beyond the two first stages; many passed away in the vanaprastha or forest stage and only the rare few made the last extreme venture and took the life of the wondering recluse.
But this profoundly conceived cycle gave a scheme which kept the full course of the human spirit in its view; it could be taken advantage of by all according to their actual growth and in its fullness by those who were sufficiently developed. It was on this firm and noble basis that Indian civilisation grew to its maturity and became a thing rich, splendid and unique.
The Indian society was divided into four castes or four graded classes of society. The ancient Indian idea was that man falls by his nature into four types. There are first and highest, the man of learning and thought and knowledge; next, the man of power and action, ruler, warrior, leader, administrator; third in the scale, the economic man, producer and wealth-getter, the merchant, artisan, cultivator; these were the twice born, who received the initiation, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya. Last came the more undeveloped human type, not yet fit for these steps of the scale, unintellectual without force, incapable of creation or intelligent production, the man fit only for unskilled labour and menial service, the Shudra. The economic order of society was cast in the form and gradation of these four types. The Brahmin class was called upon to give the community its priests, thinkers, men of letters, legislators, scholars, religious leaders and guides. The Kshatriya class gave its kings, warriors, governors and administrators; the Vaishya order supplied it with it producers, agriculturists, craftsmen, artisans, merchants and traders. The Shudra class ministered to its need of menials and servants.
As far as this went, there was nothing peculiar in the system unique to India. For we had in Europe a similar division made up of four classes that corresponded to the Indian division. The Brahmin class in India was represented in Europe by the Church; the Kshatriya class by the aristocracy, the Vaishya by the bourgeoisie and the Shudra by the serf.
But what was unique to the Indian system was its extraordinarily durability and perhaps the supreme position given to religion, thought and learning, not only at the top of the scale but as the dominant power. It must also be noted that in its origin and purity the status of man was not fixed by his heredity and birth, but by his capacities and his inner nature.
As we see that this division of society into four classes or castes as it is called in India was a well ordered economic division. But the real greatness of the Indian system of the four varnas lay elsewhere. Its true originality and permanent value was in the ethical and spiritual content which the thinkers and builders of the society poured into these forms.
This inner content started with the idea that the intellectual, ethical and spiritual growth of the individual is the central need of the race.
There was therefore erected a rule of family living, a system of individual observance and self-training, a force of upbringing and education which would bring out and formulate the essential ethical and spiritual qualities. The individual man was carefully trained in the capacities, habits and attainments, and habituated to the sense of honour and duty necessary for the discharge of his allotted function in life. He was scrupulously equipped with the science of the thing he had to do, the best way to succeed in it as an interest, artha, and to attain to the highest rule, canon and recognised perfection of its activities, economic, political, sacerdotal, literary, scholastic or whatever else they might be. All pursuits had their education, their law and canon, their ambition of success, their sense of honour in the discharge of their scruple of well-doing, their dignity of a fixed standard of perfection. And it was because of this that even the most despised pursuit, the lowest and the least attractive function could be in a certain degree a means of self-finding and ordered self-satisfaction.
One of the greatest contributions of the caste system was the idea of social honour: the honour of the Brahmin which resides in purity, in piety, in a high reverence for the things of the mind and spirit and a disinterested possession and exclusive pursuit of learning and knowledge, the honour of the Kshatriya which lives in courage, chivalry, strength, a certain proud self-restraint and self-mastery, nobility of character and the obligations of that nobility; the honour of the Vaishya which maintains itself by rectitude of dealing, mercantile fidelity, sound production, order, liberality and philanthropy; the honour of the Shudra which gives itself in obedience, subordination, faithful service, a disinterested attachment.
But Indian culture did not stop there; it said to the individual: “This is only the substructure, it is of pressing importance indeed, but still not the last and greatest thing. When you have paid your debt to society, filled well your place in its life, helped its maintenance and taken from it your legitimate and desired satisfactions, there still remains the greatest thing of all. There is still your self, the soul in you and it is this self and soul that you have to find. You are here on earth for that and it is from the place I have provided you in life and by this training that you can begin to find it. That is the real object before you. From the life basis I gave you, you can rise to the liberating knowledge which brings a spiritual release, moksa. When you have done that you are free”.
It was on this firm and noble basis that Indian civilisation grew into its maturity and became a thing rich, splendid and unique. While it filled the view with the last mountain prospect of a supreme spiritual elevation, it did not neglect the life of the levels. It lived between the busy life of the city and village, the freedom and seclusion of the forest and the last overarching illimitable ether. Thus founded, thus trained, the ancient Indian race grew to astonishing heights of culture and civilisation; it lived with a noble, well-based, ample and vigourous order and freedom; it developed a great literature, sciences, arts, crafts, industries; it rose to the highest possible ideals and no mean practice of knowledge and culture, of arduous greatness and heroism, of kindness, philanthropy and human sympathy and oneness; it laid the inspired basis of wonderful spiritual philosophies; it examined the secrets of external nature and discovered and lived the boundless and miraculous truths of the inner being; it fathomed self and understood and possessed the world.
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