LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -34
RELIGION and BRAHMANISM (i)

Brahmanism is not an order, but a conglomerate of numerous disarray developments some of these coming from gathering days. They include rites, rituals, practices, beliefs, and even worship and sacrifices from non-violent to merciless killing of animals which were a threat to agriculture. More than anything it is a clever design to misappropriate without sweating the best of all produced by others through knowledge control even those through such a mechanism that the armed and moneyed sections which protected and provided must not get disgruntled. Nevertheless it kept them dependent on him for information and counselling. It is the same role that west started to play right from the day it learned this secret from the Brahmins.*

Brahmanism is a new coinage, with no authority nor mention in earlier texts and yet as a tendency it has a hoary past penetrating into the gathering day’s Magician priests. Yes, cunningness has a long and inglorious past to make the cunning proud. The term Brahman itself had come into use with cleaning the land of shrubs and outgrowths by fire.

Initially the arrangement was so flawless and just, that the entire society felt proud to kneel before them and really must have offered them the best : they were their own elders, their own future, and closer to their manes. But they were past productive age. If unable to produce corn, they were also past the age to produce off springs. There was no way they could make privileges offered to them hereditary.

How and at what stage some clever men managed to enter this idle class, free from all risks and strains, and yet able to control the protectors and producers claiming secret knowledge through which to to keep the forces of nature in good humor and get relief from drought and epidemics is beyond our comprehension. All we can guess is that with gradual drift of indecisive environmentalists (Rakshasas) towards agriculture, some witches might have entered the network and moderated the despise of the agriculturists towards witchcraft (kritya कृत्या, yaatu. यातु), recycling it into sacrificial rituals (कर्मकांड), emulating agricultural operations, known as formal (yajna (यज्ञ the art of causing rain and indirectly promoting production).

This may be true or not, we have nothing better than this inference which of course is built on slender bits of information. What is more interesting is that whereas the Devas had clearly cut themselves off the gathering stage, these entrants appear never to have severed their connections with the past. They readjusted and reshaped everything to make the accord more acceptable.

Looking at the fact that the teacher of Asuras, Sukrachrya (शुक्राचार्य) is not remembered with any less reverence than the teacher of the Devas, Brihaspati (बृहस्पति) and in the Gita, poet Ushana ( उशना, i.e. शुक्राचार्य) is rated above all the other poets. The Supreme God declares himself to be Ushana among poets, (कवीनां उशना कवी). Through their entry into the category of elders who took upon them the role of teachers of the infants, and counsellors for the workforce, irrespective of their age, they saved themselves from the taboos attached to agricultural operations. As such there is greater likelihood that Brahmanism was initiated by the late comer, tricksters, who transformed division of work, Varna, into hereditary caste system and stratified the Varna and ashram Dharma.

In fact the three Ashramas were inherent in the old scheme the fourth introduced at this stage was a return to the cherished way of life, much in tune with the popular desire to die at the birthplace.

The contradictions of value-systems were resolved by these Asuras who were eager to take benefit of the agricultural How close have my inferences reached to that of Kosambi regarding the origins of the Brahmanism and yet how different it is astonishes me. But Kosambi was driven by vengeance and had no other ground but his reverie, We have abundant documentary evidence driving us to the inevitable conclusion.

We shall examine Brahmanism in this background with evidence relied by us in the coming post.

*n.b.This miyan ki juti miyan ke sar (मियां की जूती मियां के सर) experiment was so successful in Bengal and Benaras that they practiced it universally with extraordinary deft combining it with physical force that even those clung to them who they were out to destroy and disposes of their buried treasures.