BY
W. H. MORELAND, C.S.I., C.I.E.
AND
ATUL CHANDRA CHATTERJEE
G.C.I.E., K. C.S.I.
SUBJECT to local and temporary interruptions, Hinduism dominated India politically until the thirteenth century of the Christian era; and when eventually political authority passed to Moslem conquerors, the Hindu rule of life remained substantially unchanged, governing, or claiming to govern, the conduct of the great majority of the population, as it does to-day. It will be well, therefore, to give at this stage a general account of the institution, not as it stood at any particular date, but as it appears throughout the period of Hindu political supremacy.
The rule of life is Dharma, a term which is really equiva- lent to the whole duty of man,' but is conveniently rendered as the Sacred Law. It is embodied in a literature which runs from portions of commentaries on the Vedas, written, perhaps, as early as 800 B.C., and extends for at least twenty centuries; indeed, it may be described as still incomplete, for even at the present day the rules which deal specifically with personal law may be the subject of interpretation by judges exercising jurisdiction in British India. The most important texts are known as Dharma-sästras, but in some cases later commentaries on these texts have practically superseded the originals. The dates of the texts are un- certain, some of them bear marks of successive recensions, and even in the case of the Manava-Dharma-sästra, or 'Laws of Manu,' the most famous text of all, modern scholars are content to allow a wide margin, as from 200 ̊ B.C. to A.D. 200, for the period to which it belongs.
THE
SACRED LAW
The
Sacred Law is equally binding on kings and on subjects. No machinery exists for its formal
amendment, but in the course of time particular provisions have been
substantially altered by the refinements and elaborations of successive
commentators, and it must be regarded as to some extent a gradual growth,
influenced by the views of individuals or schools of thought, and by their
reaction to changing environment. The main outlines are, however, unchanged,
and it is these which we proceed to summaries.
The
Sacred Law contemplates the existence of many kingdoms, and of war between them
as the normal state of things. Within his kingdom, the king is a great deity in
human form,' and his paramount duty is to protect his subjects, punishing the
criminals who molest them, and receiving in return the revenue which it is
their duty to pay. He is expected to employ a learned priest as his chief
minister, and to maintain a body of councilors whom he should consult daily.
The bulk of his subjects live in the country, and a regular bureaucratic
hierarchy must be maintained for their government, extending from the 'lord of
ten' to the 'lord of a thousand' villages, though it is possible that these
precise numbers represent a theoretical scheme rather than the actual practice
of any particular period.
On
the face of it the king stands out as a despot, but some recent writers have
argued that he was bound by the decisions of his councilors to an extent which
rendered his position practically the same as that of a constitutional monarch
of the present day. The evidence on this point cannot be discussed here, but it
may be remarked that if such a position was in fact contemplated by the early
text- writers, the institution must have atrophied, for nothing resembling it
was found in the Hindu kingdoms which in later periods came under the
observations of foreign visitors; to them, the Hindu king was obviously a
despot. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that his despotism was not
unconditioned. He had been educated in the principles,. and in the atmosphere,
of the Sacred Law; he was exposed to the influence of councilors trained on the
same lines; and it is a question of fact, and one which owing to want of evidence
can scarcely ever be answered, how far the ideal of public service inculcated
by the Law prevailed over the temptations to which a despot is exposed. We can
safely infer that there were good kings as well as bad, but we cannot even
guess which type predominated.
The
idea of empire, that is to say, of a political institution superior to the
kingdom, had existed in India at any rate since the period of the Vedas, when a
special form of sacrifice was recognised as appropriate to the 'conqueror of
the whole earth,' and during the historical period large empires emerged from
time to time. As a rule these were super- imposed on existing kingdoms as the
result of conquest or submission, the constituent units ordinarily remained
intact, subject to the payment of tribute, and, when the empire broke up, the
old kingdoms, or most of them, resumed their independence as a matter of
course. The Hindu king, therefore, should not be thought of as necessarily
holding the position of an uncontrolled sovereign: the conception of a king
under an emperor was recognised in the Hindu period, it recurs during the
centuries of Moslem rule, when Hindu kingdoms submitted to foreign conquerors,
and it is apparent in the position of the Indian States at the present day.
Within
the kingdom the status of the individual subject was determined by his birth.
The caste-system was not so elaborate or so rigid as it has since become, for
inter- marriage frequently took place, and social segregation was apparently
less complete; but already each caste had its appropriate occupation, which
every man born into it was expected to follow in the ordinary course. The most
important occupation was necessarily agriculture, which was organised in the
units known in India as villages. To English readers this term is misleading:
the Indian village must be thought of rather as a civil parish, that is to say,
a recognised administrative unit of area, which need not have a resident
population, though ordinarily the land of a village was cultivated by people
living within its limits.
LAND
TENURE
The
Indian village of the remote past has been the subject of some rather
imaginative literature, in which conjecture
has occasionally run beyond the few facts furnished incidentally by the texts
of the Sacred Law. Interpreting the texts in the light of facts recorded at
later periods, it may be said that most villages, but probably not all,
contained a resident community or brotherhood, held together by the tie of a
common ancestry, and managing, as a body, the affairs of the village, subject
to whatever orders the administration might give. Each member of the
brotherhood had separate possession of the land which he cultivated; and his
holding passed by inheritance, and could in some cases, if not in all, be sold
or mortgaged. A share of the produce of the land was due to the king in return
for the protection he offered, and it was largely for the realisation of this
share that the local administration was organised. Outside the brotherhood
there were serfs who worked as labourers on the land, and in some cases were
probably allowed to cultivate portions of it, either in lieu of, or in addition
to, the grain or other produce paid to them for their maintenance. There may
also have been persons, not belonging to the brotherhood, allowed to cultivate
land as its tenants, but the evidence on this point is too scanty for a
definite statement, and it is quite un- certain when the free tenant emerged.
Apart from these ordinary villages, there are some indications of areas held as
the peculiar possession of the king, or of prominent men ; and these may have
been cultivated by serfs, or by tenants, or in both ways.
The
scanty facts on record regarding the tenure in the ordinary villages have been
interpreted in three ways. Some writers have contended that the king was owner
of the soil, and the brotherhood were his tenants, paying a share of the
produce by way of rent. Others have argued that the members of the brotherhood
owned the land, paying a share of the produce to the king by way of tax.
Others, again, hold that the juristic conception of owner- ship of land had not
emerged when the texts of the Sacred Law were compiled, and that the relation
between king and brotherhood was contemplated as political, not legal, in its
nature: cultivation of land within a kingdom was a fact, which necessarily
involved allegiance to the king and payment to him of a share of the produce,
while failure to pay was a breach of the Sacred Law and a definite act of
rebellion. These conflicting views cannot be discussed in. a book like this,
and we must be content with recording the divergence.
Of greater practical significance is the question what share of the produce had to be paid, and the passages bearing on this point are of interest as showing how the Sacred Law might in fact develop. The text-writers fixed the ordinary share at one-sixth, or less, though the Laws of Manu allowed one-fourth to be taken in emergencies. One of the later writers, however, used the phrase ' what is called one-sixth,' suggesting that by his time the fraction, like the word 'tithe' in modern English, had come to bear a technical signification. A commentator on Manu inserted the words 'or one-third' in the provision for emergencies, while another later writer explained, much in the fashion of a modern parliamentary draftsman, that the term one-sixth included one-fourth or one-third. It is probable that these writers reflect a change in practice, and that, as time went on, the higher charges, at first recognised as permissible in emergency, came to be levied in ordinary circumstances, so that the burden was in fact doubled; and this view is borne out by a few records which have survived in South India, showing that the actual charge was much greater than the traditional fraction.
Payments
of the king's share of produce did not always reach the royal treasury. It was
a common practice to assign the amount due from a given area as the salary of
an official, who made his own arrangements for collecting it, or as an
endowment for a temple or charitable foundation, the assignments in the first
case being merely temporary, while those with a charitable or religious object
might be intended to be permanent. This practice of alienating future revenue
prevailed right into the British period, and was one of the causes which
contributed to the financial collapse of various kingdoms; but its practical
convenience in the circumstances cannot be denied.
ADMINISTRATION
Notwithstanding
these alienations, it is probable that the great bulk of a Hindu king's revenue, was drawn from his share
of the produce of the soil; but all classes of his subjects were required to
pay for the protection to which they were entitled, and the result was an
elaborate system of taxation on trade and industry, much of it injurious when
judged by modern canons. This system, too, was destined to continue, in spite
of the occasional efforts of financial reformers, right through the Moslem
period, and traces of it are still to be found in the India of to-day.
As
has been said above, a regular bureaucratic hierarchy was required to execute
the king's duties and collect his dues. Administration had of course to be
conducted in accordance with the Sacred Law, but the subject was of sufficient
importance to be recognised by Hindu thinkers as a separate department of activity,
requiring a literature of its own. The outstanding text of this literature is
known as the Arthasästra 1 of Kautilya, and is traditionally attributed to a
famous minister of Chandragupta Maurya, who was reigning at Patna in the year
300 B.C. Some modern scholars accept this attribution, but others date the
treatise at least five centuries later, while others again regard it as a
gradual growth, which cannot be dated at all. According to some authorities it
may be confidently accepted as indicating the administrative practice
prevailing at the time it was written, while according to others it should be
taken as originally a theoretical work, which in course of time came to
exercise an important influence on rulers and administrators. Regarded from the
former standpoint, the picture it presents must be described as unpleasant in
modern eyes, for the sole aim of the administrator was efficiency, and he had
no scruples as to the means he employed. In view, however, of the existing
uncertainties as to date and authority, it would be dangerous to assume that
any Indian kingdom was in fact governed in accordance with the detailed rules
given in this manual, or to use it as more than a warning that the environment
in which it was drawn up was not a golden age of honesty and simple truth.
We must recognise that what would now be called gross administrative oppression was contemplated as possible, and even appropriate, by the writer, or writers, of the manual, but we cannot be confident that it reflects the actual practice of the Hindu period as a whole, though it may serve to illustrate the complexity of the administrative machinery, and the nature of the system of taxation to which reference has already been made.
Passing
from public to private life, the Sacred Law contemplates a monogamous-family as
the unit; but the religious requirement that death ceremonies should be
performed by a male descendant was allowed to override the strict rule of
monogamy, and a wider latitude in this matter was permitted to kings than to
private persons. The same requirement accounts for the gradual rise to
prominence of the practice of adoption, so that at the present day an adopted
son becomes a member of the family precisely as if he had been born in it, and
can thus perform the obligatory ceremonies. Probably the insistence of some of
the text-writers on the practices of child-betrothal and early marriage is
derived from the same source, the imperative need for male offspring, but the
imaginative literature of the Hindu period shows incidentally that, while these
practices existed, they were by no means so general as in later times.
In
the matter of property also, there appears to have been a gradual development
of rules restricting the freedom of the head of the family, until the position
was reached in most parts of the country that males acquire at birth a right in
the family property, the father is manager rather than owner, and on his death
the sons take equal shares. Actual division of the property is, however,
unnecessary, for the family may hold together for successive generations, the
rights of individuals being maintained, and being recognized when eventually
partition takes place.
SUTTEE
AND PURDAH
As
a rule, females have no share in the family property, though there is a
complicated set of provisions regarding the devolution of possessions which a woman has
acquired in particular ways; and the legal position of women is through- out
inferior to that of men, the sex receiving respect from the text-writers only
as potential or actual mothers of sons, and as essential partners of a
householder in religious and ceremonial rituals.2
In
this connection reference may be made to two ex- ceptional institutions
familiar under the names of 'suttee' and 'purdah.' The former denotes the
practice of a widow allowing herself to be burnt on her husband's funeral pyre.
Such customs have been recorded in the early stages of many races, but it is
only among Hindus that they persisted into modern times. The source of the
Indian practice is unknown, but it was recognised in some texts of the Sacred
Law, and it excited the interest of the Greek invaders in the fourth century
B.C., so that it certainly belongs to the Hindu period. It persisted under
Moslem rule, in spite of the efforts made by some administrations to suppress
it, and its final prohibition by law dates only from the year 1830. The
practice had two sides. When enforced by family or priestly opinion on an
unwilling victim, it resulted in a long series of what were in effect cruel and
callous murders when followed voluntarily, as it so frequently was, it
expressed the highest ideal of unselfish love, that a wife should accompany her
husband in death as in life; and many western observers must have shared the
attitude of William Methwold 3, an English merchant of the seventeenth century,
whose experience left him yet unresolved whether their love to their dead
husbands be more to be admired or pitied.'
The other practice, purdah, or the seclusion of ladies of position from the public eye, does not appear in the Sacred Law, nor is it clearly exemplified in the literature of the Hindu period; and the usual view is that it originated under Moslem rule, when the subjects adopted the practice intro- duced by their conquerors. There are, however, some signs that, even in Hindu times, the ladies in a royal palace lived in apartments specially reserved for them, and it is not entirely certain that the Indian institution was originated by Moslems, though their practice must undoubtedly have contributed to its prevalence in northern India in later times.
Slavery
was recognised by the Sacred Law. Prisoners of war and their descendants were
naturally slaves, and the same status might result as a punishment for crime,
or on failure to discharge a debt; while there are definite pro- visions
regarding the voluntary surrender of freedom under economic pressure, as in
time of famine. From the general literature of the Hindu period it appears that
slaves were quite common in domestic service, but there is nothing to show that
their labour was employed in organised industry, as was the practice in some
other countries. There are also some indications of a class of serfs living in
the villages, and held at the disposal of the free community, though not
treated as slaves in the strict sense, but the references in the literature are
too scanty for any precise statement to be made regarding the legal position of
this class.
Turning
to the religious side of Hinduism, it may be said that the creed was not
embodied in any precise formulas, and that in practice an individual enjoyed
considerable latitude in regard to belief, so long as he paid due respect to
Brahmans, the sacred caste, venerated the cow, the sacred animal,4 and did not
hurt his neighbours' feelings. For popular worship, there was an extensive
array of gods, from which the individual might choose the object of his special
devotion; not all of these gods were regarded as benevolent, and sacrifice
might be desirable not merely to obtain favour, but to propitiate some
malignant power.
RELIGION
The
two great gods, Siva and Vishnu, stood out far above the rest; in the
literature Brahma, the creator of the uni- verse, ranks along with these, but
it does not appear that his worship was ever really popular, as that of Siva or
Vishnu was. In the case of the latter of these, popular devotion tended to
concentrate more and more on two incarnations, Krishna and Rama, and to become
practically monotheistic, as will be told in a later chapter.
In
all formal religious ceremonies, the intervention of the Brahman was
indispensable, because he alone was in position to conduct the ritual without
which sacrifices and offerings would be ineffective; and the magical side of
his powers seems always to have been emphasized in the popular view, that is to
say, the belief prevailed that he could compel the gods to act in a particular
way. But this idea of compulsion is most prominent in connection with the
practice of asceticism. The Sacred Law prescribed a period of ascetic
self-discipline for Brahmans, and in practice this developed into the life of
austerity, culminating in self-torture, led by some groups of religious
mendicants. The development is no novelty, for it attracted the attention of
the Greek invaders under Alexander the Great; and, while the underlying idea
was self-discipline, the magical conception seems to have supervened that a man
could become more powerful than the gods by subjecting his body to extremes of
torture. Popular tales represent even the greatest of the gods as terrified by
the threats of some particular saint, and as hastening to grant his prayer, or
rather to obey his orders, in the fear that otherwise they themselves would be
annihilated.
The allied doctrines of karma and rebirth, the emergence of which was mentioned in the preceding chapter, formed an integral part of the popular mentality, and they, too, tended to derogate from the position of the gods, of whom their operation is almost independent; and speaking generally, Hinduism as a religion must not be regarded as mere polytheism. It cannot be defined in terms of strict logic, which is irrelevant to popular belief, but it may be said that polytheism did not satisfy religious needs, and that there was continuous effort to get beyond it to a region where satisfaction might, perhaps, be found. The pantheon was not discarded, but its power was limited, and people were seeking, more or less consciously, for a road by which it might be superseded.
So
far we have spoken of Hinduism as a popular religion. In the schools the search
for a way of escape was more conscious and more systematic. An immense mass of
philosophical literature was produced during the Hindu period, containing
practically all the metaphysical con- ceptions which are now current in the West;
it is marked by extraordinary intellectual acuteness, it presents very
different views of the ultimate reality, and it is unified only by the fact
that all thinkers alike leave polytheism far behind. It would probably be a
mistake to infer that this conscious intellectual effort exerted much direct
influence on the popular views: the two movements should be regarded rather as
different expressions of the same need. The scholar sought escape in the
profoundest regions of speculative thought, while the ordinary man chose from
among a wide variety of cults that which seemed to offer the best prospect of
concrete satisfaction. This wide variety is in fact one of the most obvious
characteristics of the popular religion. There have in the past been cults
which centred in sanguinary sacrifices, or in orgies of lust; alongside of them
there have been, and still are, others of pure spiritual aspiration; and midway
between, there is the worship which so far as we know has always been that of
the vast majority of Hindus, traditional rites scrupulously performed, with a
varying degree of confidence in their efficacy.
EXTENSION
OF HINDUISM
Some
scholars have attributed this variety, or part of it, to absorption into
Hinduism of cults which had grown up among the earlier inhabitants of the country,
and judging by the experience of later times, this explanation is not
improbable. Even in the present century several millions of souls, constituting
the jungle tribes, have been enumerated in the census as Animists, that is to
say, worshippers of spirits believed to reside in particular natural objects
such as stones or trees. The absorption
of these tribes into Hinduism is a simple affair when once their isolation has
given way as the result of the development of the country. It is sufficient for
a Brahman to point out that the spirit which the members of a tribe 'ignorantly
worship' is in fact a manifestation of Siva or some other member of the Hindu
pantheon; the idea is accepted as reasonable, the Brahman is appointed priest,
the ritual is regularised, and the tribe is brought within the circle of
Hinduism without more ado. There is no reason to doubt that this process has
operated in the past, but evidence is wanting to prove that it accounts for the
existence of all the cults which have been conjecturally attributed to it.
Foot Notes
1 An English version. will be found in Kautilya's Arthasåstra, tr. R. Shamasastri, Mysore, 1923.
2 The question of the right to property of Hindu women is at present receiving much attention from the legislature in India and some changes are taking place.
3 Relations of Golconda (Hakluyt Society, 1931), p. 28. Much informa- tion on this subject will be found in Altekar's The Position of Women in Piuilicntian (Renares, 1938).
4 This sentiment appears to have grown up by degrees. In the earliest days of Hinduism cows' flesh was still eaten, as it had been among the Aryans; in the second stage it was offered to honoured guests, who, it seems, were expected to refuse it; but the view that killing, or wilfully înjuring, a cow is a heinous sin was well established by about the Christian and had extended its protection to oxen as well as cows.
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