Guest guest Posted July 17, 2004 Report Share Posted July 17, 2004 There were various discussions whether Mauryan kings are sudras. To determine this, let us go back into the days of varna and have a look. In India, when Varna has been brought into existence, it had four branches- Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas and Shudras. It is actually a power dissection giving intellectual power to brahmins, political power to kshatriyas , economic power to vaisyas and man power to shudras. No varna was greater than the other, though ksatriyas seemed to enjoy more say in the society due to their political power and sudras, the least. So far my study goes, these sections are created to rob brahmins of their wealth and political power.- which is quite contrary to the popular belief. However, it is the great battle of Mahbharat that has brought about a great collapse of this varna system, resulting in huge varna sankara. In fact, it has not just stopped with varna sankara but since there are not enough men and protectors, the stocks outside the varna system too have mixed with the people within the varna tradition and the children born to these people have finally had to be assimilated into the society. There was no body to check who belonged to which varna since there is no more any varna. Generations after generations have married people with mixed origins. Most of them congregated into tribes. These tribes have an internal hierarchy, probably based on occupation and importance. Externally too , the tribes were placed in rungs. One tribe is greater than the other, perhaps based on the culture, power and the claimed ancestry. This has continued for hundreds of years. In due course, people have tried to again segregate themselves into groups- we and other. This time this has been done on the basis of occupation and culture- ironically, again, with in the framework of varna. Brahmins are segregated into several subsects, with perhaps some kind of hierarchy, all kings are called kshatriyas- some of them, pure and some, fallen, vaishyas are segregated into arya vaisyas and others and the rest of the people into thousands of castes, based on occupation. The various people following the same occupation are said to belong to the same caste, irrespective of their origins. This again brought a problem due to cultural differences, " I am greater than him though we both are following the same occupation" traits and this led to sub castes. How ever, caste system is drastically different from varna system, not only because the basis of segregation has now differed but also due to the characterisics of these two systems. For eg., varna had no concept of middle castes, which is a new idea in the caste system. Similarly, peasantry had been in the keep of vaisyas during the creation of varna but somewhere during all the turbulence, it has slid into the hands of middle castes. The Mauryan times and times just before them were witnessing this kind of consolidation of caste. But, Tribe was still playing a major role till some where before mauryas. For eg., during Buddha's time, Sakyas have joined in large numbers into Baudhism. And though sakya represented one tribe, it had people pursuing all kinds of occupations in the tribe(and hence, belonged to different castes) . All the same, they were all identified with the tribal name only. Similarly, Prasena jit, supposedly a kshatriya , was jilted by sakyas in marriage since they thought he belonged to a lower tribe and did not like to give away their daughter to him. In other words, the tribe can include people from all kinds of occupations, later which turned into caste, irrespective of which tribe they belonged to. Pre Mauryan times have seen that tribal segregation is more important than the caste segregation (in fact, this kind of tribal importance has continued even into the later dates, but caste based on occupation has become more important. While sakyas have deceived the more power ful prasena jit due to his lower status in the tribal hierarchy, similar tribal hierarchical low status did not stop chandra gupta I to marry a girl from Licchavi clan, because the fact that he is a king and hence, a kshatriya, pure or fallen has become more important than the considerations of tribal hierarchy. But again, thanks to the tribal importance, Chandra guptaI had attained cognisance due to this alliance. ) I think Moriya is also such a tribe. It includes people from all walks of life and we can not really say that one is sudra or brahmin just because he belonged to a particular tribe, say Moriya.. Thus, we can not really say that all Moriyas belonged to sudras or what ever. The tribe will include all kinds of castes. But in the hierarchy of tribes, it seems to be occupying a lower status and perhaps, this is the reason why the credit of being a sudra was given to Mauryans. Thus, he was called repeatedly sudra (vrshala) due to his tribal status (and he never seemed to have objected to this epithet) but was allowed to become a king due to fact that his ancestors are chiefs of the tribe and hence, come under kshatriyas in the caste system. Perhaps, I can summarize this in terms of a tribe- caste matrix. Mauryans are placed low in tribal hierarchy but high in caste hierarchy. Kishore Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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