The message of Bahagavan Das on the present significance of the Vedic Social Order

farmers and altogether the providers of wealth. It is their duty to concern themselves with the providing of wealth for the whole community, for Kshattriyas and Brahmins as well as for themselves. There is described in the Manu Code a fourth class, the Sudras, who may be compared with labourers, but their existence is related to the peculiar racial circumstances of ancient India, to an earlier time in Man’s development and to the institution of slavery, as we find it also in Plato’s time; it is not an essential part of the threefold order of society as described in the Manu Code and is not relevant to modern thinking about social order.

Thus it is the function of the Brahmins to guide, of the Kshattriyas to rule and protect and of the Vaishyas to provide. The essence of the Manu Code is in the definition of these three functions and of the relationship between them. They must be kept separate in order that the whole may function properly. Guidance, political power and wealth must not be confused with one another. Those who guide must not have power and wealth, those who have power must be guided by those who have wisdom and they must not themselves have wealth, those who have and provide wealth must not themselves have power but must be ruled by others whose function is to rule.

It is at once evident that everything depends on the wisdom of those whose function it is to guide. To ensure this the whole life of a Brahmin is prescribed in the greatest detail from the moment he is born until his death. Never at any time in his whole life is there any possible suggestion that he is living for his own sake alone, but only for the proper performance of his function in society. His life was divided into four parts. In the first he was a religious student, studying the Vedas at the feet of his teacher. His life was regulated in every detail ritually and above all he had to obey his teacher in everything. Having, as it were, graduated, he had to take a wife and bring up a family and engage in some economic pursuit. When his child had in turn grown up and his

Footnote on Sudras. This is not a mere evasion. Dr. Bhagavan Das did indeed relate the fourth (Sannyasi) stage in the life of a Brahmin to the Sudras, calling the Brahmins in this stage spiritual Sudras. But whereas the other three classes were considered ‘twice-born’, the Sudras were only ‘once-born’, that is immature as human beings. Such a notion does not accord with the present development of Man. It can indeed be said that the social function of mere labourer is more and more being taken over by the machine and that all who work in the economic world are in that respect properly classed as Vaishya.

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