Topic started by Amresh vashisht (@ 202.140.155.56) on Fri Oct 12 03:03:31 .
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THE BRAHMIN-The first intellectuals on earth.
The caste of priests, of those who know and repeat the Vedas. This is the first of the four Hindu castes and belongs to the dvija or twice-born category.
According to the Puranas, Brahmins were created from the mouth of Brahma so that they might instruct mankind. This was why they were considered the highest of the four castes, as they had the most to do with intellect. Since it was recognised that knowledge is the only thing that remains with a person throughout life, Brahmins, as teachers, were duly respected.
In ancient times, this name was specifically applied to those priests of the Atharva Vedas whose place was at the northern side of the altar during sacrificial ceremonies.
The Brahmins conducted the daily rites, the purification ceremonies, sacrifices and taught the Vedas. Their life was divided into four stages Brahmins had to maintain a strict code of conduct and exemplify ideal behavior. Which they had to go through in the prescribed order. Since they were the teachers, preachers and priests they had to be proficient in sacred knowledge through the Vedas. They had to maintain a strict code of conduct and exemplify ideal behavior. They were to be kind and gentle. For this, they earned certain privileges.
They were regarded as the highest class and respected by all, to the extent that commoners and kings treated them almost like gods alike. They were given special gifts, dan, and dakshina and were free from oppression and immune from capital punishment. It was considered to be the gravest of sins to kill a Brahmin. Only a priest could partake of the sacrificial Soma and eat the remains of the sacrifices, for no one else was regarded holy enough to eat the divine leftovers.
In India, a thousand years would pass before there was a noticable change in men's thinking. A new kind of spirituality and with it a new way of looking at the gods came due to the teachings of the Brahmans (the priests / monks of India). These men who refused to commit any act of violence, demonstrated by the example of their saintly life, that the gods were not there to kill all living things, but instead to help the weak, and to inspire the human race to live in a new spirit of conciliation and a search for perfection. This new faith found one of its principal tenants in the theory of the reincarnation cycles of the lives of souls, which are sent back to earth until they are judged to be worthy of going up to heaven and becoming immortal, like the gods. From this evolution of spirituality was born successively : Hinduism, Buddhism and Jaïnism, which replaced the Vedic religion.
Initially, a person became a Brahmin on the basis of his knowledge of the Vedas. In time, the Brahmins began interpreting laws to their own advantage to maintain their privileges. And because of this unassailable social and moral authority, they were unchecked. Thus, according to the Brahmins themselves, they were the chiefs of all created beings, entitled to all honour. The Shatapatha Brahmana declares that there are two kinds of divinities: gods and Brahmins who have learnt the Vedas. Only the Brahmins were allowed to read and teach the Vedas and hence monopolised the privilege of priesthood in the later Vedic period. They also established that one was born into a caste, which could not be changed except to be outcaste. This became the common practice, which survives till the present.
Today most Brahmins are engaged in other secular activities. However, only a qualified Brahmin can conduct religious ceremonies. These professional priests are now called Pandit, Bhatt or Shastri. There are several subdivisions within the Brahmin caste. Earlier, Brahmins belonging to specific gotras preached the different Vedas. The subdivisions are therefore based on their gotra or on geographic location. Presently there are 1,800 subdivisions. A Brahmin should be able to trace his origin to one of the seven great sages - Kashyapa, Atri, Bharadvaja, Gautama, Vishvamitra, Jamadagni and Vasishtha. Of these seven, Vishvamitra is said to have been born a Kshatriya and later became a Brahmin after performing severe penance.
Geographically, Brahmins are divided into two main groups - of the north and of the south, each of which has five divisions. The categories of the north are Kanyakubja, Sarasvata, Gauda, Mithila and Utkala. Those of the south are Maharashtra, Telinga, Dravida, Karnataka and Malabar. Each group claims to be the highest category. By common perception, Brahmins involved in the funerary rites are considered the lowest category.
The Brahmin caste of India consists of a number of regional castes, which are spread. Out all over the country. Ever since the times of the puranas, the Brahmin caste had been devided into groups based on the geo-graphical origin of the peoples. The division of the groups was based on their place of profession and types of religious rituals i.e. the prayers. All Brahmins were located on the banks of rivers, seashores, big ponds, hills and prabats. The division was perfect that the western, Eastern, Southern & Northerns ends of the location named their particular class of Brahmins.
My father was Brahmin. He belongs to a saraswat Brahmins community. The probable reason of being a Saraswat Brahmin, who lived to the east/west of Saraswati river were refereed to as the Saraswat Brahmins.At around 3000 B.C, The maha river SARASWATI got vanished and the inhabitants of its banks spread over to various places. This is the same time that the vedas were authored. (in written Texts)
Though its my personal opinion that the inhabitants of that time were in great danger, no rains were there, it was a hunger for all and bhahmins being the mouthpiece of the society called a yagna, which lasted ten months praying for the food, water and non displacing from the places of their pitras. It seems that at the end of that yagna, the brahmins, the saraswat brahmins decided not to give up their love for saraswati, and through the prayers which were noted by them during the yagna, compiled it as vedas and transform the river saraswati into the river of education. An idol has been created and vedas had been put on her left hand.(This is my very personel observation)
The journey from Purohits to Kings,Generals,Ministers and Pandits
The royal claim to absolution did not pass unchallenged. The ceremonial of consecration included certain rites, which required the king to descend from the throne and make obeisance to the Brahmanas. He had also to take an oath not to play false to the priest, and was specially charged with the duty of protecting the Brahmanas and the laws of the realm. That the Brahmanas did not tamely an acquies in all that the kind did, It appears from several stories about the conflict of kings and Brahmanas recorded in the later Vedic Texts. As to the commonalty, they supplied important officials like the Suta and the Gramani, whose title raja kartri or “King-maker” indicated their importance in the body politic. The popular assemblies styled the Sabha and the Samiti were still regarded as important, and it is stated in the Atharva Veda that concord between the king and the assembly was essential for the former’s properity. Popular wrath vented itself in the expulsion of tyrannical kings together with erring officials.
The two higher classes, namely the Brahmana and the Kashatriya, enjoyed privileges deny to the Vaisya and the Sudra. Different modes of address were laid down for the four castes. Change of caste was becoming difficult, if not impossible, but the higher classes were still free to intermarry with the lower orders, though marriage with sudras was not much approved. The life of a member of the higher castes was now rigidly regulated. The Chandogya Upanishad makes pointed reference to three stages, that of the householder engaged in sacrifice, study and charity, that of the householder engaged in sacrifice, study and charity, that of the hermit who practised austerity, and that of the Brahmacharin who dwelt with his Acharya or teacher. The power and prestige of the Brahmanas had increased immensely. But though the priest claimed to be a god on earth and the protector of the realm, and the same individual might be the Purohita of several kingdoms, there was no pope to oppose the king.
The Kshatriya now and then contested the Brahmana claim to supremacy, and we have declarations to the effect that the Kshatriya had no superior and that the priest was only a follower of the king. The great community of ordinary freemen was splitting up into small functional groups and we have references, in addition to those engaged in agricultural and pastoral pursuits, to the merchant, the chariot-maker, the smith, the carpenter, the tanner, the fisherman, etc., as names of distinct castes. Some of them were sinking in social estimation, and in a Brahmana passage a carpenter’s touch is said to impart ceremonial impurity. The Sudra, too, regarded as impure and was not allowed to touch the milk needed for oblations to the fire-God. The gulf separating him from the humbl freeman was, however, becoming narrower. He was not infrequently grouped with the Vaisya, and the two together were set against the priest and the noble. The right of the Sudra to live and proper was gradually recognised and prayers were even uttered for his glory. The ranks of Skudras were constantly swelled by the admission of new aboriginal tribes into the Aryan polity.
Outside the regular castes stood two important bodies of men, namely, the Vratyas and the Nishadas. The Vratyas were probabaly Aryans outside the pale of Brahmanism. They did not observe Brahmanic rules, spoke some prakritic language and led a nomadic life. They appear to have had some special connection with the people of Magadha and the cult of Siva and of the “Arhats”. They were permitted to become members of the brahmanical community by the performance of some prescribed rites. The Nishadas were clearly a non-Aryan people who lived in their own villages and had their own rulers (Sthapati). They were probabaly identical with the modern Bhils.
The Greek writers note at the end of this period that the custom of the country prohibited intermarriage between the castes. Custom also prohibited anyone from exercising two traders, or from changing from one caste to another. The sophist only could come from any caste. Brahmanical lawgivers developed the theory of defilement and laid a ban on certain kinds of food as being intrinisically unfit for consumption by the twice born or upper castes. Others, when defiled by the touch of certain classes of men and women, were regarded as impure. The theory of mixed castes is produced so as to explain the presence of new communities like the Yavanas. But such a theory tacitly admits that intermarraige between the castes did take place, and was legally recognised, though it was looked upon with disfavour by some of the law givers. Legal maxims were counsels of perfection, which were not always followed in practice. Greek historians refer to the matrimonial alliance between an Indian king and a Greek potentate.
They also draw attention to the political activities and militancy of the Brahmanas in the lower Indus Valley, and allude to the rise of a dynasty of barber origin in the valley of the Ganges. Puranic writers refer to marriages of Kshatriya kings with Sudra women and the assumption of royal authority by the Sudras. Cases of intermarriage between castes and change of caste and occupation are also found in the epic. An epic king marries a Brahmana girl. A Kshatriya prince is promoted to the rank of a Brahmana. A Brahmana warrior leads the Kuru host against the Pandus and chieftains of the Panchala country. A Kshatriya prince does not hesistate to embrace a Nishada whom he calls his friend and takes food from a Savara woman who has already served several sages.
From the point of view of religion, the early days of the Magadhan ascendancy were among the most eventful in Indian history. Great changes took place within the fold of Brahmanism. Old ideas changed. New ones sprang into vigorous life. Popular cults and beliefs obtained recongnition at the hands of the upper classes, and humanitarian and theistic movements gathered force and monetum as popular faith in animal sacrifice and barren ritual tended to diminish with the growth of free speculation presaged in the Upanishads. Outside the Brahmanical Holy Land, spiritual leadership passed from the hands of priestly theologians and sacrificers to ascetics and wanderers (Sramana, Parivrajaka) who laid the utmost stress on non-injury to living beings and the cessation of craving for the things of the world.
The Brahmanical texts refer to the growing popularity of Vaisravana, Kumara (Karttikeya), and the goddesses Uma Haimvati and Vasini who are regarded as different naspects of Durga, the mother goddess, consort of Siva. Side by side with these divinities appear the spirits dwelling in waters,herbs, trees etc., The mention of vaisravana points to the influence of the Yaksha cult, the popularity of which is attested both by epic and Buddhist evidence. The cult of trees and of water deities like the Ganges is noted by Curtius and Strabo, and the idea of the Kapla-vriksha, the tree which will give a man all he wants, occurs prominetly in literature, including that of the Jainas.
The Patanjali refers to the exhibition and sale of images of Siva, Sikanda, and Visakha by the Mauryas who rose to power at the end of our period. Temples of a primitive kind are mentioned already in the Satapatha-Brahmana, but these were not meant for iconic worship. In the epic, however, we have clear references to temples sacred to deities.
The hymns of the Rig Veda are addressed to a huge collection of devas, or gods; however, there are several references to a single god or single principle which is the source or the totality of all other divinities and phenomenon in the universe; this is an early attempt in Hinduism to unify the many into the one. This single, originary divinity that is sometimes the combination of all the gods put together, the Vishvadevas, or "Allgods."Sometimes this single divinity or principle is a concrete, activeforce, such as the World Maker (Vishvakarman: "All-maker"),or it's highly abstract, such as Rita, or cosmic order, an ideasimilar in some respects (but different in others) to the Chinese concept of the Tao or the Great Ultimate.
Upanishad literature tended to talk about this unitary or single divinity, power, or principle to the exclusion of all other gods, so that philosophically Indian thought during the Upanishad period moved towards many of the same conclusions as Promenades and the Elliptic philosophers did in ancient Greece. This single, unitary divinity had several aspects and names in the Upanishads, two of the most important are Atman, "Universal Spirit," and Brahman.
The word "Brahman" in Sanskrit originally meant "power" and specifically referred to the power of prayer or sacrifice to bring about material change in the world (hence the word Brahmin for priest); so that Brahman seems to refer to the power that brings about and changes the physical universe. In the Upanishads, Brahman is not only the principle and creator of all there is, but is also the sum totality of the universe and its phenomena.
This dual nature of the single divinity or totality of the universe, Brahman and Atman gets worked out inthe following way. Brahman can be located both in thephysical, external world and also in the spiritual and inner world where it is present as Atman, "universal spirit." Now every human being has an undying soul (atman) which, because of samsara, lasts through eternity from
life; this undying atman is a microcosm of Atman, the universal spirit, which is identical to Brahman. By understanding your true Self, by coming to know one's own undying soul, one then arrives at the knowledge of Brahman itself; the key to understanding the nature of the one unitary principle of the universe is to see one's (undying) self as identical with Brahman: "aham asmi Brahman": I am Brahman.
BRAHAMANA -AN OLDEST PROSE OF THE WORLD
'Belonging to the Brahmins'. These ancient prose texts are considered shruti. They are sub-categorized in the Vedas and contain explanations of, and commentaries on the mantras. However, they are differentiated from mantras on account of their distinct ideas and concepts. The Brahmana are considered to be the oldest prose writings in any Indo-European language. Several Brahmins, from 600 BC onwards, are believed to have authored these textbooks on ritual and prayer. The Brahmanas are said to have been compiled later by Veda Vyasa, the 'arranger of the Mahabartha"Apart from explaining the hymns of the Sanhitas, the Brahmanas also provide information about the origin and meaning of Vedic ceremonies, give instructions on the use of particular verses and metres, and describe the importance of prayers, sacrifices, and their correct observance. They emphasis the observance of the caste system and the ashrams. According to them, sacrificial rites are so powerful that they enable the performer to control the processes of nature, and even the gods. Essentially the Brahmanas represent an earlier stage in the evolution of Hindu thought and metaphysics, which would later assert and define the vast and enduring principle of Brahman-Atman, in the .
Each of the Sanhitas have Brahmanas associated with them, which usually maintain the essential character of the Veda to which they belong.
The Brahmanas associated with the Rig Veda are:
The Aitareya Brahmana:
Also known as the Ashvalayana Brahmana, it is believed to have been composed around 600 BC and is perhaps the oldest Brahmana. It deals principally with Soma sacrifices.
The Kaushitaki or Sankhayana Brahmana:
It contains material similar to that of the Aitareya Brahmana and describes various sacrifices.
The Brahmanas associated with the Yajur Veda are:
The Shatapatha Brahmana:
This Brahmana is associated with the white Yajur Veda. It consists of 100 lectures, which provide information on ceremonies, and the philosophy of sacrifices. After the Rig-Veda, this text is considered the most important work in the entire range of Vedic literature.
The Taittiriya Brahmana:
This Brahmana is associated with the black Yajur Veda. The Sama Veda has eight Brahmanas associated with it. Some of th important ones are
The Tandya Brahmana:
This is the most important Brahmana associated with the Sama Veda. It provides general information about sacrifices.
The Prauda Brahmana:
It has 25 sections, which enumerate the Vratyastoma ritual by which non-Aryans were admitted into the Aryan fold.
The Shadvinsa Brahmana:
Literally meaning "26", it was so named because it constitutes the twenty-sixth section of the Prauda Brahmana, and was later added toit
The Sama Vidhana Brahmana:
This work is devoted entirely to magic and details the chants to be recited for various spells.
The Atharva Veda has only one Brahmana associated with it,
the Gopatha Brahmana.
It is a much later work than the others, composed largely of material gathered from previous sources including the Aitareya Brahmana of the Rig-Veda and the Shatapatha Brahmana of the white Yajur Veda.
Thus, It’s not very old that the Brahmins have been divided in to class based on the names of the places. The Gaur, Saraswat, Saryupari, Kanyakubj, and all these places we find as Gaur City at River Gomti a prominent place and it is located in east uttar pradesh hence titled as Gaur. The Saraswat from Saraswati, The Saryupari from River Saryu, The Kannuj was known as Kanyakubj. However the journey of Brahmans was a diffiucult.As per our mythology Right from the creation of the humans beings to the year 2001 it goes as follows.( The period of 10000 years have been taken as model time gap)
Brahma -the creator and his seven sons -uncertained Years from Today
Brahmins of 300 gotras authored Veds 8000BC 10 ,000 BrahminVashisht Purohit of SHRI RAM 4000BC 6,000
Brahmin Guru of Kaurv And Pandav 3000Bc. 5,000
Brahmins of Bram Shahi Rulers 1000BC 3,000
Brahmin Gautam Budha 500A.d 1,500
Brahmin Kautilya
Brahmin Shivaji of Maharashtra. 1600A.D 400
Brahmin Shirdi Sai Baba of Bhardwaj Gotra 1600 400
Brahmin Guru Govind Singh of Sikhism 1600A.D 400
Brahmin NandKumarof Bengal 1850 A 150
Brahmin Mangal Pandey of Indian Rebellion1857A.d 143 Brahmin Swami Dayanand Of Arya Samaj1875A. 125
Brahmin Jawahar Lal Nehru 1948A.d 52
Brahmin Atal Bihari Vajpaee 2000A.d 1
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