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

own hairs had started to turn grey, then he was allowed to retire from economic life, but was expected to continue to give his advice and counsel to others, thus performing his true function in society and receiving from society in return his sustenance. In the fourth quarter of his life the Brahmin was entitled to seek his own salvation. He had paid his debts to his ancestors, by himself rearing progeny, to the gods and to the sages, and he had given his wisdom freely to society. He was now allowed to become a beggar, seeking only his own inner salvation and relying on others to give him what little he needed as he prepared to die. This wholly ritual life which the Brahmin had to live ensured that he would not misuse the authority which reposed in him, but if he did the direst penalties were prescribed for him—far worse than those imposed on either of the other two classes for transgressing or failing in their duty.

A natural modern reaction to this order of society, and particularly to the discipline under which the Brahmins had to live, might be to say, with the critic of Socrates when he was outlining his ideal Republic, that this is just a city of pigs! No freedom, no joy, no right or opportunity to better oneself, to make wealth or rise to power! All prescribed from birth to death! And the answer to this must be the same as Socrates gave: that this was not designed to give pleasure to any particular class of people—such as those with initiative or ambition—but to make a healthy community as a whole. The three (or four) classes of society were known as Varnas, which literally means colours, and the four stages of life of the Brahmin were known as Ashramas, which literally means asylum or place of refuge. The emphasis is not on any one of either of these, as being more significant than the others, but on the well-ordering of the whole, which was accordingly called the Varn-Ashrama-Dharma.

Desire and ambition were indeed recognised as two of the three major aims of Man on the path of Pravritti (the outgoing path), and at the very beginning of the Manu Code it is stated at considerable length that nothing in the world is done without desire or self-love; but they were to be kept within bounds, recognising that though in the outgoing arc of Man’s life they are his guiding motive into the experience of individual selfconsciousness, yet they will not be found to be the end and aim

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