The hereditary monopoly of the sacred scriptures would be strengthened
and made absolute when the Sanskrit language, in which they had been
composed and handed down, ceased to be the ordinary spoken language
of the people. Nobody then could learn them unless he was taught by
a Brahman priest. And by keeping the sacred literature in an unknown
language the priesthood made their own position absolutely secure and
got into their own hands the allocation of the penalties and rewards
promised by religion, for which these books were the authority, that
is to say, the disposal of the souls of Hindus in the afterlife. They,
in fact, held the keys of heaven and hell. The jealousy with which they
guarded them is well shown by the Abbé Dubois: [400] "To the Brahmans
alone belongs the right of reading the Vedas, and they are so jealous
of this, or rather it is so much to their interest to prevent other
castes obtaining any insight into their contents, that the Brahmans
have inculcated the absurd theory, which is implicitly believed, that
should anybody of any other caste be so highly imprudent as even to
read the title-page his head would immediately split in two. The very
few Brahmans who are able to read those sacred books in the original,
only do so in secret and in a whisper. Expulsion from caste, without
the smallest hope of re-entering it, would be the lightest punishment
of a Brahman who exposed those books to the eyes of the profane." It
would probably be unfair, however, to suppose that the Vedas were
kept in the original Sanskrit simply from motives of policy. It
was probably thought that the actual words of the sacred text had
themselves a concrete force and potency which would be lost in a
translation. This is the idea underlying the whole class of beliefs
in the virtue of charms and spells.
But the Brahmans had the monopoly not only of the sacred Sanskrit
literature, but practically of any kind of literacy or education. They
were for long the only literate section of the people. Subsequently
two other castes learnt to read and write in response to an economic
demand, the Kayasths and the Banias. The Kayasths, it has been
suggested in the article on that caste, were to a large extent the
offspring and inmates of the households of Brahmans, and were no doubt
taught by them, but only to read and write the vernacular for the
purpose of keeping the village records and accounts of rent. They were
excluded from any knowledge of Sanskrit, and the Kayasths subsequently
became an educated caste in spite of their Brahman preceptors, by
learning Persian under their Muhammadan, and English under their
European employers. The Banias never desired nor were encouraged
to attain to any higher degree of literacy than that necessary
for keeping accounts of sale and loan transactions. The Brahmans
thus remained the only class with any real education, and acquired
a monopoly not only of intellectual and religious leadership, but
largely of public administration under the Hindu kings. No literature
existed outside their own, which was mainly of a sacerdotal character;
and India had no heritage such as that bequeathed by Greece and Rome
to mediaeval Europe which could produce a Renaissance or revival of
literacy, leading to the Reformation of religion and the breaking
of the fetters in which the Roman priesthood had bound the human
mind. The Brahmans thus established, not only a complete religious,
but also a social ascendancy which is only now beginning to break
down since the British Government has made education available to all.