DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

8.2] PRIESTLY SUPERSTITION 249
and connected, if legendary tradition 7 be any guide, with the defeat of
Sahanusahl invaders who had killed the last Gardabhila king of Ujjain.
These tribes (like the Yaudheyas) also patronized brahmins ; the
patronage helped preserve the era and expand its mythical founder
Vikrama into a universal cakravartin emperor. No coin or inscription
of his have ever been found, nor do the puranas mention him. The
purlanic lists cease to be empty as the dynasties just mentioned
gradually receive numismatic confirmation. The find-spots of the
coins also give some indication of royal territory.
8.2. The question of religion, .sufficiently important even in the
treatment of dynastic history, needs to be examined more closely. In
deciying the role of superstition when it kept India backward, it must
never be forgotten that priestly ritual and magic also helped bring
civilization to any given locality. Such beliefs turned into fetters when
the class-structure hardened. The first Rgvedic two-caste system made
it possible to advance beyond the Indus basin. The four-caste system
which had developed within Aryan Yajurvedic tribes laid the
foundations of a class society which was more progressive than
mutually exclusive warring tribes. The Greeks noted of our brahmins
(Strabo; Meg. 59) : “Their ideas about physical phenomena are very
crude, for they are better in their actions than in their reasonings,
inasmuch as their belief is in great measure based upon fables.” These
fables and a certain rigid discipline were helpful to impose upon
savages, to initiate a class-society. If people cannot distinguish physical
from man-made necessity, if they do not consciously search out the hidden
laws of matter, they remain helpless in the face of nature. Therefore,
later brahminism greatly restricted both human freedom—the recognition
of necessity—and the production of value, which is measured by SOCIALLY
NECESSARY. labour-time. Science as the cognition of necessity was
incompatible with brahmin insistence upon dogma and authority.
The incompatibility grew with the practice of forging or rewriting
sacred works to order. The roots of all this suoersti-tion lie in the
primitive means of production, just one little step above food-gathering.
To this day, the Indian peasant meticulously performs ritual acts before the