Friday, May 30, 2014

Duties of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shudra in India

The following are the duties declared for a SUDRA from the olden times.
He should serve the Brahmanas and submit to them; should not study; sacrifices are forbidden to him; he should be diligent and be constantly enterprising in doing all that is for his good. The king protects all these with proper care, and sets all the castes to perform their respective duties.

A VAISYA should study and diligently earn and accumulate wealth by means of commerce, agriculture, and the tending of cattle. He should so act as to please the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas, be virtuous, do good works, and be a householder.

A KSHATRIYA should protect the people in accordance with the injunctions of the law, diligently practise the virtue of charity, offer sacrifices, study the whole Veda, take a wife, and lead a virtuous householder's life. If he be possessed of a virtuous soul, and if he practises the holy virtues, he may easily attain the religion of the Supreme Being.

A BRAHMAN should study (the Vedas), offer sacrifices, make charities, and sojourn to the best of all holy places on the earth; he should teach, minister as a priest in sacrifices offered by others worthy of such help, and accept gifts from persons who are known.

Learn Caste System in India

He is called a Brahmana in whom are truth, gifts, abstention
from injury to others, compassion, shame, benevolence and penance.

He who is engaged in the profession of battle, who studies the Vedas, who makes gifts (to Brahmanas) and takes wealth (from those he protects) is called a Kshatriya.

He who earns fame from keep of cattle, who is employed in agriculture and the means of acquiring wealth, who is pure in behaviour and attends to the study of the Vedas, is called a Vaisya.

He who takes pleasure in eating every kind of food, who is engaged in doing every kind of work, who is impure in behaviour, who does not study the Vedas, and whose conduct is unclean, is said to be a Sudra.

If these characteristics be observable in a Sudra, and if they be not found in a Brahmana, then such a Sudra, is no Sudra, and such a Brahmana is no Brahmana. By every means should cupidity and wrath be restrained.

This as also self-restraint, are the highest results of Knowledge. Those passions (cupidity and wrath), should, with one`s whole heart, be resisted.They make their appearance for destroying one`s highest good.

One should always protect one`s prosperity from one`s wrath, one`s penance from pride; one`s knowledge from honour and disgrace; and one`s soul from error.

That intelligent person, who does all acts without desire of fruit, whose whole wealth exists for charity, and who performs the daily Homa, is a real renouncer (karma-sannyasa).

One should conduct oneself as a friend to all creatures, abstaining from all acts of injury. Rejecting the acceptance of all gifts, one should, by the aid of one`s intelligence, be a complete master of one`s passions. One should live in one`s soul where there can be no grief. One would then have no fear here and attain to a fearless region hereafter. One should live always devoted to penances, and with all passions completely restrained; observing the vow of taciturnity, and with soul concentrated on itself; desirous of conquering the unconquered senses, and unattached in the midst of attachments.

The indications of a Brahmana are purity, good behaviour and compassion unto all creatures."