Compiled by London swaminathan

Date:23 July 2016

Post No. 2999

Time uploaded in London :– 16-27

( Thanks for the Pictures)

DON’T REBLOG IT AT LEAST FOR A WEEK!  DON’T USE THE PICTURES; THEY ARE COPYRIGHTED BY SOMEONE.

(for old articles go to tamilandvedas.com OR swamiindology.blogspot.com)

I have compiled what Buddha, Tamil poet Tiruvalluvar, Greatest Hindu Philosopher Adi Sankara, World’s first Law Book writer Manu (not Hammurabi) and Modern Hindu Saint Swami Vivekananda said about Brahmins. They all defended Brahmins – only the Brahmins who studied the Vedas and followed Vedic duties.

Buddha Says:–

“And a saint, a Brahmin, is pure from past sins; even if he had killed his father and mother, had murdered two noble kings, and had ravaged a whole kingdom and its people”

–Buddha in Dhammapada, Sloka 294

Because he has put away evil, he is called a Brahmin; because he lives in peace, he is called a ‘samana’; be cause he leaves all sins behind, he is called a ‘Pabbajita’, a pilgrim.

–Buddha in Dhammapada, Sloka 388

Ons should never hurt a Brahmin; and a Brahmin should never return evil for evil

–Buddha in Dhammapada, Sloka 389

Adi Sankara says:–

Jantuunaam narajanma durlabatah pimstvam tato viprathaa

Tasmaadvaidika dharmamaargaparataa vidvatvamasmaatparam

–Vivekachudaamani of Adi Sankara, Sloka 2

“For all beings a human birth is difficult to obtain, more so is a male body;rarer than that is Brahminhood; rarer still is the attachment to the path of Vedic religion;higher than this is the erudition in the scriptures.

Tamil Poet Tiruvalluvar

The Brahmins are ascetics, because they are kind to all creatures (Tirukkural 30) Manakkudavar commentary.

Cows yield less, Brahmins forget the Vedas, if the king does not guard justice

(Tirukkural 560)

Manu Says:–

Buutaanaam praaninah sreshtaah praaninaam buddhi jiivinah

Budhimatsu naraah sreshtaanareshu braahmanaah smrutaah

The best of living beings are those that those who have the breath of life;

And the best of those that have the breath of life are those that live by their intelligence;

The best of those that have intelligence are men;

And Brahmins are traditionally regarded as the best of men.

Manu 1-96

Braahmaneshu sa vidvaamso vidvaatsukruta buddhayah

Krutabuddhishu kartaarah kartrushu brahmavedinah

Among the Brahmins learned men are the best;

Among learned men, those who understand their duties;

Among those who understand their obligations, those who fulfil them;

And among those who fulfil them, those who know the veda (are the best)

–Manu 1-97

The very birth of a Brahmin is the eternal physical form of religion; for he is born for the sake of religion and is fit to become one with the ultimate reality.

Manu 1-98

Utpattireva viprasya murtidharmasya saasvatii

Sa hi dharmaartamutpanno bramabhuyaaya kalpate

Xxx

For when a Brahmin is born he is born at the top of the earth, as the lord of all living beings, to guard the treasure of religion.

Manu 1-99

A Brahmin who studies the Vedas and has fulfilled his vow is NOT constantly smeared with the faults of the effects of past actions born of mind and heart, speech and body.

Manu 1-104

He purifies the rows for seven generations in the past and seven generations in future; he alone deserves the entire earth.

Manu 1-105

Swami Vivekananda says:–
“The ideal man of our ancestors was the Brahmin. In all our books stands out prominently this ideal of the Brahmin. In Europe, there is my Lord the Cardinal, who is struggling hard and spending thousands of pounds to prove the nobility of his ancestors, and he will not be satisfied until he has traced  his ancestry to some dreadful tyrant who lived on a hill and watched the people passing by, and whenever he had the opportunity,  sprang out on them and robbed them. That was the business of these nobility-bestowing ancestors, and my Lord Cardinal is not satisfied until he can trace his ancestry to one of these. In India, on the other hand, the greatest princes seek to trace their descent to some ancient sage who dressed in a bit of loin-cloth, lived in a forest, eating roots and studying the Vedas. It is there that the Indian prince goes to trace his ancestry. You are of the high caste when you can trace your ancestry to a Rishi, and not otherwise.

Our ideal of high birth, therefore, is different from of others. Our ideal is the Brahmin of spiritual culture and renunciation. By the Brahmin ideal what do I mean? I mean the ideal Brahminess in which worldliness is altogether absent and true wisdom is abundantly present. That is the ideal of the Hindu race.

Have you not heard how it is declared that the Brahmin, is not amenable to law, that he has no law that he is not governed by kings, and that his body cannot be hurt? That is perfectly true. Do not understand it in the light thrown upon it by interested and ignorant fools, but understand it in the light of the true and original Vedantic conception.

In Satya Yuga only one caste was there!

If the Brahmin is he who has killed all selfishness and who lives and works to acquire and propagate wisdom and the power of love– If a country is altogether inhabited by such Brahmins, by men and women who are spiritual and moral and good, is it strange to think of that country as being above and beyond all law? What police, what military are necessary to govern them? Why should govern them at all? Why should they live under a government? They are good and noble, and they are the men God; these are our ideal Brahmin and we read that in the Satya Yuga there was only one caste, and that was the Brahmin. We read in the Maha bhaarata that the whole world was in the beginning peopled with Brahmins, and that as they began to degenerate, they became divided into different castes, and when the cycle turns round, they will all go back to that Brahminical origin. This cycle is turning round now and I draw your attention to this fact. Therefore our solution of the caste question is not degrading those who are already high up, in not running amuck through food and drink, is not jumping out of our own limits in order to have more enjoyment, but it comes by every one of us, fulfilling the dictates of our Vedantic religion, by our attaining spirituality, and by our becoming the ideal Brahmin”.

“He only the Brahmin who has no secular employment. Secular employment is not for the Brahmin, but for the other castes. To the Brahmins I appeal, that they must work hard to raise the Indian people by teaching them what they know, by giving whatever out the culture that they have accumulated for centuries. It is clearly the duty of the Brahmins of India to remember what real Brahminhood is.

As Manu says, all these privileges and honours are given to the Brahmin because with him is the treasury of virtue. He must open that treasury and distribute its valuables to the world. It is true that he was the earliest preacher to the Indian races, he was the first to renounce everything in order to attain to  the higher realisation of life before others could reach to the idea. It was not his fault that he that he marched ahead of the other castes. Why did not the other castes so understand and do as he did? Why did they sit down and be lazy, and let the Brahmins win the race?

“But it is one thing to gain an advantage, and another thing to preserve it for evil use. Whenever power is used for evil it becomes diabolical; it must be used for good only. So this accumulated culture of ages of which the Brahmin has been the trustee, he must now give to the people at large, and it was because he did not give it to the people that the Mahammedan invasion was possible. It was because he did not open this treasury to the people from the beginning that for a thousand years we have been trodden under the heels of everyone who chose to come to India. It was through that we have become become degraded and the first task must be to break open the cells that hide the wonderful  treasures which our common ancestors accumulated; bring them out, and give them to everybody, and the Brahmin must be the first to do it”.
—SELECTIONS FROM THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA