The common people were, on the other hand, extremely poor and in great distress. The
uncertainty of the tariff on which each man had to pay various taxes gave a pretext to the
collectors of taxes for exorbitant exactions. Impressed labor, burdensome levies and con-
scription in the army as footman, without the inducement of pay or any other reward, had
compelled a large number of peasants to give up their fields and take refuge in the service
of temples or monasteries. In their bloody wars with the Byzantines, which seemed to be
never ending and without any interest or profit to the common man, the Persian kings had
been plying their subjects as a cannon fodder.
INDIA
The remarkable achievement of the ancient India in the fields of mathematics, astronomy,
medicine and philosophy had earned her a lasting fame, but the historians are agreed that
the era of her social, moral and religious degradation commenced from the opening dec-
ades of the sixth century. For shameless and revolting acts of sexual wantonness were con-
secrated by religion, even the temples had degenerated into cesspools of corruption. Wom-
en had lost their honor and respect in the society and so had the values attached to chastity.
It was not unusual that the husband losing in a game of chance dealt out even his wife. The
honor of the family, especially in higher classes claiming a noble descent, demanded that
the widow should burn herself alive with the funeral pyre of her dead husband. The custom,
upheld by society as the supreme act of fealty on the part of a widow to her late husband,
was so deep-rooted that it could be completely suppressed only after the establishment of
the British rule in India.
India left behind her neighbors, or, rather every other country of the world, in evolving an
inflexible and callously inhuman stratification of its society based on social inequality. This
system which excluded the original inhabitants of the country as exteriors or outcasts, was
formulated to ensure the superiority of conquering Aryans and was invested with an aura of
divine origin by the Brahmins. It canalized every aspect of the people's daily life according to
heredity and occupation of different classes and was backed by religious and social laws set
forth by the religious teachers and legislators. Its comprehensive code of life was applicable
to the entire society, dividing it into four distinct classes:
(l) The Brahmins or priests enjoying the monopoly of performing religious rites;
(2) The Kshatriyas of nobles and warriors supposed to govern the country; and,
(3) The Vaisyas or merchants, peasants and artisans;
(4) The Sudras or the non Aryan serfs meant to serve the first three castes.The Sudras or the dasas meaning slaves (forming a majority in the population), believed to
have been born from the feet of Brahma, formed the most degraded class which had sunk