How the system worked ?- 3

...However, Buddhism became popular among general population and Brahmans felt threatened. Their cultural hegemony was at stake. Many kings also started patronizing Buddhism. This led to a reduction in Yagyas and a loss of income to Brahmans. The Brahmans retaliated by joining the enemy. If they could not beat Buddhists then at least they could join them. They went one step ahead and completely stopped eating of any kind of meat. While the Buddhists still allowed people to eat meat and also ate it themselves. It was a difficult somersault in eating habits but a tough competition from Buddhism forced them to do it. In it they were helped by the ideas of Upanishads. The Upanishads also discounted the philosophy of animal sacrifice of Vedas. The immediate effect was that the anti-Brahman feelings among Vaisyas and Kshatriyas went down. There was no dharmic danger to agriculture and to the income of Vaisyas and also that of kings. The Yagyas had become a device to transfer wealth from Vaisyas and Kshatriyas to Brahmanas. Ultimately the Brahmanas gave up all the meat eating including the beef. It was a great historical somersault. But they still retained the mystique Yagyas with minimum sacrifices and that too on occasional basis. The cow sacrifice was changed to the donations of cows in Yagyas. Still it was a transfer of wealth but not to the required extent. The cow was elevated to sacred level from being important and slaying of cow was later made the second highest crime next only to slaying of a Brahman.

Then one more factor is that the Buddhist philosophy had some common points though it denied the existence of God and soul. It believed in rebirth like Sanatana dharma. It also believed in Karma theory like Sanatana dharma. It believed in the concept of Nirvana that had its counter part of Moksha in Vedic dharma. It also believed in Varna dharma like Vedic dharma. The rebirth in Buddhism took place through Chetana while in Vedic dharma it took place through soul. The counter part of soul in Buddhism was Chetana. The medium to carry forward the Karmas in Buddhism was Chetana while in Vedic dharma it was soul. The Varna in Buddhism was decided by Karmas and by birth in Vedic dharma; both of them are essentially the same thing. Both the religions believed in the concept of reincarnation. The world according to both the religions was not permanent. The only change was the negation of the God. Simply by negating the God in one and accepting the God in another you will get the other philosophy. All the other things were almost similar. Thus there was not much philosophical departure in Buddhism. And that was its undoing. When the occasion arose, all the Buddhists again became part of Sanatana dharma. In other words they got reassimilated.

...The Varna system was maintained outside the Sangha. It was easy to maintain equality within Sangha because Bhikshus were not allowed to marry. And they were also not required to follow a profession. However the acceptance of Varna outside the Sangha even on basis of Karmas allowed the discriminatory Varna dharma to continue. It was so because if one had to change his Varna then one had to change his occupation. And if Shudras wished to change their occupations then it essentially meant that they had to take up the occupations of other Varnas. A change to higher level occupations required the acquisition of the resources of society from the higher three Varnas. It was not possible without bloodshed. It required the Shudras to improve their might which they could not do. Further Buddhism required that there should be no killings. The violence was prohibited by it for the welfare of society. So the Shudras remained where they were....