malous remedies were necessary. The king accordingly formed the resolution of depressing the idle boasters of their genealogy by exalting the meritorious and the virtuous of their own body. There are always two ways of degrading men. They may either be actually reduced to a lower position and deprived of honours and privileges already in their possession; or others whom they have hitherto considered their peers may be exalted above their ranks, and then the upward motion of those that are promoted, must produce in those that are superseded an acute sense of an apparent motion downwards. The first way of degrading is ever an ungracious punishment, which worthlessness and mere negative vices do not always deserve;—the second is in truth nothing more than the reward of merit, though in its consequences it answers all the ends of moral discipline and government. Vain and unworthy boasters priding themselves on their Gotras must, when invidiously overlooked in a general distribution of favours, feel with all the keenness of a real humiliation, a kind of ignominous descent, on beholding their worthier compeers actually ascending above their level. The politic king of Bengal chose this latter mode of demeaning some by ennobling others. He knew that when the virtuous among the descendants of the Kanouj Brahmins were exalted, the vicious who could boast of nothing but their pedigree, would be necessarily depressed; while as the moral effect of this discrimination all would be stimulated to good and great efforts by the king’s readiness to reward virtue.
Accordingly he selected, from among the descendants of the sacerdotal colonists, those who had distinguished themselves by learning and good manners, and conferred upon them the honourable appellation of Kulins. The rule by which, according to tradition, he made this selection, is like all other oriental maxims more charming to the ear, as recited by Ghataks, than striking to the eye as realized in life. Without derogating from the capacities of human nature, we must frankly declare that we do not believe a single Brahmin, thus exalted by Bullal, lived up to the pretended standard of Kulinism. Good manners, humility, learning, reputation, pilgrimages, devotion, means of subsistence, self-mortification, and charity are the nine-fold qualifications of a Kulin. We should certainly congratulate human nature if the good king could conscientiously predicate as much for any of his favoured Brahmins.
The Kulins thus created were like privileged families elsewhere of diverse orders and transmissible in hereditary succession. The institution was accordingly liable to all the abuses to which hereditary honours are perhaps always subject. That
