Caste purity and pollution and from their corruption comes mixing of castes.

Mixing of castes is seen as a great evil. Purity of castes is something worth pr eserving, and very important to a high-caste warrior such as Arjuna. A product o f a static and rigid order, he wants to protect the order from corruption. The curse of confusion degrades the victims and damns the destroyers. Not only the victims are degraded by all this, but the destroyers, too, all are corrupted. Everybody needs the social order preserved in order to live a clean l ife. This is a story set in an age when the social structure was static, and technica l progress did not demand a fluid structure allowing talented people to exercise their abilities and rise in the social scale, while less capable offspring of t he upper classes decline into insignificance. All energy went into preserving th e existing structure, the ultimate expression of which was a caste structure, or its equivalent of finely graded social levels in other societies, with detailed rules of who can marry who, and which families might socialise together. And of course, the pattern of castes is seen as god-given, as Krishna says in chapter 4: I established the four castes. It is reminiscent of the old Anglican hymn, on ly recently removed from the official canon, praising the god for the "station i n life to which it has pleased god to call me". Until not very long ago, our own society was fairly static, too Duty to the spirits of the dead the rice and the water no longer are offered,; the ancestors also must fall dish onoured from home in heaven. Arjuna lived in a society in which the souls of the dead ancestors were believed to go to heaven, but their places were ever insecure and had to be maintained b y ongoing ritual performance by their descendants. So the ancient dead will fall from their places if their descendants are killed in battle and cannot sustain the required round of rituals. The man of the family is responsible not only for the chastity of the women and the maintenance of caste purity, but also for enabling dead ancestors to keep th eir places in heaven. This is achieved by the regular observance of rituals to h onour the dead. The rituals involve placing cakes of rice and containers of wate r by the shrines of ancestors. The ancestors can keep their peaceful places in h eaven only if these rituals continue to be performed. If the rituals cease every one of the ancestors - vast numbers of them - will fall from their places and k now peace no more. This is a heavy responsibility in any ancestor-worshipping so ciety, and grows heavier every generation as there are more ancestors to maintai n. Heaven is up, hell is down - this spatial arrangement seems common to many relig ions. The brief reference by Arjuna to rituals which maintain ancestors in heaven poin ts to a transition in Indian beliefs which was going on when the Gita was being written. If ancestors go to heaven and are kept there by the pious observances o f their living descendants, then they do not re-incarnate. Yet Krishna argues fo r the remainder of the Gita from a belief in reincarnation as occurring automati cally to everyone but a few of the Enlightened who have escaped. If all souls re incarnate, there are no ancestors in heaven to be maintained by rituals. One sys tem of beliefs seems to be giving way to another. So Arjuna is made the mouthpie

ce for the ancient beliefs which were being superceded. As well as being the Man of Action, being introduced to contemplative mysticism. The argument takes place between the two armies - one about to be defeated, the other about to prevail. The argument on another level, is between an ancient sys tem of belief, about to give way before a new development - the doctrine of rein carnation. So Arjuna states his arguments: that he would be condemning himself t o hell, for engaging in sinful activity, and condemning the dependent women and children of slain warriors to hell, when they lost the protection of the men, an d condemning the ancestors to hell when the rituals are neglected by the scatter ed remnants of families: the outcome of this battle will be thoroughly bad for e veryone. Such is the crime of the killer of kinsmen: the ancient, the sacred, is broken, forgotten. Such is the doom of the lost, without caste-rites: darkness and doubt ing and hell forever. All Arjuna can see is social destruction, corruption of the individuals he cares for, so the excitement of the battle will only lead to bad after-effects. It is not about killing bad men, it is about one's own family. What is this crime I am planning, O Krishna? Murder most hateful, murder of brot hers! Am I indeed so greedy for greatness? The greatness may be the victory in battle that adds to his warrior's reputation , or the greatness that goes with being on the winning side that secures the thr one. But he has doubts about the moral qualities of some-one who would do that k ind of deed to win such greatness. Rather than this let the evil children of Dhritarashtra come with their weapons against me to battle: I shall not struggle, I shall not strike them. Now let the m kill me, that will be better. A very Socratic conclusion - it is better to be sinned against than sinning, bet ter to endure an unjust end than to bring others to an unjust end. Sanjaya, who is narrating the entire Gita, speaks of Arjuna as the foe-consuming , so this is not a squeam-ishness about death and injury in battle, but a real h orror of family war, with near relations killing each other. Bhisma and Drona are noble and ancient, worthy of the deepest reverence. How can I greet them with arrows, in battle? If I kill them, how can I ever enjoy my we alth, or any other pleasure? It will be cursed with blood-guilt. This idea of blood-guilt is common to many religions, and appears also in the ea rly Hebrew religion, with its cities of refuge for those accidentally killing ne ighbours and being liable to avenging killings to expiate the blood-guilt. Murde r is seen as the ultimate crime, the stain of which follows a man and marks him as a pariah for life. To sum up Arjuna's problem, which presents his value system: The ethic of living in a community with family, teachers and companions involves doing them no violence War is a defendable activity, but only against strangers, not united by blood ti es The rituals that keep a society functioning are only performed in a society at p eace, not one devastated by losing its young adult males in war, so protecting o ne's own community from such violent disruption enables these rituals to continu e

Women need to be managed and protected from their own emotional volatility by me n. If these men are killed in war, women will be unrestrained and engage in undi sciplined and destructive behaviour, damaging society Keeping castes pure and unmixed is very important, but the vigilance needed to p revent caste mixing fails when a community is devastated by war The spirits of dead ancestors can only keep their place in heaven if their desce ndants continue to perform the traditional rituals. If these cease, the ancestor s will lose their places in heaven So destroying the males of a community in war has multiple effects, all bad. Pro tecting one's own community from these evils is the duty of a warrior, who there fore should not make war on his own family and community.