The Brahman was the most powerful yet most unfree man in India

Evidence

Perhaps there was never any other hierarchy that ruled so unconditionally and that possessed such fantastic prerogatives as this one. But consider the life of the Brahman, this man who was endowed with unsurpassed power, against whose word there was absolutely no appeal, who seemed to be the only man with rights in the entire people such that even the king was no more than a subordinate of the priest. One sees there a life of unbearable harshness, of such constriction by forms and rules and mortifications and limitations that there would probably have been extraordinarily few Europeans who would have wanted even the unsurpassed rights of the Brahman priest at such a price. He was the most powerful, but also the most unfree man in India. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 494

Categorization

• CANDY: The paradox that absolute social power came with absolute personal unfreedom is a striking compact anecdote.