tenth book of the Ṛigveda—that this attempt at a polytheistic system is followed up by the promotion of one particular god to the dignity of chief guardian for each of these three regions. On the other hand, a tendency is clearly traceable in some of the hymns towards identifying gods whose functions present a certain degree of similarity of nature; attempts which would seem to show a certain advance of religious reflection, the first steps from polytheism towards a comprehension of the unity of the divine essence. Another feature of the old Vedic worship tended to a similar result. The great problems of the origin and existence of man and the universe had early begun to engage the Hindū mind; and in celebrating the praises of the gods the poet was frequently led by his religious, and not wholly disinterested, zeal to attribute to them cosmical functions of the very highest order. At a later stage of thought, chiefly exhibited in the tenth book of the Ṛigveda and in the Atharvaveda, inquiring sages could not but perceive the inconsistency of such concessions of a supremacy among the divine rulers, and tried to solve the problem by conceptions of an independent power, endowed with all the attributes of a supreme deity, the creator of the universe, including the gods of the pantheon. The names under which this monotheistic idea is put forth are mostly of an attributive character, and indeed some of them, such as Prajāpati (“lord of creatures”), Viśvakarman (“all-worker”), occur in the earlier hymns as mere epithets of particular gods. But to other minds this theory of a personal creator left many difficulties unsolved. They saw, as the poets of old had seen, that everything around them, that man himself, was directed by some inward agent; and it needed but one step to perceive the essential sameness of these spiritual units, and to recognize their being but so many individual manifestations of one universal principle or spiritual essence. Thus a pantheistic conception was arrived at, put forth under various names, such as Purusha (“soul”), Kāma (“desire”), Brahman (neutr.; nom. sing. bráhma) (“devotion, prayer”). Metaphysical and theosophic speculations were thus fast undermining the simple belief in the old gods, until, at the time of the composition of the Brāhmaṇas and Upanishads, we find them in complete possession of the minds of the theologians. Whilst the theories crudely suggested in the later hymns are now further matured and elaborated, the tendency towards catholicity of formula favours the combination of the conflicting monotheistic and pantheistic conceptions; this compromise, which makes Prajāpati, the personal creator of the world, the manifestation of the impersonal Brahma, the universal self-existent soul, leads to the composite pantheistic system which forms the characteristic dogma of the Brāhmanical period (see Brahman).
In the Vedic hymns two classes of society, the royal (or military) and the priestly classes, were evidently recognized as being raised above the level of the Viś, or bulk of the Āryan community. These social grades seem to have been in existence even before the separation of the two Asiatic branches of the Indo-Germanic race, the Āryans of Iran and India. It is true that, although the Athrava, Rathaēstāo, and Vāśtrya of the Zend Avesta correspond in position and occupation to the Brāhman, Rājan and Viś of the Veda, there is no similarity of names between them; but this fact only shows that the common vocabulary had not yet definitely fixed on any specific names for these classes. Even in the Veda their nomenclature is by no means limited to a single designation for each of them. Moreover, Atharvan occurs not infrequently in the hymns as the personification of the priestly profession, as the proto-priest who is supposed to have obtained fire from heaven and to have instituted the rite of sacrifice; and although ratheshtha (“standing on a car”) is not actually found in connexion with the Rājan or Kshatriya, its synonym rathin is in later literature a not unusual epithet of men of the military caste. At the time of the hymns, and even during the common Indo-Persian period, the sacrificial ceremonial had already become sufficiently complicated to call for the creation of a certain number of distinct priestly offices with special duties attached to them. While this shows clearly that the position and occupation of the priest were those of a profession, the fact that the terms brāhmaṇa and brahmaputra, both denoting “the son of a brahman,” are used in certain hymns as synonyms of brahman, seems to justify the assumption that the profession had already, to a certain degree, become hereditary at the time when these hymns were composed. There is, however, with the exception of a solitary passage in a hymn of the last book, no trace to be found in the Ṛigveda of that rigid division into four castes separated from one another by insurmountable barriers, which in later times constitutes the distinctive feature of Hindū society. The idea of caste is expressed by the Sanskrit term varna, originally denoting “colour,” thereby implying differences of complexion between the several classes. The word occurs in the Veda in the latter sense, but it is used there to mark the distinction, not between the three classes of the Āryan community, but between them on the one hand and a dark-coloured hostile people on the other. The latter, called Dāsas or Dasyus, consisted, no doubt, of the indigenous tribes, with whom the Āryans had to carry on a continual struggle for the possession of the land. The partial subjection of these comparatively uncivilized tribes as the rule of the superior race was gradually spreading eastward, and their submission to a state of serfdom under the name of Śūdras, added to the Āryan community an element, totally separated from it by colour, by habits, by language, and by occupation. Moreover, the religious belief of these tribes being entirely different from that of the conquering people, the pious Āryas, and especially the class habitually engaged in acts of worship, could hardly fail to apprehend considerable danger to the purity of their own faith from too close and intimate a contact between the two races. What more natural, therefore, than that measures should have been early devised to limit the intercourse between them within as narrow bounds as possible? In course of time the difference of vocation, and the greater or less exposure to the scorching influence of the tropical sky, added, no doubt, to a certain admixture of Śūdra blood, especially in the case of the common people, seem to have produced also in the Āryan population different shades of complexion, which greatly favoured a tendency to rigid class-restrictions originally awakened and continually fed by the lot of the servile race. Meanwhile the power of the sacerdotal order having been gradually enlarged in proportion to the development of the minutiae of sacrificial ceremonial and the increase of sacred lore, they began to lay claim to supreme authority in regulating and controlling the religious and social life of the people. The author of the so-called Purusha-sūkta, or hymn of Purusha, above referred to, represents the four castes—the Brāhmaṇa, Kshatriya, Vaiśya and Śūdra—as having severally sprung respectively from the mouth, the arms, the thighs and the feet of Purusha, a primary being, here assumed to be the source of the universe. It is very doubtful, however, whether at the time when this hymn was composed the relative position of the two upper castes could already have been settled in so decided a way as this theory might lead one to suppose. There is, on the contrary, reason to believe that some time had yet to elapse, marked by fierce and bloody struggles for supremacy, of which only imperfect ideas can be formed from the legendary and frequently biased accounts of later generations, before the Kshatriyas finally submitted to the full measure of priestly authority.
The definitive establishment of the Brāhmanical hierarchy marks the beginning of the Brāhmanical period properly so called. Though the origin and gradual rise of some of the leading institutions of this era can, as has been shown, be traced in the earlier writings, the chain of their development presents a break at this juncture which no satisfactory materials as yet enable us to fill up. A considerable portion of the literature of this time has apparently been lost; and several important works, the original composition of which has probably to be assigned to the early days of Brāhmanism, such as the institutes of Manu and the two great epics, the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana, in the form in which they have been handed down to us, show manifest traces of a more modern redaction. Yet it is sufficiently clear from internal evidence that Manu’s Code of Laws, though
