in the performance of the ceremonies. Some among the community were of course prominent in the composition of hymns and the performance of great sacrifices, and kings and rich men sent for them on great occasions, and rewarded them handsomely. But even these great composers—these great Rishis of the Rig-Veda—did not form an exclusive caste of their own. They were worldly men, who mixed and married with the people, shared property with the people, fought the wars of the people, and were of the people; nor is there a shadow of evidence to prove that they formed a caste of their own, different from the fighters and cultivators. Except for the ninetieth hymn of the tenth book, written long after the Vedic period, there is not a single allusion to caste in the entire collection of the Rig-Veda, composed during six hundred years and more, and replete with references to the habits and manners and customs of the people, to agriculture and pasture and manufacture, to wars against aborigines, to marriage and domestic rules, to the duties and position of women, to religious observances and to the science of the time. But if this be negative proof, there is positive evidence as well, and various passages in the Rig-Veda show that the caste system did not exist at the time when the hymns were written and compiled. The very word varna, which in later Sanskrit denotes caste, is used in the Rig-Veda to distinguish the Aryans and the non-Aryans, and nowhere indicates separate sections in the Aryan community. The word Kshatriya, which in later Sanskrit means the military caste,
