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This remigration must not be confused with the original advent of the A'ryan race from Irto, still less must the ebb be made to account for the earlier flow. In the mouth, however, of Zarathastra, the mere nature-worship took a deeper tone, and spoke of strife no longer between cloud and sky, but between evil and good, or the malignant serpent and the Son of Heaven. Thus he divorced, in a way, mankind from physical nature, and brought out a deeper moral consciousness, with both its sense of suffering, and its manlier struggle. Whereas with the true Hindus remained longer, and almost remains still, something of the old childhood, which felt itself cradled in the elements of * Golebrooke, EuayB^ Vol. I. ; M. N^ve, Ewai sur le mythedeaJlibhavas, Paris, 1847. The striking hymn about Atman belongs to the loth book, "in einem der spatesten hymnen," says Lassen. 284 BRAHMANISM. the world and only asked their bounty, looking on it almost as a right. I need not stay to trace nicely how many hymns of the Rig- Veda reappear in both the Yajurs, and again in the S4ma, or how they are somewhat modified. But in the Br4h- manas we have the signs of a priesthood or caste arranging and explaining the songs which were already ancient; and this tendency is said to reach a more elaborate formalism in the Stitras. Before the Atharva or fourth Veda had been compiled, the Aryas must have spread into India. It speaks more directly of the aboriginal races, among whom it mentions the Siidras* as hostile. It has words which are said to betray symptoms of PrdcrUj or at least of the older language already assimilating itself to indigenous idioms. It gives prayers, no longer as natural efiusions of the religious feeling, but as formal charms against sickness. It deals more, in its episodes, with meta- physical questions, as about death and the spiritual world. It is the expression, in short, of a religious revolution, which already the Brahmanical caste was conducting. We may esti- mate both its comparatively recent date, and yet the antiquity of Manu, fix>m remembering that the legislator recognises only three Vedas, though it is possible the fourth may already have been framed. Some also find in the Atharvan astronomical signs f of B.C. 1100, rather than 1400, but these I will not venture to argue from. "When we pass on to the laws of Manu what a stride the Brahmanical system has made! The purdhita, who merely presided on great occasions of sacrifice, is now an hereditary priest. The families of singers, to whom early hymns were ascribed, are now sacerdotal clans. The Brahmans, who are not named as such in the earlier mantras^ are now an exclusive caste. The Sddras, who in the earliest Veda were not known, and in the latest were enemies, are now the lowest class. The Dasyus, once hostile, have become vassals. The term Vatsya^ ♦ Roth, quoted in Weber, VoL I. pp. 149, 143. t Lassen, p. 745, but compare Weber, pp. 224 — 227. PRIESTHOOD— CASTE — M AN U. 285 which once meant earthly, or human, (so that Vispati might mean king in general) is now applied to mere cultivators ; and these are partly, no doubt, the indigenous possessors of the soil. The mere tribes of A'ryan shepherds are grown into organised nations. The king must no longer sacrifice, but give presents to the Brdhmans. The character of Teacher is brought forward as having especial claim to reverence. The religious bath and the sacred cord are made important. Though sacrifices are still eaten, the rules for general diet are more precise. Oblations to the spirits of ancestors seem to be a new custom. The military art has been developed, and the use of elephants, chariots, cavalry, as well as archers and swordsmen, is described. Cities, and the mode of besieging them, are alluded to. The prices of markets are to be regulated. Many of the regulations are good enough, but the punishments are not always in propor- tion to the true character of acts. There is an excessive stress on the sauctity of the highest caste, and severe penalties for whatever tends to lessen it. There is an attempt, in short, to arrest society, and fix it in a mould, chiefly of priesthood and partly of race; while such minuteness of regulation in common actions may be natural for a speculator to devise, but has never been found wholesome in practical life. Here and there, too, appear allusions to Viswamitra, and, perhaps, others who vindicated the kingly freedom for a time, though the fatal victory, in the struggle, was, to their own cost, with the Brahmans. " Yet, however different the polity sketched in the Mdnjava- dharmorsdatra may be from that of the earliest time, I would not affirm that it has no prefigurement in the Siitras, which have been mentioned as appended to the Vedic hymns. It has been noticed, that the same names are given as authorities for some of the Sdtras, and of the Laws. The tendencies of the one find their fulfilment in the other. But this only affects the question, where the difference begins. "What now must have happened between the two social stages we have glanced at? We should guess at once some 286 STEPS OP DEVELOPMENT. such course of event and imagination as is described or implied in the two great Epics. We are, in fact, able to infer from these poems a career of conquest on part of the Aryan race, however far the B^mdjana may be, as some conceive, from the time of its hero, and however scanty a nucleus of history may be involved in its fable. We see in them the clash of races, the older of which are represented in fastastic forms*. We have the hermit life of the Brahmans beginning in the wild forests, where they must have been pioneers of civilisation. We have the conflict of king and priest, already spoken of. We have the rise of new heroes, whose memories are likely to be famous, though we should hardly have foreseen how entirely some of their names would take the place of the older divinities, as objects of worship. Perhaps in the oldest, and truly heroic part of the Mah&bh&rata, Crishna is not yet represented as an incarnation of Vishnu; just as, when his name is mentioned in the Vedic Brahmanas, it is only as that of a man who needed himself to be instructed by Ghtfraf, a descendant of Angiras. We have, how- ever, in the two great Epics, forecasts not merely of Manu, but of the Purdnas. Nor is it easy to say how much in the form of episode and speculation is of later insertion. Nor, again, does it follow, because the Epics portray that long ferment of the Indian mind, which settled down in the polity of Manu, that therefore the poems themselves were written before the laws. As regards their ftdlest form, we must rather suppose the contrary. In the episode of Nala, for example, we have four Vedas men- tioned, instead of three, as in Manu. But I have said enough to shew the significance of the Epic poems for our present point of vast developments in the Hindii mind, and must leave more learned persons to fix dates in a region so uncertain, that while your traditions make Vdlmiki a contemporary of E&ma, 2000 B.C., * B&ma's conflict is with Rdcshasas, or demon people, whoe king, lUyana, hae ten heads ; and with monkeys, whose king's name is BiUi. He crosses to Ceylon by a bridge. His earlier adventures have a tinge as if of the Odyssey. t Colebrooke, Vol. ii. p. 197. THE TWO EPICS, (iTIHA'SLiS), DRAMA. 287 MHne critics would bring down the anthorsliip of hid poem to mlmost the Chiidtian enu If one must offer a conjecture, there 18 some reason for fancrins: that the Mahdbhdrata in its shortest form expresses the poetical youth of the people, soon after the consolidation of their settlements in India, while the R^m^^TUia ought, firom the date of its subject, to be older. As a S})ecial argument that this is so, we have the fact that in the Rdmdyana widows not only survive, but reign as queens ; whereas in the Mah4bh4rata the fatal SutL or immolation by fire, unknown in earlier ages, has already begun. But again good critics have ventured to bring down the Mah4bh4rata to the first reaction of the popular mind against Buddhism, such as we may suppose to have existed partially just before the Christian era ; and they place the other poem even later, as fancying that the spread of Aryan civilisation to the extreme South was later. If we knew for certain, what the first Bauddha missionaries or princes found in Ceylon, we could estimate this argument better.