such a chaos in order to understand the kosmos that followed.

Intellectual Life in ancient India.

In certain chapters of the Brahmanas and in the Upanishads we see a picture of the social and intellectual life of India at that early time, which seems fully to justify the saying that India has always been a nation of philosophers. The picture which these sacred books give us of the seething thoughts of that country may at first sight seem fanciful and almost incredible; but because the men of ancient India, as they are there represented to us, if by tradition only, are different from Greeks and Romans and from ourselves, it does not follow that we have not before us a faithful account of what really existed at one time in the land of the Five or Seven Rivers. Why should these accounts have been invented, unless they contained a certain verisimilitude in the eyes of the people? It is quite clear that they were not composed, as some people seem to imagine, in order to impose after two thousands of years on us, the scholars of Europe, or on anybody else. The idea that the ancient nations of the world wished to impose on us, that they wished to appear more ancient than they were, more heroic, more marvellous, more enlightened, is an absurd fancy. They did not even think of us, and had no word as yet for posterity. Such thoughts belong to much later times, and even then we wonder rather how a local, not to say, provincial poet like Horace should have thought so much of ages to come. We must not allow such ideas of fraud and forgery to spoil our

faith and our interest in ancient history. The ancients thought much more of themselves than of the nations of the distant future. If, however, what the ancients tell us about their own times, or about the past which could never have extended very far back, seems incredible to us, we should always try first of all to understand it as possible, before we reject it as impossible and as an intentional fraud. That in very early times kings and nobles and sages in India should have been absorbed in philosophical questions seems no doubt strange to us, because the energies of the people of Europe, as far back as we know anything about them, have always been divided between practical and intellectual pursuits, the former, in ancient times, considerably preponderating over the latter. But why should not a different kind of life have been possible in a country which, without much effort on the part of its cultivators, yielded in abundance all that was necessary for the support of life, which was protected on three sides by the silver streaks of the ocean, and on the fourth by almost impassable mountain barriers, a country which for thousands of years was free from war except the war of extermination directed against barbarous tribes, the so-called sons of the soil? After all, to thoughtful people, finding themselves placed on this planet, they did not know how or why, it was not so very farfetched a problem, particularly while there was as yet no struggle for life, to ask who they were, whence they came, and what they were intended for here on earth. Thus we read at the beginning of the Svetasvatara-upanishad: Whence are 'Whence are we born? Whereby do we live, and whither do we go? O ye

who know Brahman, (tell us) at whose command we abide here, whether in pain or in pleasure? Should time or nature, or necessity, or chance, or the elements be considered as the cause, or He who is called Purusha, the man, that is, the Supreme Spirit 1??

Kshatriyas and Brahmans.

It might be thought that all this was due to the elevating influence of an intellectual aristocracy, such as we find from very early times to the present day in India, the Brâhmans. But this is by no means the case. The so-called Kshatriyas or military nobility take nearly as active a part in the intellectual life of the country as the Brâhmans themselves. The fact is that we have to deal in the earlier period of ancient India with two rather than with four castes and their numerous subdivisions.

This term caste has proved most mischievous and misleading, and the less we avail ourselves of it the better we shall be able to understand the true state of society in the ancient times of India. "Caste is, of course, a Portuguese word, and was applied from about the middle of the sixteenth century by rough Portuguese sailors to certain divisions of Indian society which had struck their fancy. It had before been used in the sense of breed or stock, originally in the sense of a pure or unmixed breed.' In 1613 Purchas speaks of the thirty and odd several castes of the Banians (Vanig). To ask what caste means in India would be like asking what caste means in England, or what fetish

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1 See also Anugîtâ, chap. XX; S. B. E., VIII, p. 311.

(feitiço) means in Portugal. What we really want to know is what was implied by such Indian words as ✓ Varna (colour), Gàti (kith), to say nothing of Sapindatva or Samânodakatva, Kula (family), Gotra (race), Pravara (lineage); otherwise we shall have once more the same confusion about the social organisation of ancient India as about African fetishism or North American totemism! Each foreign word should always be kept to its own native meaning, or, if generalised for scientific purposes, it should be most carefully defined afresh. Otherwise every social distinction will be called caste, every stick a totem, every idol a fetish.

We have in India the Aryan settlers on one side, and the native inhabitants on the other. The

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former are named Aryas or Aryas, that is, cultivators of the soil which they had conquered; the latter, if submissive to their conquerors, are the Sûdras or Dâsas, slaves, while the races of indigenous origin who remained hostile to the end, were classed as altogether outside the pale of political society. The Aryas in India were naturally differentiated like other people into an intellectual or priestly aristocracy, the Brahmans, and a fighting or ruling aristocracy, the Kshatriyas, while the great bulk remained simply Vis or Vaisyas, that is, householders and cultivators of the soil, and afterwards merchants and mechanics also. To the very last the three great divisions, Brâhmans, Kshatriyas,

1 Thus we read as early as the Mahabharata-'The three qualities abide in the three castes thus: darkness in the Sûdra, passion in the Kshatriya, and the highest, goodness, in the Brahmana.' (Anugità, S. B. E., VIII, p. 329.)

and Vaisyas, shared certain privileges and duties in common. Originally they were all of them called twice-born, and not only allowed, but obliged to be educated in Vedic knowledge and to pass through the three or four Asramas or stages of life. Thus we read in the Mahâbhârata: The order of Vânaprasthas, of sages who dwell in forests and live on fruits, roots, and air is prescribed for the three twice-born (classes); the order of householders is prescribed for all.' (Anugîtâ, S. B. E., VIII, p. 316.) While the division into Aryas and Dâsas was due to descent, that into Brâhmans, Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas seems originally to have been due to occupation only, though it may soon have acquired an hereditary character. The Brâhmans had to look after the welfare of souls, the Kshatriyas after the welfare of the body politic, and the Vaisyas represented originally the undifferentiated mass of the people, engaged in the ordinary occupations of an incipient civilisation. The later subdivision of Indian society, as described by Manu, and as preserved under different forms to the present day, does not concern us for our present purpose. The lessons which the names of Varna (colour) and Gâti (genus) teach us had long been forgotten even in Manu's time, and are buried at present under a heavy heap of rubbish. Still even that rubbish heap deserves to be sifted, as I believe it is now being sifted by scholars like Mr. Risley and others.

In ancient times neither Kshatriyas nor Vaisyas were excluded from taking part in those religious and philosophical struggles, which seem to have occupied India far more than wars of defence or conquest. Nay women also claimed a right to be