Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/327

 INDIA 3IS sanction ' of the division, the doctrine of the twice-born and the once-born, was developed after the first immigration. The hymns and epic poems from which we derive our earliest know- ledge say nothing of caste. But the next group of poems, the Mahabharata, are clearly the outcome of a period when the military and the learned castes had not only taken shape, but were carrying on a long and severe struggle for supremacy, in which the priestly caste was successful. It was somewhat as though the papacy in mediaeval Europe had achieved the highest dreams of Innocent in. or Boniface vni., and compelled secular kings and nobles to submit to it. Later still — perhaps about iooo B.C. — the fully developed system is expressed in the code of Manu. The four castes now were rigidly defined and kept apart ; the distinction of classes was not merely a social one which could be overcome ; it was fundamental, the breaches of The Ancient it carrying severe religious penalties. It must not Caste be forgotten, however, that the Brahmans were the System - sons of Brahmans ; the caste was not artificially produced like the celibate ecclesiastical orders of the Christian Church ; it was hereditary, like the others. The fact remains that there were long periods when the strictness of the law was relaxed, so that in later ages the purity of Kshatrya (otherwise called Rajput) blood became questionable among most of the self-styled Rajputs, and this was still more the case with the Vaisya. Moreover, all the four castes became subdivided into innumer- able hereditary castes divided for matrimonial and other purposes by almost impenetrable barriers. The caste system, however, as Europeans have known it in India, was a much later development. The old Brahmanism was shaken to its foundations by the rise and Buddhism, expansion of Buddhism about the sixth century 600 B.C. B.C. ; while the lower classes, forbidden to search into the mysteries of religious knowledge, naturally sought satisfaction in absorbing the superstitions of the conquered peoples. In time Buddhism expanded beyond the borders of India, and spread all over the far east till its votaries became perhaps more numerous than those of any other cult in the world. But within India the