Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/169

 XXVIII The Life ov Gautama Buddha BUT now we must go back three centuries in our story to tell of a great teacher who came near to revolutionizing the religious thought and feeling of all Asia. This was Gautama Buddha, who taught his disciples at Benares in India about the same time that Isaiah was prophesying among the Jews in Babylon and Heraclitus was carrying on his speculative enquiries into the nature of things at Ephesus. All these men were in the world at the same time, in the sixth century B.C. — ^unaware of one another. This sixth century B.C. was indeed one of the most remarkable in all history. Everywhere — for as we shall tell it was also the case in China — men's minds were displaying a new boldness. Everywhere they were waking up out of the traditions of kingships and priests and blood sacrifices and asking the most penetrating questions. It is as if the race had reached a stage of adolescence — after a child- hood of twenty thousand years. The early history of India is still very obscure. Somewhen perhaps about 2000 B.C., an Aryan-speaking people came down from the north-west into India either in one invasion or in a series of invasions, and was able to spread its language and traditions over most of north India. Its peculiar variety of Aiyan speech was the Sanscrit. They found a brunet people with a more elaborate civilization and less vigour of will in possession of the country of the Indus and Ganges. But they do not seem to have mingled with their predecessors as freely as did the Greeks and Persians. They remained aloof. When the past of India becomes dimly visible to the historian, Indian society is already stratified into several layers, Avith a variable number of sub-divisions, which do not eat together nor intermarry nor associate freely. And throughout history this stratification into castes continues. This makes the Indian popula- tion something different from the simple, freely inter-breeding 14Q