Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/805

781 HISTOKY.] INDIA 781 friendly gods. Riidra, who was destined to become the Siva of the Hindus, and the third person, or Destroyer, in their Triad, is only the god of Roaring Tempests in the Veda; Vishnu, the second person, or Preserver, in the Hindu Triad, is but slightly known as the deity of the Shining Firmament ; while Brahma, the first person, or Creator, has no separate existence in these simple hymns. The names of the dreadful Mahadeva, Durga, Kali, and of the gentler Krishna and Rama, are equally unknown in the Rig- Veda. While the aboriginal races buried their dead under rude stone monuments, the Aryan alike in India, in Greece, and in Italy made use of the funeral-pile as the most solemn method of severing the mortal from the immortal part of man. As he derived his natural birth from his parents, and a partial regeneration, or second birth, from the performance of his religious duties, so the fire, by setting free the soul from the body, completed the third or heavenly birth. His friends stood round the pyre as round a natal bed, and commanded his eye to go to the sun, his breath to the wind, his limbs to the earth, the water and plants whence they had been de rived. But &quot; as for his unborn part, do thou, Lord (Agni), quicken it with thy heat ; let thy llame and thy brightness quicken it; con vey it to the world of the, righteous.&quot; The doctrine of transmigra tion was unknown. The circle round the funeral-pile sang with an assurance that their friend went direct to a state of blessedness and reunion with the loved ones who had gone before. The hymns of the. Rig-Veda were composer], as we have seen, by the Aryans in their colonies along the Indus, and on their march eastwards towards the Jumna and upper Ganges. The growing numbers of the settlers, and the arrival of fresh Aryan tribes from behind, still compelled them to advance. From the Land of the Sacred Singers Maim describes them as spreading through &quot; The Middle Land&quot; (Afadhyadesha), comprising the whole river systems of Upper India as far east as Oudh and Allahabad, with the Himalayas as its northern and the Vindhya ranges as its southern boundary. The conquest of the vast new tracts thus included seems not to have commenced till the close of the Rig-Vedic era, and it must have been the work of many generations. During this advance the simple faith of the Rig-Vedic singers was first adorned with stately rites, and then extinguished beneath them. The race progressed from a loose confederacy of tribes into several well-knit nations, each bound together by the strong central force of kingly power, directed by a powerful priesthood and organized on a firm basis of caste. te. Whence arose this new constitution of the Aryan tribes into nations, with castes, priests, arid kings? We have seen that, although in their earlier colonies on the Indus each father was priest in his family, yet the chieftain, or lord of the settlers, called in some man specially learned in holy offerings to conduct the great tribal sacrifices. Such men were highly honoured, and the famous quarrel which runs throughout the whole Veda sprang from the claims of two rival sages, Vasliishtha and Visvamitra, to perform one of these ceremonies. The art of writing was unknown, and the hymns and sacrificial words had to be handed down by word of mouth from father to son. It thus happened that the families who learned them by heart became, as it were, the hereditary owners of the liturgies required at the most solemn offerings to the gods. Members of these households were chosen again and again to conduct the tribal sacrifices, to chant the battle-hymn, to implore the divine aid, or to pray away the divine wrath. Even the Rig- Veda recognizes the importance of these sacrifices. &quot; That king,&quot; says a verse, &quot; before whom marches the priest, he alone dwells well-established in his own honse, to him the people bow down. The king who gives wealth to the priest, he will conquer, him the gods will protect.&quot; The tribesmen first hoped, then believe 1, that a hymn or prayer which had once acted successfully, and been followed by victory, would again produce the same results. The hymns became a valuable family property for those who had composed or learned them. The Rig-Veda tells how the prayer of Vasliishtha prevailed &quot; in the battle of the ten kings, 1 and how that of Visvamitra &quot;preserves the tribe of the Bharats.&quot; The potent prayer was termed Irdhma, and he who offered it brahman. Woe to all who despised either ! &quot; Whoso ever,&quot; says the Rig-Veda, &quot;scoffs at the prayer (brdhma) which we have made, may hot plagues come upon him, may the sky burn up that hater of Brahmans &quot; (brdhma-dv ish}. Certain families thus came to have, not only an hereditary claim to conduct the great sacrifices, but also the exclusive knowledge of the ancient hymns, or at any rate of the traditions which explained their symbolical meaning. They naturally tried to render the ceremonies solemn and im posing. By degrees a vast array of ministrants grew up around each of the greater sacrifices. There were first the officiating priests and their assistants, who prepared the sacrificial ground, dressed the altar, slew the victims, and poured out the libations ; second, the chanters of the Vedic hymns ; third, the reciters of other parts of the service ; fourth, the superior priests, who watched over the whole, and corrected any mistakes. Meanwhile other castes had been gradually formed. As the Aryans moved eastwards from the Indus, some of the warriors were more fortunate than others, or received larger shares of the conquered lands. Such families had not to till their fields with their own hands, but could leave that work to be done by the aboriginal races whom they subdued. In this way there grew up a class of warriors, freed from the labour of husbandry, who surrounded the chief or king, and were always ready for Battle. It seems likely that these kinsmen and &quot; companions of the king &quot; formed an important class among the early Aryan tribes in India, as they certainly did among the ancient branches of the race in Europe, and still do at the petty courts of India. Their old Sanskrit names, Kskattriya, Rdjanya, and Rdjbansi, mean &quot;connected with the royal power,&quot; or &quot;of the royal line &quot; ; their usual modern name Rajput means &quot; of royal descent.&quot; In process of time, when the Aryans settled down, not as mere fighting clans, but as powerful nations, in the middle land along the Jumna and Ganges, this warrior class grew in numbers and in power. The black races had been reduced to serfdom, or driven back into the Himalayas and the Vindhyas, on the north and the south of that fertile tract. The incessant fighting, which had formed the common lot of the tribes on their actual migra tion eastwards from the Indus, ceased. A section of the people laid- aside their arms, and devoted themselves to agriculture or other peaceful pursuits. The sultry heats of the Middle Laud must also have abated their old northern energy, and led them to love repose. Those who, from family ties or from personal inclination, preferred a soldier s life had to go beyond the frontier to find an enemy. Distant expeditions of this sort could be undertaken much less conveniently by the husbandman than in the ancient time, when his fields lay on the very border of the enemy s country, and had just been wrested from it. Such expedi tions required and developed a class of regular soldiers whose presence was not constantly needed at home for tilling the land. The old warrior companions and kinsmen of the king formed a nucleus round which gathered all the more daring spirits, and laid the foundation of a military caste. The Aryans on the Ganges, in the &quot; Middle Land,&quot; thus found themselves divided into three classes- first, the priests, or Brahmans ; second, the warriors and king s com panions, called in ancient times Kshattriyas, at the present day Rajputs; third, the husbandmen, or agricultural settlers, who retained the old name of Vaisyas, from the root vis, which in the Vedic period had included the whole &quot;people.&quot; These three classes gradually became distinct castes ; intermarriage between them ceased, and each kept more and more strictly to its hereditary employment. But they were all recognized as belonging to the &quot; twice-born &quot; or Aryan race, were all present at the great national