Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/245

Rh well as those who had acquired an intimate knowledge of the various forms of ritual worship. The common term used in the Veda for the officiating priest is brahman (masc. ; nom. sing, bra/ima), originally denoting, it would seem, &quot; one who prays, a worshipper,&quot; or &quot; the composer or reciter of a hymn (brahman, n.) &quot; In some passages the word also signilies a special class of priests who officiated as superintendents during sacrificial ceremonies, the complicated nature of which required the co-operation of several priests. It is probable that in most cases the function of the poet or composer of hymns was combined with that of a minister of worship. In the Vedic hymns two classes of society, the royal (or military) and the priestly classes, were evidently recognized as being raised above the level of the Vis, or bulk of the Aryan community. These social grades seem to have been in existence even before the separation of the two Asiatic branches of the Indo- European race, the Aryans of Iran and India. It is true that, although the Athrava, Rathacstdo, and Vattrya of the Zend Avesta correspond in position and occupation to the Brahman, Rdjan, and Vis of the Veda, there is no similarity of names between them ; but this fact only shows that the common vocabulary had not yet definitely fixed on any specific names for these classes. Even in the Veda their nomenclature is by no means limited to a single designation for each of them. Moreover, Atharvan occurs not infrequently in the hymns as the personification of the priestly profession, as the proto-priest who is supposed to have obtained fire from heaven and to have instituted the rite of sacrifice ; and although ratheshtha (&quot;standing on a car&quot;) is not actually found in connection with the Rdjan or Kshatriya, its synonym rathin is in later literature a not unusual epithet of men of the military caste. A.t the time of the hymns, and even during the common Indo- Persian period, the sacrificial ceremonial had already become sufficiently complicated to call for the creation of a certain number of distinct priestly offices with special duties attached to them. While this shows clearly that the position and occupation of the priest were those of a profession, the fact that the terms brakmana and brahmaputra, both denoting &quot;the son of a brahman,&quot; are used in certain hymns as synonyms of Brahman, seems to justify the assumption that the profession had already, to a certain degree, become hereditary at the time when these hymns were composed. There is, however, with the exception of a solitary passage in a hymn of the last book, no trace to be found in the Rigveda, of that rigid division into four castes separated from one another by unsurmount- able barriers, which in later times constitutes the distinctive feature of Hindu society The idea of caste is expressed by the Sanskrit term varna, originally denoting &quot; colour,&quot; thereby implying differences o f complexion between the several classes. The word occurs in the Veda in the latter sense, but it is used there to mark the distinction, not between the three classes of the Aryan community, but between them on the one hand and a dark-coloured hostile people on the other. The latter, called Dasas or Dusyus, consisted, no doubt, of the indigenous tribes, with whom the Aryans had to carry on a continual struggle for the possession of the land. The partial subjection of these comparatively uncivilized tribes, as the rule of the superior race was gradu ally spreading eastward, and their submission to a state of serfdom under the name of &udras, added to the Aryan community an element, totally separated from it by colour, by habits, by language, and by occupation. Moreover, the religious belief of these tribes being entirely different from that of the conquering people, the pious Aryas, and especially the class habitually engaged in acts of worship, could hardly fail to apprehend considerable danger to the purity of their own faith from too close and intimate a contact between the two races. What more natural, there fore, than that measures should have been early devised to limit the intercourse between them within as narrow bounds as possible. In course of time the difference of vocation, and the greater or less exposure to the scorching influence of the tropical sky, added, no doubt, to a certain admix ture of Sudra blood, especially in the case of the common people, seem to have produced also in the Aryan population different shades of complexion, which greatly favoured a tendency to rigid class-restrictions originally awakened and continually fed by the lot of the servile race. Meanwhile the power of the sacerdotal order having been gradually enlarged in proportion to the development of the minutiae of sacrificial ceremonial and the increase of sacred lore, they began to lay claim to supreme authority in regulating and controlling the raligious and social life of the people. The author of the so-called Purusha-sukta, or hymn to Purusha, above referred to, represents the four castes the Brahmanas, Kshatriyas, Vaisyars, and Sudras as having severally sprung from the mouth, the arms, the thighs, and the feet of Purusha, a primary being, here assumed to be the source of the universe. It is very doubtful, however, whether at the time when this hymn was composed the relative position of the two upper castes could already have been settled in so decided a way as this theory might lead us to suppose. There is, on the contrary, reason to believe that some time had yet to elapse, marked by fierce and bloody struggles for supremacy, of which only imper fect ideas can be formed from the legendary and biassed accounts of later generations, before the Kshatriyas finally submitted to the full measure of priestly pretension. The definitive establishment of theBrahmanical hierarchy marks the beginning of the Brahmanical period properly so called. Though the origin and gradual rise of some of the leading institutions of this era can, as has been shown, be traced in the earlier writings, the chain of their develop ment presents a break at this juncture which no satisfactory materials enable us to fill up. A considerable portion of the literature of this time has apparently been lost ; and several important works, the original composition of which has probably to be assigned to the early days of Brahmanism, such as the institutes of Manu and the two great epics, the Mahdb/idrata and Rdmdyana, in the form in which they have been handed down to us, show manifest traces cf a more modern redaction. Yet it is sufficiently clear from internal evidence that Mann s Code of Laws, though it is merely a metrical rifacimento of older materials, reproduces on the whole pretty faithfully the state of Hindu society depicted in the sources from which it was compiled. The final overthrow of the Kshatriya power was followed by a period of jealous legislation on the part of the Brahmans. For the time their chief aim was to improve their newly gained vantage-ground by surrounding everything connected with their order with a halo of sanctity calculated to impress the lay community with feelings of awe. In the Brahmanas and even in the Purusha Hymn, and the Atharvan, divine origin had already been ascribed to the Vedic Sanhitas, especially to the three older collections. The same privilege was now successfully claimed for the later Vedic literature, so imbued with Brahmanic aspirations and pretensions; and the authority implied in the designation of Smti or revela tion removed henceforth the whole body of sacred writings from the sphere of doubt and criticism. This concession necessarily involved an acknowledgement of the new social order as a divine institution. Its stability was, however, rendered still more secure by the elaboration of a system of conventional precepts, partly forming the basis of Manu s Code, which clearly defined the relative position and the duties of the several castes, and determined the penalties to bo inflicted on any transgressions of the limits assigned 