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 their lifetime to learning these rites, they alone were able to perform them in all their details, and the natural inference in the popular mind was that they alone were worthy of the holy task.

The very same causes led to the rise of a royal caste. Royalty had not assumed a very high dignity among the Panjab Hindus. Warlike chiefs led clans from conquests to conquests, and the greatest of them were regarded rather as leaders of men and protectors of clans than as mighty kings. Far different was the state of things with the Hindus along the Ganges. Probably in the early days of the martial Kurus and Panchalas caste distinctions had not yet been fully matured. But later, the kings of the peaceful Kosalas and Videhas, surrounded by all the pomp and circumstance of royalty, were looked upon by the humble and lowly people as more than human.

Although the simple origin of caste was obscured in later Hindu literature by strange myths and legends, later Hindu writers never completely lost sight of the fact that it was originally only a distinction based on professions, and this account of its genesis often occurs in the same Puranic works which elsewhere delight in marvellous legends concerning its beginnings.

In the Vayu Purana we are told that in the first, or Krita, Age there were no castes, and that subsequently Brahma established divisions among men according to their works. "Those who were suited for command and prone to deeds of violence, he appointed to be Kshatriyas, from their protecting others. Those