Page:Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx.djvu/138

18 the Punjab, the Brahmins had no power or authority. They were merely messengers and sacrificers. No food so pure as that cooked by a Brahmin. Others among them, having a devout turn of mind, were hermits doing penance, immersed in contemplation. At the time of Alexander's conquest of northern India, many lived in convents, practising occultism. They were called gymnosophists by the Greeks, and were regarded as very wise men. But it must be remembered that the period between the establishment of the Vedic settlements on the Saraswati and the conquest of Hindostan by the Aryans, when they had become the leading power, probably covers an interval of thousands of years.

"The Aryans appear to have had no definite idea of a universe of being or of the creation of a universe." From them, therefore, the Brahmins could not have borrowed their account of the creation, which differs from that we might infer from the Vedic hymns. Still "Manu borrowed some of the ideas conveyed in his account of the creation of the universe by Brahma."

From whom did he borrow them?

"The Brahmins rarely attempted to ignore or denounce the traditions of any new people with whom they came in contact; but rather they converted such materials into vehicles for the promulgation of their peculiar tenets."

The Nâgás, we have seen, were a highly civilized people,