Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/260

236 and Buddhist teaching have respectively to bear in the matter. The Brahmanical castes became subdivided into groups composed of many families, with no common founder, the preservation of whose name and deeds would have afforded an instigation to building up the materials of a national history. Only at a comparatively late period some traditions were kept up of the heads of these groups, but this in such a way as to serve rather to throw back attention on to the past and restrain it from the contemplation and record of contemporary events. Caste took the place of country, and the interest of the individual was drawn away from national to local interest.

Next, the history of the gods possessed a much higher importance in their eyes than that of the kings of the earth, while at the same time the humanistic conception of their character rendered the myths concerning them of a nature to clash with and supersede the records of earthly notabilities. Their wars and their loves and their undertakings were indeed often superhuman in scale, but they were yet for the most part no more exalted in nature, than the occupations of men. But from this habit of making their divinities actors in gigantic human incidents, their mind grew used to regard the marvellous and unreal as possible and true, and was at no pains to fix any data with exactness.

Then their contemplative mode of life kept them