A General History for Colleges and High Schools | Page 6

river as early probably as 1500
B.C.
These fair-skinned invaders found the land occupied by a dark-skinned,
non-Aryan race, whom they either subjugated and reduced to serfdom,
or drove out of the great river valleys into the mountains and the half-
desert plains of the peninsula.
THE ORIGIN OF CASTES.--The conflict of races in Northern India
gave rise to what is known as the system of castes; that is, society
became divided into a number of rigid hereditary classes. There arose

gradually four chief castes: (1) Brahmans, or priests; (2) warriors; (3)
agriculturists and traders; and (4) serfs, or Sudras. The Brahmans were
those of pure Aryan blood, while the Sudras were the despised and
oppressed non-Aryan aborigines. The two middle classes, the warriors
and the cultivators of the soil, were of mixed Aryan and non-Aryan
blood. Below these several castes were the Pariahs, or outcasts, the
most degraded of the degraded natives. [Footnote: At a later period, the
Brahmans, in order to perpetuate their own ascendancy and to secure
increased reverence for their order, incorporated among the sacred
hymns an account of creation which gave a sort of divine sanction to
the system of castes by representing the different classes of society to
have had different origins. The Brahmans, the sacred books are made to
say, came forth from the mouth of Brahma, the soldier from his arms,
the farmer from his thighs, and the Sudra from his feet. ]
The system of castes, modified however by various influences,
particularly by the later system of Buddhism (see p. 11), has
characterized Hindu society from the time the system originated down
to the present, and is one of the most important facts of Indian history.
THE VEDAS.--The most important of the sacred books of the Hindus
are called the Vedas. They are written in the Sanscrit language, which
is believed to be the oldest form of Aryan speech. The Rig-Veda, the
most ancient of the books, is made up of hymns which were composed
chiefly during the long period, perhaps a thousand years or more, while
the Aryans were slowly working their way from the mountains on the
northwest of India across the peninsula to the Ganges. These hymns are
filled with memories of the long conflict of the fair-faced Aryans with
the dark-faced aborigines. The Himalayas, through whose gloomy
passes the early emigrants journeyed, must have deeply impressed the
wanderers, for the poets often refer to the great dark mountains.
BRAHMANISM.--The religion of the Indian Aryans is known as
Brahmanism. This system gradually developed from the same germs as
those out of which grew the Greek and Roman religions. It was at first
a pure nature-worship, that is, the worship of the most striking
phenomena of the physical world as intelligent and moral beings. The

chief god was Dyaus-Pitar, the Heaven-Father. As this system
characterized the early period when the oldest Vedic hymns were
composed, it is known as the Vedic religion.
In course of time this nature-worship of the Vedic period developed
into a sort of pantheism, that is, a system which identifies God with the
universe. This form of the Indian religion is known as Brahmanism.
Brahma, an impersonal essence, is conceived as the primal existence.
Forth from Brahma emanated, as heat and light emanate from the sun,
all things and all life. Banish a personal God from the universe, as
some modern scientists would do, leaving nothing but nature with her
original nebula, her endless cycles, her unconscious evolutions, and we
have something very like Brahmanism.
A second, fundamental conception of Brahmanism is that all life, apart
from Brahma, is evil, is travail and sorrow. We can make this idea
intelligible to ourselves by remembering what are our own ideas of this
earthly life. We call it a feverish dream, a journey through a vale of
sorrow. Now the Hindu regards all conscious existence in the same
light. He has no hope in a better future; so long as the soul is conscious,
so long must it endure sorrow and pain.
This conception of all conscious existence as necessarily and always
evil, leads naturally to the doctrine that it is the part of wisdom and of
duty for man to get rid of consciousness, to annihilate himself, in a
word, to commit soul-suicide. Brahmanism teaches that the only way to
extinguish self and thus get rid of the burden of existence, is by
re-absorption into Brahma. But this return to Brahma is dependent
upon the soul's purification, for no impure soul can be re-absorbed into
the primal essence. The necessary freedom from passion and the
required purity of soul can best be attained by self-torture, by a severe
mortification of the flesh; hence the asceticism of the Hindu devotee.
As only a few in each generation reach the