CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



of divinity is claimed. The poor among them are 

 to be supported by the gifts of others ; and it is 

 only when subsistence is impossible by other 

 means that they may descend to military duties, 

 or engage in certain kinds of traffic. Second 

 comes the class of Kshatriyas, or soldiers, com- 

 prising priests and nobles. The third is the caste 

 of Vaisyas. who are engaged in agriculture, in 

 keeping cattle, and in trading. Widely separ- 

 ated from all these is the fourth caste, that of 

 the Sudras, who are enjoined to serve the other 

 castes, and are considered unfit for the higher 

 rites and rewards of religion, so that it was an 

 offence even to read the Vedas to a Sudra. The 

 god Brahma is believed to have created these 

 classes for the functions assigned to them re- 

 spectively, by causing them to proceed from dif- 

 ferent parts of his body the Brahmans from his 

 mouth ; the Kshatriyas from his arm ; the 

 Vaisyas from his thigh ; and the Sudras from 

 his foot. Nevertheless, other castes existed at a 

 very early period, some of which may have been 

 produced by intermarriages between the pure 

 castes, and similar causes operating while the 

 new classification was being consolidated, while 

 others were probably the continuation of divisions 

 of older date. A certain recognition was given to 

 the mixed castes, and we find employments and 

 handicrafts assigned to each. It is obvious that 

 the Sudras were originally slaves no doubt the 

 descendants of the conquered native races. The 

 superior castes, on the other hand, who were all 

 alike regarded as ' twice-born,' must have been 

 mainly made up of the descendants of the con- 

 querors. The institution of caste is unknown to 

 the Vedas. The religious change observable in 

 the Epic period is quite as remarkable as the 

 social. 



Though we find the elemental gods of the 

 Vedas still objects of worship, they have been 

 ousted from their former rank ; they are now an 

 inferior order of deities, exercising the office of 

 'guardians of the world.' The chief place in 

 Hindu theory is now held by the triad or trimurti, 

 Brahmci., Vishnu, and Siva, who represent respect- 

 ively the creating, preserving, and destroying 

 energies of nature. Temples and images have 

 now become indispensable to worship. The Tri- 

 murti, when represented, is one body with three 

 heads : in the middle, that of Brahma ; at its 

 right, that of Vishnu ; at its left, that of Siva. 

 Brahma, theoretically, is first and greatest of this 

 trinity ; but his special function is that of crea- 

 tion ; he takes little or no part in the regency of 

 the world ; and the result is that, as an object of 

 worship, he gradually disappears the philoso- 

 phers, to account for this, declaring that he has 

 become merged in the Brahma of their own specu- 

 lation, the one primary, all-pervading spirit, of 

 whom all things, including the greatest gods, are 

 the manifestations. Vishnu and Siva are, in fact, 

 the gods who divide between them the alle- 

 giance of the Hindus, and there is already notice- 

 able a tendency among the worshippers of either 

 to consider him the one god, of whom the other 

 and Brahma were but passing forms. In the 

 Ramdyana, the subject of which is an incarnation 

 of Vishnu, the superiority of Vishnu is always 

 assumed. In the Mahabhdrata, we find a per- 

 petual conflict as to which has the higher place. 

 Inferior gods there now are almost beyond num- 



421 



bering, and they also are worshipped ; but the 

 old Vedic conception of a god as everlasting, 

 not subject to decay or death, is scarcely, or, at 

 anyrate, not generally held applicable to them. 

 Among the innumerable legends connected with 

 the gods, those which describe the incarnations of 

 Vishnu and other deities are the most remarkable ; 

 and strange, indeed, is the conception of a divine 

 providence which in these stories is presented to 

 us. The accounts given of the creation of the 

 world by Brahma, and of the four ages through 

 which it has to pass, making a day of Brahma, 

 at the close of which, all things are resolved into 

 primary matter, and Brahma reposes for a night 

 equal in length to the day, ready to begin anew 

 the work of creation, and so on for a hundred 

 years of such days forming one of the wildest of 

 those wild human imaginings called cosmogonies 

 also belong to this period of Hinduism. A minute 

 and rigid ceremonial had sprung up along with 

 the new theology, the most scrupulous observance 

 of which was enforced by the sanctions of re- 

 ligion. It regulated not merely properly religious 

 acts, but social life in almost every part. To 

 comply with it without priestly assistance was 

 impossible, and thus the Hindus of this period 

 were probably the most completely priest-ridden 

 people the world has ever seen. 



The philosophical creed of this period adds 

 little to the fundamental notions contained in the 

 Upanishads, though it frees itself from the legend- 

 ary dross which imparts to those works a deep 

 tinge of mysticism. But with the doctrine that the 

 individual soul is of the same nature with the 

 supreme spirit, and may be reunited with it, we 

 find connected in this period two beliefs, which 

 were destined to have great influence over future 

 religious thought and practice. One was, that 

 penance prepared the soul for reunion with 

 God. The other was the doctrine of metem- 

 psychosis or transmigration of souls. Whatever 

 its origin, it became connected with the view 

 that in a single life it was impossible for the soul 

 to attain to that purity without which it could 

 not be reunited to the universal spirit. The soul, 

 after death, must therefore be born again and 

 again, until it has become purified from all taint 

 of earth. The beginning of this doctrine may be 

 found in some of the oldest Upanishads ; but its 

 development into a system, with rewards and 

 punishments proportioned to the deeds done in 

 the last state of existence, and its rise to the 

 position of a popular creed, belong to the Epic 

 period. It pervades the legends of this period, 

 and affects the social life of the nation. The 

 Hindu ingenuity has worked out elaborate schemes 

 of the forms of existence to which virtue may 

 raise or sin condemn the unpurified spirit ; but 

 into these it would scarcely be profitable to enter. 

 Suffice it, that while eminent virtue may elevate 

 a soul to a long life of bliss in Indra's heaven, and 

 to the position almost of a god, an irreligious life, 

 or even a single vicious act, if of enormity for 

 example, disrespect to a Brahman may lead to 

 ages of torture in a succession of hells, before the 

 soul resumes its terrestrial migrations ; and that 

 the soul may pass, as a punishment for sin, into 

 the lowest animal forms, into vegetable existence, 

 and even into inorganic matter. 



The strictly moral part of the Brahmanical 

 system, which is contained chiefly in the book 





