8 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



his primitive religion, his close contact \\dth Mother 

 Earth and ^ith the tame creatures that Uve still 

 closer to it. This is the age of innocence among 

 mankind, and the remains of it in the most advanced 

 country keep human existence clean and sweet, hke 

 a waft of ozone from the sea over a hot and parched 

 land. 



To the anti-Semitic imagination of Edgar Quinet the 

 social state indirectly described in the Vedas is the 

 most primitive of which tradition has preserved any 

 account. There we perceive the true dawn of the 

 social world, where there is, as yet, no nation or State, 

 no people and no visible government, but only clans 

 and patriarchs, who are surrounded by their herds, 

 seeking from peak to peak of the Indian Alps the freshest 

 grasses ; with no other wealth than that which they 

 carry on their waggons ; lighting their fires on the 

 high plateaux by rubbing one branch against another ; 

 then burning the virgin forests in order to clear a track 

 or prepare the ground for a hut ; without agriculture 

 or fixed property, without temple or home ; marking 

 each stopping-place with a new song and a monumental 

 sacred stone ; already addicted to war for the purpose 

 of defending or increasing their own herds or of attack- 

 ing another's ; and connecting all things — their prayers 

 and poetry, their labours and beliefs — with those all- 

 nourishing herds as the source of life. Such is the 

 picture of the ancient Aryan Indians presented in the 

 Vedic hymns.* There are features of this primeval 

 pastoralism that are lost m the reproductions of it 

 found in other lands and other times, but its essential 

 characteristics are the same, wherever cattle are the 

 chief sustenance of a still nomad people. The Vedic 

 neatherd is the lineal ancestor of the Australian stock- 

 man. 



Of at least equal, and possibly greater, antiquity are 

 the simple pastoral societies that figure in the Hebrew 

 books of Job and Genesis. The Book of Job is popularly 

 * Oenie dea Eeligiona, bk. iii. ch. L 



