16 The Ethnology of India. 
substantial inductions may be formed from putting together many 
observations. 
And among the more civilised races, I think it not improbable that 
an accurate observation of the prevalence of Sivite and Vishnuite ideas 
respectively, among particular tribes and castes, may be found to have 
an ethnological significance. I cannot help thinking that these two 
forms of modern Hinduism may im fact represent entirely different 
religions derived from widely different sources, and that while the 
Vishnuite faith came from the north, the Sivite may have had some 
other origin, and may be the special property of races which of old 
peculiarly affected it. Sivite monuments certainly seem to be marks 
of a very old faith in the greater part of India, and the essential 
element of it, the reverence for and deification of the procreative power, 
seems to be the same idea of natural progression which is carried on 
by the Buddhist doctrine of gradual perfectibility (raising man almost 
to the rank of a god) in opposition to the Vishnuite or Vedic creed of 
a separate creation of gods and their occasional incarnation in thé 
form of man. If then pure Sivites, Buddhists, and Jains are in some 
way connected, and they all prevail most in the West, who are those 
who brought their doctrines there ? and whence did they come ? 
4. Laws. I believe that, laws are among the most persistent 
ethnological marks, and that, as such, they have been too much ne- 
glected. Caste, and Marriage as a sacrament strictly limited by 
caste, seem to be Arian institutions. Arian are strict rules of inhe- 
ritance, resulting from that sacred form of marriage and subject to none 
of the caprices of Mahommedan and similar laws. Arian is the pri- 
vate property in land, as distinguished from the Tribal; the property 
first of the village—then of the family—then of the individual ; anda 
consequence is, the attachment of the Arian to his native soil. Espe- 
cially Arian is the form of what we call constitutional, as opposed 
to patriarchal and arbitrary government. The Indian village or Com- 
mune is a constitutional unit, common to all the Arians. A main 
distinction, as I think, between two great classes of Arians is to be 
traced in the constitution of these Communes—Aristocratic among 
the one—among the other democratic, and recognizing as equals all 
free citizens, to the exclusion of Helots only. 
Among the non-Arians, on the other hand, the rule of the Chicfs 
