I8G4.] 



On Ancient Indian Weiglits. 



257 



if not probable, that when the Aryan flint, at the end of its course, 

 struck against the Indian steel, sparks were emitted that flashed 

 brightly on the cultivated intellects of a fixed and now thoroughly 

 organised and homogeneous nation, whose leading spirits quickly saw 

 and appreciated the opportunity afforded in the suggestion of a new 

 religion, that was capable of being evolved, by judicious treatment, out 

 of the rude elemental worship, aided forcibly by the mystification of 

 the exotic and clearly superior language of the Aryans* which came 

 so opportunely in company ? 18 The narrow geographical strip, to 

 which the promoters of this creed confined the already arrogant priest- 

 ly element^ intervening between the two nationalities, would seem to 

 savour more of an esoteric intention than of any natural result of 

 €onquest or of progressive power, achieved by the settlement of an 

 intellectually higher class. That the Aryans should be able so com- 

 pletely to divest themselves of their national entity and leave no trace 

 behind them, would be singular in itself ; but the concentration of all 

 god-like properties on a mere boundary line 5 so much insisted upon as 

 Brahmanism grew and pushed its forces downwards into the richer 

 countries of Hindustan, while it ignored both the land of the nativity 

 of its votaries and the site of their later more advantageous domestica- 

 tion, forms a fair subject for present speculation and future deliberate 

 investigation. But this in itself is a matter only incidental to my 

 special subject, and I return to the question, that if the Aryans were 

 so far instructed on their first immigration as to bring with them, or 

 subsequently to import and amplify, the Phoenician alphabet, and 

 similarly to secure its transmission ? even as a secondary system of 



fering from that in which they were found by the Greeks at Alexander's inva- 

 sion, although no doubt they had not spread so far to the east, and were located 

 chiefly in the Punjab and along the Indus." — -" Rig. Veda," ii. p. xvii. I am 

 inclined to question this latter inference ; I do not think the civilisation evi- 

 denced in the text of the " Rig Veda" by any means equal to that discovered at 

 the advent of the Greeks ; indeed, it would foe an anomaly that the Aryans, 

 while occupied in pressing their way onwards, in constant hostility with the 

 local tribes, should have made a proportionately greater progress in national 

 culture than they did in the subsequent six or seven centuries of fixed residence 

 in their new home within the five rivers. 



18. A late writer in the Westminster Review 1864, p. 154, has justly remarked 

 that the 1026 incoherent hymns of the " Rig Veda" constituted but a poor stock 

 in trade whereon to found a new religion. Nor do the Soma " inspired" Rishis 

 by whom they were " seen" appear, from the internal evidence of their crude 

 chants, to have possessed mental qualifications such as should have been equal 

 to the Origiaatioii of the higher intellectual structure of Brahmanism. 



2 l 2 



