128 General Observations on [Feb. 



If the brahman caste had been all-powerful, all the rulers and digni- 

 taries of the land would have belonged to it. 



If the Brahmanical tribe was itself divided into castes, then there were 

 two bodies under this denomination, — the Brahmanical and the Indian, 

 which, if proved, would at once shew that caste came with them, from 

 Persia or some other contiguous region, — and if any one could be a brah- 

 mana, an anchorite or an ascetic, and a teacher of the Brahmanical 

 mantras, there could scarcely have been any regular Hierarchy. It is 

 not likely that we shall ever learn when the brahmans ceased to be 

 what Fa Hain termed them, a small tribe of foreigners, — for their march 

 to power was insidious. Sir W. Jones informs us that the Mohsan 

 states in his writings, that in the opinion of the best informed Persians, 

 who professed the faith of Hushang, distinguished from that of Zera- 

 tusht, the first monarch of Iran, and of the whole earth was, Mahabad, 

 (Maha ? — a word apparently Sanscrit,) who divided the people into four 

 orders, — the religious, military, commercial and servile, to whom he 

 assigned names unquestionably the same in their origin with those now 

 assigned to the four primary classes of the Hindus.* 



If we were to admit that Sakya Muni had three predecessors, and to 

 allow only a hundred years to have elapsed betwixt each, we might fix 

 B. C. 843, as about the time when Buddhism was first promulgated, 

 and in such case, where ought we to place the brahmans at that period ? 

 — not to the south and S. W. of the Punjab ? If dissent had not also 

 sapped the foundations of Buddhism, the brahmans could never perhaps 

 have risen to power, and that dissent became the more dangerous 

 inasmuch as to Buddhism, it embraced men who were brahmans well 

 versed in the Vedas, and who being fully informed of all the weak points 

 of Buddhism, — for no popular feeling was wounded, and no political insti- 

 tution, caste included, was assailed by Buddhism ; on the contrary, it was, 

 while it endured, a very popular faith, and we have its present prevalence 

 over Hindu-China, Japan and partly China itself, as a proof of the tena- 

 city it now possesses over the human mind, and which it probably origi- 

 nally did possess, until force subdued it. The Indians rivetted the 

 chains already forged for them by the brahmans, when they abandoned 

 the freedom and equality of Buddhism, and placed the mighty engine 

 of civil and religious thraldom, that of the castes, entirely in the hands 

 of the Hindu priests, or brahmans. 



* As. Res. Vol. II. p. 59. 



