10 TJie 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 in 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 the 

 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 ; and a 

 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 Chiefs 





