234 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
The one has not been erected above sixty years, the 
other has perhaps existed nearly half as many centuries. 
Nothing can be more perfectly opposite than the two 
styles, and yet both are perfect in their kind. 
I shall devote the remainder of this chapter to a 
brief account of that remarkable sect which raised the 
splendid temple at Bode Gyah. The Brahminical re- 
ligion by consecrating the hereditary principles of caste, 
by declaring there was no passage from one caste to 
another, by proclaiming that all men who were not 
of the Aryas, were Mlechha, or barbarians, fixed 
limits to its own progress that could not be passed. 
When once it was established that crimes committed 
in a previous state of existence irrevocably determined 
the fate of men in the present life ; that he who was 
born a Mlechha must remain a Mlechha, whatever 
were his virtues, and that he who was born an Arya 
should continue an Arya whatever were his vices, 
there could be no motive to conversion ; the very at- 
tempts to make proselytes must have been regarded 
as criminal. Two results necessarily followed from 
such a system. The Aryas seized supremacy as a 
matter of right ; the Mlechhas were ready to receive 
with pleasure the first daring innovator that would 
denounce as unfounded the dogmas which sentenced 
them to hopeless degradation. 
We must not imagine that the system of caste 
belonged exclusively to India: on the contrary, we 
have strong proof that it prevailed over the greater 
part of central and western Asia. In Persia, for in- 
stance, the Medes claimed to be Aryas, and under 
that pretext demanded submission from the Persians. 
