Volume Iv Part 6 (1/2)

CHAPTER IV.

THE FORMATION AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE ORDERS.

The Aryas had now advanced far beyond the borders of their ancient territory; from the land of the Panjab they had conquered and occupied the valley of the Ganges. The plundering raids and feuds which had occupied the tribes on the Indus had pa.s.sed away, and in their place came the migration, conquest, settlement, the conflict for the conquered districts, and a warlike life of considerable duration. It was only when attempted in large ma.s.ses that attack or defence could be successful. By this means the tribes grew up into larger communities; the small unions of tribes became nations, which divided the land of the Ganges among them. The tribal princes were changed into leaders of great armies. The serious and important nature of the tasks imposed upon them by the conquest and the settlement, by the need of security against the ancient inhabitants or the pressure of their own countrymen, placed in the hands of these princes a military dictators.h.i.+p; so that in the new districts which were won and maintained under their guidance, the princes had a much greater weight, and a far wider power, than the heads of the tribes on the Indus, surrounded by the warriors of their nations, had ever ventured to exercise. Thus arose a number of monarchies in the conquered land. Beside the Matsyas on the western bank of the Yamuna, and the curasenas, who lay to the south in the cities of Mathura and Krishnapura (in the place of the Yadavas), stood the kingdom of the Bharatas and Panchalas on the upper course of the Yamuna and Ganges.

These nations were governed by the dynasty of Pandu, at first from Hastinapura on the upper Ganges, and afterwards, apparently after the accession of the eighth successor of Pariks.h.i.+t, from Kaucambi, which lies on the lower Yamuna, about 30 miles above the confluence of the Yamuna and the Ganges.[151] Further to the east, and to the north of the Ganges, the Kocalas were situated on the Sarayu; the seat of their kingdom was Ayodhya. Still further to the east were the Videhas, whose rulers resided at Mithila (Tirhat). On the Ganges, below the confluence with the Yamuna, were the kings of the Kacis at Varanasi (Benares), and farther to the east still, the kings of the Angas at Champa, also on the Ganges. To the south of the river the Magadhas had won a large district; their kings resided at Rajagriha (king's house) on the Sumagadhi.[152]

Thus in the east there was a complex of tolerably extensive states, under a monarchy which owed its origin to military leaders.h.i.+p in the war, and its permanence to the success of the settlement; a state of things forming a complete contrast to the old life of the tribes of the Aryas in the land of the Panjab.

Such a powerful, extensive, and complete alteration of the forms of the civic community, combined with the new conditions of life rendered necessary on the Ganges, must have exercised a deeply-felt influence on the Aryas. The conquest, establishment, and arrangement of extensive dominions had created the monarchy, but at the same time a warlike n.o.bility had sprung up beside the princes in these contests. The land of the Ganges had been won by the sword and divided among the victors. No doubt those who had achieved most in the battles, and stood nearest to the princes, received the best reward in land and slaves, in captives or dependants among the old population. In this way a number of families with larger possessions became distinguished from the ma.s.s of the population. In these the delight in arms and war became hereditary; the feeling of the father pa.s.sed to his son along with his booty, his horses, and his weapons. He could apply himself to the chase, or to the exercise of arms; he was raised above all care for his maintenance, or the necessity of work. He possessed land and slaves to tend his herds or till his fields. From the later position of this order, we might a.s.sume that a n.o.bility practised in the use of arms, the Rajnayas, _i.e._ the princely, the Kshatriyas, _i.e._ the wealthy or powerful, surrounded the princes in the Ganges in greater numbers and with greater importance than the warriors of pre-eminent position, who in the land of the Indus had aided the tribal princes in battle, in council, and in giving judgment.

The battles for the possession of the new territory were over, and the mutual pressure of the Arian tribes had come to an end. War was no longer a constant occupation, or carried on for existence; it was only at a distance, on the borders of the new states, that battles took place, either to check the incursions of the old inhabitants from the mountains or to extend the territory already possessed. Hence the majority of the settlers preferred to till their lands in peace, and left it to those for whom booty or glory had a charm, to follow their kings in beating back the enemy at the borders, or making an attack on foreign tribes and countries. Those who had to work the soil with their own hands gladly gave up the precedence to this military n.o.bility; the king might fight out his wars with their help, if under such protection the herds could pasture in peace, or the fields be tilled without interruption. It was time enough for the peasants to take arms when the n.o.bles who surrounded the princes were no longer able to keep off the attacks of the enemy. No doubt the Kshatriyas formed a still more favourable estimate of themselves and their position. Busied with their arms, their horses, or the chase, they became proud, and despised the work of the peasant, paying little respect to that laborious occupation in comparison with their own free and adventurous life.

Owing to their close relation to the king, to their weapons, and their possessions, the Kshatriyas took the first place in the new states on the Ganges. This they maintained beyond a doubt for centuries in the kingdom of the Bharatas, among the Matsyas and curasenas, the Kocalas, Kacis, Videhas, Magadhas. In the royal houses and the families of the Kshatriyas the achievements of the forefathers continued to live; they preserved the recollection of the wars of conquest, the struggles for the possession of the lands, which they now held. At their festivals and banquets the minstrels sang to them the songs of the ancient heroes, their ancestors, their mighty deeds, their sufferings and death; they extolled the delight in battle and the martial spirit, the knightly temper and mode of combat, and thus at length arose the poem of the great war. If our a.s.sumption, that the conquest of the land on the Ganges may have been completed about the year 1400 B.C., is tenable, we might ascribe to the two following centuries the rise of the Kshatriyas, the establishment of their prominent position in the newly-conquered territory, and to the next century the composition of the songs of the great war in their oldest form.

In the development of other nations the periods of wide expansion, the rise of the military element, and protracted war, usually repress the influence and importance of the priesthood, but among the emigrant Aryas this could not have been the case. We have already seen that among them the contest of sacrifices preceded the contest of arms. The victory fell to the side whose sacrificial bowl Indra had drained. As the correct offering and correct invocation compelled the G.o.ds to come down and fight for the nation whose sacrifice they received, the priests were naturally most indispensable in the time of war. The singers of the sacrificial hymns which caused the G.o.ds to come down were identical among the Indians with the priests, and were in fact the priests in the stricter sense. With them, minstrel and priest had one name--Brahmana, _i.e._ one who prays. The hymns of the Vedas showed us how the princes were commanded to set before them at the sacrifice a holy minstrel to offer prayer, and to be liberal to him. The minstrels who accompanied the emigrant tribes to the Yamuna and Ganges had, in those turbulent times, to sing songs of war and victory, as well as to offer prayers at sacrifice, and afterwards to compose the poems on the deeds of the heroes. If the result was that no more new invocations were composed in the period of heroic song, the minstrels nevertheless preserved the old invocations which they had brought with them from the land of the Indus very faithfully. They had imported the ancient wors.h.i.+p of their native deities into the new land; they had to preserve the old faith and the old rites at a distance from their ancient home, to offer sacrifice in the old fas.h.i.+on, and thus to win and retain the favour of the G.o.ds for the emigrants in their new abode. In the families which claimed to spring from Atri and Agastya, from Bhrigu and Gautama, from Kacyapa and Vasishtha, one generation handed down by tradition to another the prayers which they had preserved as effectual, and which had been composed, or were thought to have been composed, by these celebrated minstrels, the rites which were considered requisite for the efficacy of the sacrifice, for winning the favour and help of heaven. It is obvious that these families did not consist exclusively of the actual descendants of the supposed tribal ancestor. In ancient times the family is the only form, as yet known, of community and instruction. As the prayers pleasing to the G.o.ds and the form of sacrifice could only be learnt from a minstrel and priest, those who had this object in view must seek for admittance into a priestly family, and must be adopted as disciples by a priest in the place of sons.[153] Such admittance was naturally most sought after in the case of that race which bore the most famous name, which was supposed to spring from the most celebrated sacrificer of early times, and claimed to possess his songs. Among the ”sons of Vasishtha,” who, according to the hymn of the Veda (p. 67), sacrificed for the Tritsus, in the race of the Kucikas to which Vicvamitra belonged, and the other priestly races mentioned in the Veda, we must consider that we have just as much disciples claiming to be descended, or being actually descended, from these supposed ancestors, as relations connected by blood. The importance of these families who preserved the ancient customs and prayers, and wors.h.i.+pped the ancient G.o.ds, must have risen in the new territory in proportion to the length of the period between the emigration from the Indus and the present. In different districts the kings regarded the sacrifice and supplication of different races as the most pleasing to the G.o.ds. Among the Kocalas, according to the Ramayana and the Puranas, Vasishtha was the priest of the kings; among the Bharatas, the Kucikas; among the Videhas and Angas, the Gautamas.[154] The amalgamation of the various tribes into larger nations had the effect of bringing the priestly families into combination and union, and thus they had the opportunity of exchanging the knowledge of their possession of hymns and ritual. This union taught them to regard themselves as a peculiar order. Princes and nations are always inclined to recognise the merit of those who know how to win for them the favour of the G.o.ds, good fortune and health by prayer and sacrifice.

The ancient population of the new states on the Ganges was not entirely extirpated, expelled, or enslaved. Life and freedom were allowed to those who submitted and conformed to the law of the conqueror; they might pa.s.s their lives as servants on the farms of the Aryas.[155] But though this remnant of the population was spared, the whole body of the immigrants looked down on them with the pride of conquerors--of superiority in arms, blood, and character--and in contrast to them they called themselves Vaicyas, _i.e._ tribesmen, comrades--in other words, those who belong to the community or body of rulers.[156] Whether the Vaicya belonged to the order of the n.o.bles, the minstrels and priests, or peasants, was a matter of indifference; he regarded the old inhabitants as an inferior species of mankind. In the land of the Ganges down to the lower course of the river this cla.s.s of inhabitants bears the common name of cudras, and as this word is unknown to Sanskrit we must a.s.sume that it was the original name of the ancient population of the Ganges, just as the tribes of the Vindhyas bear to this day the common name of Gondas. In the new states on the Ganges, therefore, the population was separated into two sharply-divided ma.s.ses. How could the conquerors mix with the conquered?--how could their pride stoop to any union with the despised servants? And even if they had been willing to unite, would not the language and character of the immigrants be lost and destroyed in this mixture with tribes of rude customs and manners?

As the conquered territory became more extensive, and the old inhabitants more numerous--for many were spared by the numerically weaker immigrants and continued to live among them as slaves or free out-door servants, while others hung upon the borders of the conquered regions--the more pressing was the danger that the n.o.ble blood and superior character of the immigrants, and the wors.h.i.+p of the ancient G.o.ds, might be lost in mingling with this ma.s.s of servants. This danger co-operated with the natural pride of the conqueror, and his feeling of superiority, to place a strongly-marked separation between the cudras and the Aryas.

In every nation which has gone beyond the primitive stages of life, wealth and occupation form the basis of a division into more or less fixed forms, more or less close orders. The states on the Ganges were no exception. Here, beside the Kshatriyas, beside the minstrels and priests, or Brahmans, stood the bulk of the immigrant Aryas, whose land required the personal labour of the owner, to whom the name Vaicya, at first common to all, gradually pa.s.sed as a special name. Below these three orders were the cudras. The name given by the Indians to their orders, _varna_, _i.e._ colour, proves that the difference between the light skin of the immigrants and the dark colour of the native population was of considerable influence, and if a doubt were raised whether or not another population is concealed in the fourth order or cudras, it would be removed by the close union of the three orders against the fourth, the uncompromising exclusion of the latter in all matters of religion, and the fact that the law of East Iran (the Avesta) as well as that of the Ganges, recognises warriors, priests, and peasants, but no fourth order. The sharp distinction between the Aryas and cudras may subsequently have had an influence on the orders of the Aryas, so as to mark the divisions more strongly; resting on such a foundation, the division of orders might strike deeper roots on the Ganges than elsewhere.

The higher and more favoured strata of society will seldom be free from the desire to bequeath to posterity the advantages they possess; and this feeling makes itself felt with greater force in earlier stages of civilisation than in later. As the possessions and occupation of the father descend to the son who grows up in them, the favoured orders are inclined to maintain this natural relation, and elevate it into a legal rule; they believe that the qualification for their special calling depends on birth in it, or better blood, and make it so to depend. In the states on the Ganges these tendencies must have been the more strongly marked, as in this case the Aryas saw beneath them, in the cudras, a cla.s.s of men less capable and less cultivated than themselves; to descend to this cla.s.s and mingle with it, seemed to them as disgraceful as it was dangerous to the maintenance of their empire over these men. Here it was more natural than elsewhere to pursue this a.n.a.logy further--to regard even the cla.s.ses of their own tribe, according to their more or less honourable occupation, as separate circles, as races having different characters and higher or lower gifts, and to transform these distinctions of occupation and social position into rigid castes. Thus the Kshatriyas, in the full consciousness of their aristocratic life, proud of their brave deeds and n.o.ble feeling, must have rendered difficult or impossible all approach to their occupation and order; they regarded the minstrels and the priests, and the Vaicyas, as cla.s.ses of inferior birth. When the minstrels had sung the praises of the ancient heroic age in the poem of the marvels of the heroes, in the Epos in its earliest form, and so arrived at more peaceful times in which everything no longer depended on the sword, a feeling of their importance and dignity must have grown up among the priests. Without them, without the accurate knowledge of the old songs and customs of sacrifice, as given by Manu and Pururavas,--without precise acquaintance with the prayers in which efficacy rested, efficient sacrifices could not be offered. We have already remarked that the amalgamation of the emigrant tribes, and the formation of the new kingdoms, brought the priests, who had hitherto belonged to the separate tribes, into closer connection and combination, and made them into a separate order. At the same time, their importance as preserving the old rites and the old faith tended to increase. The community thus arising between the priestly families led of necessity to an interchange of forms of prayer and invocations, of songs, and poems, and customs of sacrifice, the exclusive possession of which had hitherto belonged to each of these families or schools. Thus in each of the new states the priestly families attained a larger collection of songs, and a ritual which was the natural product of the liturgies of the various families, the observances regarded by one or other of these as traditional and indispensable. The traditional prayers and songs of praise were regarded as magical spells, of which even the G.o.ds could not escape the power.

This exchange and combination of spells and rubrics of sacrifice no doubt made the ritual more complicated. The strictly-preserved and now extended possession of these prayers, invocations, and customs, which were known to the priests, separated that order from the Kshatriyas, and the Vaicyas; they stood in opposition to the other orders, as the exclusive possessors of the knowledge of the customs of sacrifice, and efficient invocations. It was only among the members of this order that the correct observances and invocations were known; how could the Kshatriya or the Vaicya avoid errors in his offering or invocation, such as would remove their efficacy and change them into their opposite? The constant increase of the prayers and forms accompanying every step in the sacrifice occupied more priests: the _Hotar_ offered the invitation to the G.o.d to come down and receive the sacrifice; the _Udgatar_ accompanied the preparation of the offering with the solemn forms and prayers; the _Adhvaryu_ performed the actual rite.

Thus an equality of knowledge, advantage, and interests united the priests against the Kshatriyas, Vaicyas, and cudras. By the consciousness that they were in possession of the means to win the favour of the G.o.ds for the king, the n.o.bles, and the people, the pious feeling aroused among them was greatly a.s.sisted towards gaining the recognition of the other orders. Like the Kshatriyas, they must have scorned to descend to the occupations of the Vaicyas; they must have felt that only the priest born a priest could perform the priestly service, or offer pleasing sacrifice to the G.o.ds. They must have maintained that birth alone in the order could confer the capacity for so important and lofty a calling as theirs. If n.o.bles and priests debarred the Vaicyas from entrance into their order, their occupations, and modes of life, they must have been no less careful to maintain the advantages of their birth against the cudras.

If the separation of the orders was the result of a natural progress, if the effort of the favoured cla.s.ses to close their circles was essentially promoted by the common contrast of the immigrants to the remnant of the old population, the natural conditions in which the Aryas were placed on the Ganges were not without an influence on the maintenance of the separation when once introduced. In the land of the Indus the Aryas had not learned to endure such a climate and such heat as they found on the Ganges. The atmosphere began by degrees to undermine the active and vigorous feeling of the Aryas, to lead them to a life of greater calm and rest, which inclined them to retain the conditions and circ.u.mstances once introduced.

The orders attain complete exclusiveness and become castes when not only the change from one to another is forbidden, but when even marriage between the members of different orders is either impossible, or if allowed entails the loss of order, and other disadvantages. We do not exactly know to what extent the mutual exclusiveness of the Kshatriyas, the Brahmans, and the Vaicyas was carried; we only know that these distinctions existed, and that marriages between the orders took place at the time when the priests succeeded in wresting the first place on the throne and in the state from the Kshatriyas, who had maintained it for centuries.

The priests would never have succeeded in raising themselves above the Kshatriyas and repressing the ancient pre-eminence of the armed n.o.bility so closely connected with the kings, who belonged to their order, and were their born chiefs, had they not succeeded in convincing the people on the Ganges, that the effectual sacrifice was the most important and all-decisive act; that the position in which men stood to the G.o.ds was a matter far transcending all other relations. They must have transformed the old religious conceptions by a new doctrine, and by means of this transformation given to themselves a special position, with a peculiar sanction from above. This rise of the priesthood, and their elevation to the first order, is the decisive point in the development of the Arians in India. It was a revolution of Indian life, of the Indian state, of Indian history, of which the effects still continue. It has been observed that the peculiar relations of the tribes on the Ganges, and the nature of the land, tended to fix more strongly there than elsewhere the separation between the orders. But that this division is the sharpest known in history; that the orders became castes, sub-divided in turn into a number of hereditary under-castes; that this unnatural social system has continued in spite of the severest attacks and most violent shocks, and still does continue in unbroken force--this is due to a development of the religious views supplied by the priests, and to the position of the priesthood which was founded on this transformation. The victory over the Kshatriyas was the first step on this path. It was won by means of a new conception of the idea of G.o.d, and a scheme of the origin of the world, and the stages of created beings established thereon. On this foundation it was that the priests obtained the highest position.

When the priestly families on the Ganges pa.s.sed beyond the borders of their several states in their contact with each other, they perceived the extent of the whole treasure of sacrificial song and forms of prayer, which the races had brought over in separate portions from the Indus. The confusing mult.i.tude of deities and their attributes, which now forced themselves upon the priests, led to the attempt to discover some unity in the ma.s.s. The astonis.h.i.+ng abundance of conceptions and the number of the supreme deities in the old prayers were essentially due, as has already been pointed out, to the fact that the Indians desired to render to every G.o.d whom they invoked the proper and the highest honour.

With this object the number of attributes was increased, and the G.o.d in question endowed to a greater or less degree with the power and peculiarities of other deities; and in order to win the favour of the deity to whom the sacrifice was offered, men were inclined to praise him as the highest and mightiest of all G.o.ds. This inclination was supported by the circ.u.mstance that the quick and lively fancy of the Indians never fixed the outlines of their deities or separated them as individuals, and further, by the blind impulse already noticed, to concentrate the power of the G.o.ds in one highest G.o.d, and seize the unity of the divine nature. Thus we saw that Indra and Agni, Mitra and Varuna, were in turns extolled as the highest deity. The task now before the priests was to understand the meaning of these old prayers, to grasp the point of agreement in these various invocations, the unity in these wide attributes, ascribed sometimes to one G.o.d and sometimes to another. This gave a strong impulse to the reflective mind of the Brahmans, and no sooner did the Indians begin to meditate than their fancy became powerful. The form of Indra, and the conception lying at the base of his divinity--the struggle against the black spirits of darkness--faded away in the land of the Ganges. In that region tempests do not come on with the same violence as in the Panjab; the hot season is followed by the rainy season and the inundation without any convulsions of the atmosphere. Again, as the life of war fell into the background, the position of Indra as a G.o.d of war and victory became less prominent.

Least of all could the priests in a time of peace recognise the G.o.d of their order in the G.o.d of war, and in any case the national, warlike, heroic character of Indra could offer few points of contact with priestly meditation. If in consequence of the new circ.u.mstances and relations of life, Indra pa.s.sed into the background--the old G.o.ds of light, the common possession of the Aryas in Iran and India, Mitra, Aryaman, Varuna, beside and above whom Indra had risen, were again allowed to come into prominence. The effort to grasp the unity of the divine power seemed to find a satisfactory basis in the form of Varuna, who from his lofty watch-tower beholds all things, is present everywhere, and sits throned in unapproachable light on the waters of heaven, and in the ethical conceptions embodied in the nature of this deity. The Brahmans struck out another path: they set aside altogether Aditi, _i.e._ the imperishable, who in the old poems of the Veda is the mother of the G.o.ds of light, _i.e._ of ”the immortal” (p. 45, _n._ 2), and in other poems is extolled as the heaven and the firmament, as procreation and birth, as well as other attempts to conceive this unity.

The effort to grasp the unity of the divine Being, the attempt to comprehend its nature, took quite another direction--highly significant and important for the character and development of the Indians.

The soma was offered most frequently to Indra, the Acvins, and the Maruts, and by it they are strengthened and nourished. The drink which gave strength to men and intoxicated them nourished and inspired the G.o.ds also in the faith of the Indians; it gave them strength, and thus won for men the blessing of the G.o.ds. To the Indians it appeared that a potency so effectual must itself be divine--a deity. Hence the soma itself is invoked as a G.o.d, and by consistently following out the conception, the Indians see in it the nourisher and even the creator of the G.o.ds. ”The soma streams forth,” we are told in some songs of the Rigveda, ”the creator of heaven and the creator of earth, of Agni and of the sun, the creator of Indra and of thoughts.” The soma-plants are now the ”udders of the sky;” the G.o.d is pressed for the G.o.ds, and he is offered as drink, who in his liquor contains the universe.[157] The sacrificial drink which nourishes the G.o.ds, or the spirit of it, is thus exalted to be the most bountiful giver of blessings, the bravest warrior, the conqueror of darkness, the slayer of Vritra, the lord of created things, and even to be the supreme power over the G.o.ds, the creator of the sun, the creator and father of Indra and the G.o.ds;[158]

and so the highest power could be ascribed with greater justice to the correct invocations, the efficacious prayers which, according to the ancient faith of the Indians, compelled the G.o.ds to come down to the sacrificial meal, and hear the prayers of men. If man could induce or compel the G.o.ds to obey the will of men, the means by which this operation was attained must of itself be obviously of a divine and supernatural character. Only a divine power can exercise force over the mighty G.o.ds. We saw above how the spirit of fire, which carried the offerings to the sky, was to the Indian the mediator between earth and heaven. But the gifts were accompanied by prayers, and these, according to the idealistic tendencies of the Indians and the opinion of their priests, were the most efficacious part of the sacrifice; in them was contained the elevation of the mind to heaven; and therefore to the Indian the priest was one who offered prayer; and the songs of the Veda lay the greatest weight on ”the holy word,” _i.e._ on the prayer, which with them ”was the chariot which leads to heaven.” Thus a second spirit was placed beside Agni, the bearer of gifts, and this spirit carried prayer into heaven, and was the means by which the priests influenced the G.o.ds, the power which compelled the G.o.ds to listen to them. This spirit is the personification of the cultus, the power of meditation. It lives in the acts of wors.h.i.+p, in the prayers; it is the spirit which in these prayers is the constraining power upon the G.o.ds. In the faith of the Indians the G.o.ds grow by invocations and prayers; this spirit, therefore, gives them vigour and strength, and as he is able to compel the G.o.ds, he must himself be a mighty G.o.d.

This spirit of prayer is a creation of the priestly families, a reflected expression of that power and compulsion which from all antiquity the Indians believed could be exercised upon spirits, and which they attribute to the power of meditation. The name of this deity no less than his abstract nature is a proof of his later origin. He is called Brahmanaspati, _i.e._ lord of prayer. ”Brahmanaspati,” we are told in the Vedas, ”p.r.o.nounces the potent form of prayer, where Indra, Varuna, Mitra, and the G.o.ds have made their dwellings.”[159] The lord of prayer, the leader of songs, the creator of the songs by which the G.o.ds grow, and who gives them power, the ”bright, gold-coloured,” has in reality done the deeds of Indra. ”He has cleft the clouds with his lightning, opened the rich hollow of the mountains (the hidden streams), driven the cows from the mountains, poured forth streams of water, chased away the darkness with his rays, has brought into being the dawn, the clear sky, and fire.”[160] Thus did the priests transfer the achievements of the old G.o.d of storm and battle to their new G.o.d, their own especial protector, whom they now make the possessor of all divine attributes, and the father of G.o.ds. As this spirit was concealed, and lived in the acts of sacrifice, in the priests who offered it, in their prayers and meditations, and, on the other hand, had a power over the G.o.ds, guiding them and compelling them, Brahmanaspati, the spirit of the cultus, the mysterious force, the magic power of the rite, became with the priests the Holy, an impersonal essence, which at last was looked on by the priests as ”Brahman.”[161] It was not with the lightning, but with the Brahman, _i.e._ with the power of the Holy, that Indra burst asunder the cave of Vritra.[162]

In Brahmanaspati the priests found a special G.o.d for their order and vocation; they were also at the same time carried beyond the circle of the ancient G.o.ds, whose forms had sprung up on a basis of natural powers; they had arrived at a transcendental deity emanating from the mysterious secret of their wors.h.i.+p. It was a step further on the same path to resolve Brahmanaspati into Brahman, the Sacred Being.

Nevertheless, even in the latest poems of the Veda, Brahman still coincides with Brahmanaspati, with the power of meditation and prayer.[163] But by degrees, in the eager desire to detach the unity of the divine power from the plurality of divine shapes, and find the one in the other, Brahman is elevated far above this signification; it becomes the ideal union of all that is sacred and divine, and is elevated into the highest divine power. If the Holy nourishes, leads, and constrains the G.o.ds, it is mightier than the G.o.ds, the mightiest deity, and therefore the most divine. If the Holy constrains the G.o.ds, and at the same time gives them power, in it alone the special power of the G.o.ds can rest, in so far as it is in them: the greater the portion they have in it, the mightier are they. The self-concentrated Holy is the mightiest power, the essence of all G.o.ds, the deity itself. Thus the oneness of nature in the G.o.ds, their unity and the connection between them, was discovered. Yet, this Holy, or Brahman, was not in heaven only, but also existed on earth; it lived in the holy acts and in those who performed them; in the ritual and prayer, in meditation and heaven-ward elevation of spirit, in the priests. Thus there stood upon the earth a holy and an unholy world in opposition to each other; the world of the priests and of the laity, the holy order of the priests and the unholy orders of the Kshatriyas, Vaicyas, and cudras.