in trafficking with
merchandise, and others stout in fight, whether with arrows, or hand to
hand with swords.

"There is also among them a pre-eminent race called Gymnosophists.

"These I exceedingly admire, for they are men skilled not in propagating
the vine, nor in grafting trees, nor in tilling the ground. They know
not how to cultivate the fields, nor to wash gold, or to break horses,
or to shear or feed sheep or goats.

"What is it, then, they know? One thing instead of all these. They
_cultivate wisdom_, both the aged professors and the young students.
Nothing do I so much admire in them as that they hate torpor of mind and
sloth."

This does not look as if the Indians had been unknown or unappreciated
in the second century A.D.

Apuleius is not alone in his respect for the Brahmins. Many of the Greek
writers speak of them under the names of Brahmins or Gymnosophists, but
always with great respect.

Strabo states, on the authority of Megasthenes (who it will be
remembered was Ambassador from Persia, and lived for some years at
Palibothra, about 307 B.C.), that "there were two classes of
philosophers or priests, the Brachmanes and the Germanes, but the
Brachmanes are best esteemed." Towards the close of his account of the
"Brachmanes" he says:--

"In many things they agree with the Greeks, for they affirm that the
world was produced, and is perishable, and that it is spherical; that
God, governing it as well as framing it, pervades the whole; that the
principles of all things are various, but water is the principle of the
construction of the world; that besides the four elements there is a
fifth, nature--whence heaven and the stars; that the earth is placed in
the centre of all.

"Such, and many other things are affirmed of reproduction and of the
soul. Like Plato, they devise fables concerning the immortality of the
soul, and the judgment in the infernal regions, and other similar
notions. These things are said of the Brachmanes."

Clemens Alexandrinus, after saying that philosophy flourished in ancient
times amongst the barbarians, and afterwards was introduced amongst the
Greeks, instances the prophets of the Egyptians, the Chaldees of the
Assyrians, the Druids of the Gauls (Galatae), the Samauaeans of the
Bactrians, the philosophers of the Celts, the Magi of the Persians, and
the Gymnosophists of the Indians. The Greek authors distinctly speak of
the Brahmins as the chief of the castes or division