u, it
would perhaps have continued the contest. But it was partly destroyed by
Turanian invaders and partly amalgamated with them, so that in 500 A.D.
whereas the Brahmans were in race and temperament very much what they
were in 500 B.C. the Kshatriyas were different. It is interesting to see
how this continuity of race brought triumph to the Brahmans in the
theological sphere. At one time the Buddhists and even the Jains seemed
to be competitors for the first place, but there are now hardly any
Indian Buddhists in India[125] and less than a million and a half of
Jains, whereas Hinduism has more than 217 million adherents. The power
of persistence and resistance displayed by the priestly caste is largely
due to the fact that they were householders not collected in temples or
monasteries but distributed over the country in villages, intensely
occupied with the things of the mind and soul, but living a simple
family life. The long succession of invasions which swept over northern
India destroyed temples, broke up monasteries and annihilated dynasties,
but their destructive force had less effect on these communities of
theologians whose influence depended not on institutions or organization
but on their hereditary aptitudes. Though the modern Brahmans are not
pure in race, still the continuity of blood and tradition is greater
among them than in the royal families of India. Many of these belong to
districts which were formerly without the pale of Hinduism: many more
are the descendants of the northern hordes who century after century
invaded India: few can bring forward any good evidence of Kshatriya
descent. Hence in India kings have never attained a national and
representative position like the Emperors of China and Japan or even the
Sultans of Turkey. They were never considered as the high priests of the
land or a quasi-divine epitome of the national qualities: the people
tended to regard them as powerful and almost superhuman beings, but
somewhat divorced from the moral standard and ideals of their subjects.
In early times there was indeed the idea of a universal Emperor, the
Cakravartin, analogous to the Messiah but, by a characteristic turn of
thought, he was thought of less as a deliverer than as a type of
superman, recurring at intervals. But monarchs who even approximated to
this type were rare, and some of the greatest of them were in early ages
Buddhists and in later Mohammedans, so that they had not the support o