ns, warriors,
artisans, and below them aborigines reduced to slavery. These were
classes which one could enter and from which one could withdraw. But
the Brahmans determined that every man should be attached to the
condition in which he was born, he and his descendants for all time.
The son of a workman could never become a warrior, nor the son of a
warrior a theologian. Thus each is chained to his own state. Society
is divided into four hereditary and closed castes.

=The Unclean.=--Whoever is not included in one of the four castes is
unclean, excluded from society and religion. The Brahmans reckoned
forty-four grades of outcasts; the last and the lowest is that of the
pariahs; their very name is an insult. The outcasts may not practise
any honorable trade nor approach other men. They may possess only dogs
and asses, for these are unclean beasts. "They must have for their
clothing the garments of the dead; for plates, broken pots; ornaments
of iron; they must be ceaselessly on the move from one place to
another."

=The Brahmans.=--In the organization of society the Brahmans were
assigned the first place. "Men are the first among intelligent beings;
the Brahmans are the first among men. They are higher than warriors,
than kings, even. As between a Brahman of ten years of age and a
Kchatria of one hundred years, the Brahman is to be regarded as the
father." These are not priests as in Egypt and Chaldea, but only men
who know religion, and pass their time in reading and meditating on
the sacred books; they live from presents made to them by other men.
To this day they are the dominating class of India. As they marry only
among themselves, better than the other Hindoos they have preserved
the Aryan type and have a clearer resemblance to Europeans.

=The New Religion of Brahma.=--The Brahmans did not discard the
ancient gods of the Vedas, they continued to adore them. But by sheer
ingenuity they invented a new god. When prayers are addressed to the
gods, the deities are made to comply with the demands made on them, as
if they thought that prayer was more powerful than the gods. And so
prayer (Brahma) has become the highest of all deities. He is invoked
with awe:[24] "O god, I behold in thy body all the gods and the
multitudes of living beings. I am powerless to regard thee in thine
entirety, for thou shinest like the fire and the sun in thine
immensity. Thou art the Invisible, thou art the supreme Intelligence,
thou art