ts, exalted themselves
into the Brahman caste. But in the Vedic age gifts of prayer and poetry
alone marked out the purohitas, or men put forward to mediate between
gods and mortals. Compare Ludwig, iii. 221.

Thus it is self-evident that the society in which the Vedic poets lived
was so far from being PRIMITIVE that it was even superior to the higher
barbarisms (such as that of the Scythians of Herodotus and Germans of
Tacitus), and might be regarded as safely arrived at the threshold of
civilisation. Society possessed kings, though they may have been kings
of small communities, like those who warred with Joshua or fought under
the walls of Thebes or Troy. Poets were better paid than they seem to
have been at the courts of Homer or are at the present time. For the
tribal festivals special priests were appointed, "who distinguished
themselves by their comprehensive knowledge of the requisite rites
and by their learning, and amongst whom a sort of rivalry is gradually
developed, according as one tribe or another is supposed to have more or
less prospered by its sacrifices".(1) In the family marriage is sacred,
and traces of polyandry and of the levirate, surviving as late as the
epic poems, were regarded as things that need to be explained away.
Perhaps the most barbaric feature in Vedic society, the most singular
relic of a distant past, is the survival, even in a modified and
symbolic form, of human sacrifice.(2)

(1) Weber, p. 37.

(2) Wilson, Rig-Veda, i. p. 59-63; Muir, i. ii.; Wilson, Rig-Veda i. p.
xxiv., ii. 8 (ii. 90); Aitareya Brahmana, Haug's version, vol. ii. pp.
462, 469.

As to the religious condition of the Vedic Aryans, we must steadily
remember that in the Vedas we have the views of the Rishis only, that
is, of sacred poets on their way to becoming a sacred caste. Necessarily
they no more represent the POPULAR creeds than the psalmists and
prophets, with their lofty monotheistic morality, represent the popular
creeds of Israel. The faith of the Rishis, as will be shown later, like
that of the psalmists, has a noble moral aspect. Yet certain elements of
this higher creed are already found in the faiths of the lowest savages.
The Rishis probably did not actually INVENT them. Consciousness of sin,
of imperfection in the sight of divine beings, has been developed (as
it has even in Australia) and is often confessed. But on the whole
the religion of the Rishis is practical--it might almost be said,