ions and additions, the heroes Krishna and Rama
appear as types of courage and self-sacrifice, and not, as later, as
avatars, or human incarnations, of the deity.

_b. Brahminism._

When the nomadic and warlike life of the nations of India in the land of
the seven rivers, in connection with their removal to the conquered land
of the Ganges (1300 B.C.), gave place to a more ordered social
constitution, a priestly class formed itself, which began to represent
the people before the deity, and from its chief function, _Brahma_, or
prayer, took the name of _Brahmins_, i.e., the praying. This Brahma,
before whose power even the gods must yield, was gradually exalted by
the Brahmins to the highest deity, to whom, under the name of Brahma,
the old Veda divinities were subordinated. Brahma is no god of the
people, but a god of the priests; not the lord of nature, but the
abstract and impersonal _Being_, out of whom nature and her phenomena
emanate. From Brahma the priest derives his authority; and the system of
caste, by which the priesthood is raised to the first rank, its origin.
The worship of Brahma consists in doing penance and in abstinence. Yama,
once a celestial divinity, now becomes the god of the lower world, where
he who disobeys Brahma is tormented after death. Immortality consists in
returning to Brahma; but is the portion only of the perfectly godly
Brahmin, while the rest of mankind can rise to this perfect state only
after many painful new births. The Brahmin, in the exclusive possession
of religious knowledge, reads and expounds the Vedas (knowledge),
exalted to infallible scripture, and on them constructs his doctrine.

Thus the once vigorous, natural life of the Indians gave place to a
conception of the world which repressed the soul, and annihilated man's
personality. The many-sidedness of the earlier theology resolved itself
into the abstract unity of an impersonal All, and thus the glory of
nature passed by unmarked, as nought or non-existent, and lost its
charm. At the same time, the old heroic sagas were displaced by legends
of saints, and the heroic spirit of the olden epic by an asceticism
which repressed the human, and before whose power even the gods stood in
awe. With Brahminism the religion lost its original and natural
character, and became characterized by a slavish submission to a
priesthood, which abrogated the truly human.

_c. The Speculative Systems._

The doctrine of the Brahmins oc