mountains, with a beautiful climate
and a sunny sky. These Aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal
inhabitants, who were chiefly Mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading
vassalage. The conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though
not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes
of Indian caste.

It was some time after the settlement of the Aryans on the banks of the
Indus and the Ganges before the Vedas were composed by the poets, who as
usual gave form to religious belief, as they did in Persia and Greece.
These poems, or hymns, are pantheistic. "There is no recognition," says
Monier Williams, "of a Supreme God disconnected with the worship of
Nature." There was a vague and indefinite worship of the Infinite under
various names, such as the sun, the sky, the air, the dawn, the winds,
the storms, the waters, the rivers, which alike charmed and terrified,
and seemed to be instinct with life and power. God was in all things,
and all things in God; but there was no idea of providential agency or
of personality.

In the Vedic hymns the number of gods is not numerous, only
thirty-three. The chief of these were Varuna, the sky; Mitra, the sun;
and Indra, the storm: after these, Agni, fire; and Soma, the moon. The
worship of these divinities was originally simple, consisting of prayer,
praise, and offerings. There were no temples and no imposing
sacerdotalism, although the priests were numerous. "The prayers and
praises describe the wisdom, power, and goodness of the deity
addressed," [3] and when the customary offerings had been made, the
worshipper prayed for food, life, health, posterity, wealth, protection,
happiness, whatever the object was,--generally for outward prosperity
rather than for improvement in character, or for forgiveness of sin,
peace of mind, or power to resist temptation. The offerings to the gods
were propitiatory, in the form of victims, or libations of some juice.
Nor did these early Hindus take much thought of a future life. There is
nothing in the Rig-Veda of a belief in the transmigration of souls[4],
although the Vedic bards seem to have had some hope of immortality. "He
who gives alms," says one poet, "goes to the highest place in heaven: he
goes to the gods[5].... Where there is eternal light, in the world where
the sun is placed,--in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O
Soma! ... Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasur