it were. The ministrants
increased in number, and thus sprang up the powerful priestly
caste.

[Footnote 23: Translated from the French by Chauncey C.
Starkweather.]

Then the warrior class arose and grew strong in numbers and power,
becoming differentiated from the agriculturists, and forming the
military caste. The husbandmen drifted into another caste, and the
three orders were rigidly separated by a cessation of
intermarriage.

At the bottom came the Sudras, or slave bands, the servile dregs of
the population. In course of time, from various influences, the
third class became almost eliminated in many provinces. From the
cradle to the grave these cruel barriers still intervene between
the strata of the people, relentless as fate and insurmountable as
death.

GUSTAVE LE BON

In ancient times the power of kings [in India] was only nominal. In the
Aryan village, forming a little republic, the chief, bearing the name of
rajah, was secure in his fortress, exercising full sway. Such was the
political system prevailing in India through all the ages, and which has
always been respected by the conquerors, whoever they might be. So, for
so many centuries back we see arise the first elements of an
organization which still endures.

We find here also the beginnings of that system of castes, which, at
first indistinct and floating, when the classes sought only to be
distinguished from each other, was to become so rigid, when it was
constituted under the influence of ethnological reasons, as to dig
fathomless abysses between the races.

In the Vedas may be traced the progression of the distance between the
priests and the warriors, at first slight, and then increasing more and
more. The division of functions did not stop there. While the
sacrificing priest was consecrating himself more exclusively day by day
to the accomplishment of the sacred rites and to the composition of
hymns; while the warrior passed his days in adventurous expeditions or
daring feats, what would have become of the land and what would it have
produced if others had not applied themselves without ceasing, to
cultivate it? A third class became distinct, the agriculturists.

In one of the last hymns of Rig Veda these three classes appear,
absolutely separated and already designated by the three words Brahmans,
Kchatryas, Vaisyas.

The fourth class, that of the Sudras, wa