and Shiva, and of the
latter Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. The former are worshiped as the
creating, preserving and destroying powers, and from these three all the
others have originated; at first considered as representatives of
certain attributes and principals of the three chief deities, but later
as independent, individual deities. Many of these gods are represented
by images and pictures, which originally the whole people, but at
present only the learned, regard merely as representations of certain
divine principals and attributes. Later on these were put in the place
of the things which they represented, so that the stone image, the
river, the tree, or the animal is regarded as the god himself by the
ignorant multitude.

"According to the Hindoo doctrine of creation the earth rests on the
back of a tortoise, and the human race was originally created members of
four different classes or castes. Thus the class or caste distinction of
India is closely incorporated with its religion, and shows that the
priests have been very shrewd in founding a religious system which
secured for themselves not only salvation after death, but, above all,
an abundance of the good things of this world. Brahma was from the
beginning, and from him emanated Vishnu and Shiva. Thereafter Brahma
created first water, then the earth, then from out of his head a man who
was the _Brahmin_, and became the chief of the caste of priests, or the
highest class. After this he let a _Kshatriya_ issue from out of his
arms, a _Vaisya_ from his loins and a _Sudra_ from his feet, and which
became respectively the progenitors of the three other castes, the
warriors, the craftsmen and merchants, and the common laborers. These
castes have gradually been divided into many subdivisions, but the four
principal ones still remain with all their rigid distinctions. Through
certain misdemeanors, which may be very insignificant, a person
belonging to a higher may be degraded to a lower caste, but one of a
lower caste can never rise to a higher, not even by the most meritorious
achievements."

Of all the cruel chains by which tyrants have fettered men, none has
been a more formidable enemy of liberty or a greater impediment to human
progress than this dreadful system of caste. It has stifled all noble
efforts, all brotherly love and humane feelings; it has plunged the
people into superstition, indifference and ignorance; it has doomed
ninety-nine hundredths of the m