s;
this compromise, which makes _Prajapati_, the personal creator of the
world, the manifestation of the impersonal _Brahma_, the universal
self-existent soul, leads to the composite pantheistic system which
forms the characteristic dogma of the Brahmanical period (see BRAHMAN).

In the Vedic hymns two classes of society, the royal (or military) and
the priestly classes, were evidently recognized as being raised above
the level of the _Vis_, or bulk of the Aryan community. These social
grades seem to have been in existence even before the separation of the
two Asiatic branches of the Indo-Germanic race, the Aryans of Iran and
India. It is true that, although the _Athrava, Rathaestao_, and
_Vastrya_ of the _Zend Avesta_ correspond in position and occupation to
the _Brahman, Rajan_ and _Vis_ of the Veda, there is no similarity of
names between them; but this fact only shows that the common vocabulary
had not yet definitely fixed on any specific names for these classes.
Even in the Veda their nomenclature is by no means limited to a single
designation for each of them. Moreover, _Atharvan_ occurs not
infrequently in the hymns as the personification of the priestly
profession, as the proto-priest who is supposed to have obtained fire
from heaven and to have instituted the rite of sacrifice; and although
_ratheshtha_ ("standing on a car") is not actually found in connexion
with the _Rajan_ or _Kshatriya_, its synonym _rathin_ is in later
literature a not unusual epithet of men of the military caste. At the
time of the hymns, and even during the common Indo-Persian period, the
sacrificial ceremonial had already become sufficiently complicated to
call for the creation of a certain number of distinct priestly offices
with special duties attached to them. While this shows clearly that the
position and occupation of the priest were those of a profession, the
fact that the terms _brahmana_ and _brahmaputra_, both denoting "the
son of a brahman," are used in certain hymns as synonyms of _brahman_,
seems to justify the assumption that the profession had already, to a
certain degree, become hereditary at the time when these hymns were
composed. There is, however, with the exception of a solitary passage in
a hymn of the last book, no trace to be found in the _Rigveda_ of that
rigid division into four castes separated from one another by
insurmountable barriers, which in later times constitutes the
distinctive feature of Hindu society