eginning of
kingship and religious service, a division among the Aryans into
royalty, priests, and people, i.e., whoever were not acting as priests
or chieftains. When the people becomes agricultural, the difference
tends to become permanent, and a caste system begins. Now, the Vedic
Aryans appear in history at just the period when they are on the move
southwards into India; but they are no irrupting host. The battles led
the warriors on, but the folk, as a folk, moved slowly, not all
abandoning the country which they had gained, but settling there, and
sending onwards only a part of the people. There was no fixed line of
demarcation between the classes. The king or another might act as his
own priest--yet were there priestly families. The cow-boys might
fight--yet were there those of the people that were especially
'kingsmen,' _r[=a]janyas_, and these were, already, practically a
class, if not a caste[6]. These natural and necessary social
divisions, which in early times were anything but rigid, soon formed
inviolable groups, and then the caste system was complete. In the
perfected legal scheme what was usage becomes duty. The warrior may
not be a public priest; the priest may not serve as warrior or
husbandman. The farmer 'people' were the result of eliminating first
the priestly, and then the fighting factors from the whole body
politic. But these castes were all Aryans, and as such distinguished
most sharply, from a religious point of view, from the "fourth caste";
whereas among themselves they were, in religion, equals. But they were
practically divided by interests that strongly affected the
development of their original litanies. For both priest and warrior
looked down on the 'people,' but priest and warrior feared and
respected each other. To these the third estate was necessary as a
base of supplies, and together they guarded it from foes divine and
mortal. But to each other they were necessary for wealth and glory,
respectively. So it was that even in the earliest period the religious
litany, to a great extent, is the book of worship of a warrior-class
as prepared for it by the priest. Priest and king--these are the main
factors in the making of the hymns of the Rig Veda, and the gods
lauded are chiefly the gods patronized by these classes. The third
estate had its favorite gods, but these were little regarded, and were
in a state of decadence. The slaves, too, may have had their own gods,
but of these nothing