Such were the truths uttered on the banks of the Ganges one thousand years before Christ.  But with these views there is an exaltation of the Brahmanical or sacerdotal life, hard to be distinguished from the recognition of divine qualities.  “From his high birth,” says Menu, “a Brahman is an object of veneration, even to deities.”  Hence, great things are expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the Vedas; he is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors.  A Brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into the divine essence.  This was the early creed of the Brahman before corruption set in.  And in these things we see a striking resemblance to the doctrines of Buddha.  Had there been no corruption of Brahmanism, there would have been no Buddhism; for the principles of Buddhism, were those of early Brahmanism.

But Brahmanism became corrupted.  Like the Mosaic Law, under the sedulous care of the sacerdotal orders it ripened into a most burdensome ritualism.  The Brahmanical caste became tyrannical, exacting, and oppressive.  With the supposed sacredness of his person, and with the laws made in his favor, the Brahman became intolerable to the people, who were ground down by sacrifices, expiatory offerings, and wearisome and minute ceremonies of worship.  Caste destroyed all ideas of human brotherhood; it robbed the soul of its affections and its aspirations.  Like the Pharisees in the time of Jesus, the Brahmans became oppressors of the people.  As in Pagan Egypt and in Christian mediaeval Europe, the priests held the keys of heaven and hell; their power was more than Druidical.

But the Brahman, when true to the laws of Menu, led in one sense a lofty life.  Nor can we despise a religion which recognized the value and immortality of the soul, a state of future rewards and punishments, though its worship was encumbered by rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.  It was spiritual in its essential peculiarities, having reference to another world rather than to this, which is more than we can say of the religion of the Greeks; it was not worldly in its ends, seeking to save the soul rather than to pamper the body; it had aspirations after a higher life; it was profoundly reverential, recognizing a supreme intelligence and power, indefinitely indeed, but sincerely,—­not an incarnated deity like the Zeus of the Greeks, but an infinite Spirit, pervading the universe.  The pantheism of the Brahmans was better than the godless materialism of the Chinese.  It aspired to rise to a knowledge of God as the supremest wisdom and grandest attainment of mortal man.  It made too much of sacrifices; but sacrifices were common to all the ancient religions except the Persian.

     “He who through knowledge or religious acts
     Henceforth attains to immortality,
     Shall first present his body, Death, to thee.”