sculpture and architecture can have attained but modest proportions and the purview of religion included neither temples nor images.  India was untroubled by foreign invasions and all classes seem to have been content to let the Kshatriyas look after such internal politics as there were.  Trade too was on a small scale.  Doubtless the Indian was then, as now, a good man of business and the western coast may have been affected by its relations with the Persian Gulf, but Brahmanic civilization was a thing of the Midland and drew no inspiration from abroad.  The best minds were occupied with the leisurely elaboration and discussion of speculative ideas and self-effacement was both practised and preached.

But movement and circulation prevented this calm rustic world from becoming stagnant.  Though roads were few and dangerous, a habit of travel was conspicuous among the religious and intellectual classes.  The Indian is by nature a pilgrim rather than a stationary monk, and we often hear of Brahmans travelling in quest of knowledge alone or in companies, and stopping in rest houses[216].  In the Satapatha Brahmana[217], Uddalaka Aruni is represented as driving about and offering a piece of gold as a prize to those who could defeat him in argument.  Great sacrifices were often made the occasion of these discussions.  We must not think of them as mere religious ceremonies, as a sort of high mass extending over several days.  The fact that they lasted so long and involved operations like building sheds and altars made them unlike our church services and gave opportunities for debate and criticism of what was done.  Such competition and publicity were good for the wits.  The man who cut the best figure in argument was in greatest demand as a sacrificer and obtained the highest fees.  But these stories of prizes and fees emphasize a feature which has characterized the Brahmans from Vedic times to the present day, namely, their shameless love of money.  The severest critic cannot deny them a disinterested taste for intellectual, religious and spiritual things, but their own books often use language which shows them as professional men merely anxious to make a fortune by the altar.  “The sacrifice is twofold,” says the Satapatha Brahmana, “oblations to the gods and gifts to the priests.  With oblations men gratify the gods and with gifts the human gods.  These two kinds of gods when gratified convey the worshipper to the heavenly world[218].”  Without a fee the sacrifice is as dead as the victim.  It is the fee which makes it living and successful[219].

Tradition has preserved the names of many of these acute, argumentative, fee-loving priests, but of few can we form any clear picture.  The most distinguished is Yajnavalkya who, though seen through a mist of myths and trivial stories about the minutiae of ritual, appears as a personality with certain traits that are probably historical.  Many remarks attributed to him are abrupt and scornful and the legend indicates dimly