support the secular authority.  As a result of this alliance, kings and the upper classes generally profess and protect orthodoxy, and revolutionary movements in religion generally come from below.  But in ancient India though the priests were glad enough to side with the kings, the nobles during many centuries were not ready to give up thinking for themselves.  The Hindu’s capacity for veneration and the small inclination of the Brahmans to exercise direct government prevented revolts against sacerdotal tyranny from assuming the proportions we should expect, but whereas in many countries history records the attempts of priests to become kings, the position is here reversed.  The national proclivity towards all that is religious, metaphysical, intellectual and speculative made all agree in regarding the man of knowledge who has the secret of intercourse with the other world as the highest type.  The priests tended to become a hereditary guild possessed of a secret professional knowledge.  The warrior caste disputed this monopoly and sought with less learning but not inferior vigour to obtain the same powers.  They had some success during a considerable period, for Buddhism, Jainism and other sects all had their origin in the military aristocracy and had it remained purely Hindu, it would perhaps have continued the contest.  But it was partly destroyed by Turanian invaders and partly amalgamated with them, so that in 500 A.D. whereas the Brahmans were in race and temperament very much what they were in 500 B.C. the Kshatriyas were different.  It is interesting to see how this continuity of race brought triumph to the Brahmans in the theological sphere.  At one time the Buddhists and even the Jains seemed to be competitors for the first place, but there are now hardly any Indian Buddhists in India[125] and less than a million and a half of Jains, whereas Hinduism has more than 217 million adherents.  The power of persistence and resistance displayed by the priestly caste is largely due to the fact that they were householders not collected in temples or monasteries but distributed over the country in villages, intensely occupied with the things of the mind and soul, but living a simple family life.  The long succession of invasions which swept over northern India destroyed temples, broke up monasteries and annihilated dynasties, but their destructive force had less effect on these communities of theologians whose influence depended not on institutions or organization but on their hereditary aptitudes.  Though the modern Brahmans are not pure in race, still the continuity of blood and tradition is greater among them than in the royal families of India.  Many of these belong to districts which were formerly without the pale of Hinduism:  many more are the descendants of the northern hordes who century after century invaded India:  few can bring forward any good evidence of Kshatriya descent.  Hence in India kings have never attained a national and representative position