The Brahmans or priests claimed the highest rank.  But they seemed to have had a long struggle with the Kchatryas, or warrior caste, before they won their proud position at the head of the Indian people.  They afterward secured themselves in that position by teaching that it had been given to them by God.  At the beginning of the world, they said, the Brahman proceeded from the mouth of the Creator, the Kchatryas or Rajput from his arms, the Vaisya from his thighs or belly, and the Sudra from his feet.  This legend is true so far that the Brahmans were really the brain power of the Indian people, the Kchatryas its armed hands, the Vaisyas the food-growers, and the Sudras the down-trodden serfs.  When the Brahmans had established their power, they made a wise use of it.  From the ancient Vedic times they recognized that if they were to exercise spiritual supremacy, they must renounce earthly pomp.  In arrogating the priestly function, they gave up all claim to the royal office.  They were divinely appointed to be the guides of nations and the counsellors of kings, but they could not be kings themselves.  As the duty of the Sudra was to serve, of the Vaisya to till the ground and follow middle-class trades or crafts; so the business of the Kchatryas was to fight the public enemy, and of the Brahman to propitiate the national gods.

Each day brought to the Brahmans its routine of ceremonies, studies, and duties.  Their whole life was mapped out into four clearly defined stages of discipline.  For their existence, in its full religious significance, commenced not at birth, but on being invested at the close of childhood with the sacred thread of the Twice-born.  Their youth and early manhood were to be entirely spent in learning the Veda by heart from an older Brahman, tending the sacred fire, and serving their preceptor.  Having completed his long studies, the young Brahman entered on the second stage of his life, as a householder.  He married, and commenced a course of family duties.  When he had reared a family, and gained a practical knowledge of the world, he retired into the forest as a recluse, for the third period of his life; feeding on roots or fruits, practising his religious duties with increased devotion.  The fourth stage was that of the ascetic or religious mendicant, wholly withdrawn from earthly affairs, and striving to attain a condition of mind which, heedless of the joys, or pains, or wants of the body, is intent only on its final absorption into the deity.  The Brahman, in this fourth stage of his life, ate nothing but what was given to him unasked, and abode not more than one day in any village, lest the vanities of the world should find entrance into his heart.  This was the ideal life prescribed for a Brahman, and ancient Indian literature shows that it was to a large extent practically carried out.  Throughout his whole existence the true Brahman practised a strict temperance; drinking no wine, using a simple diet, curbing the desires; shut off from the tumults of war, as his business was to pray, not to fight, and having his thoughts ever fixed on study and contemplation.  “What is this world?” says a Brahman sage.  “It is even as the bough of a tree, on which a bird rests for a night, and in the morning flies away.”