In the course of ages differences and distinctions have gradually grown up amongst them, and they have split up into innumerable septs and sub-castes.  As they multiplied from generation to generation an increasing proportion were compelled to supplement the avocations originally sacred to their caste by other and lowlier means of livelihood.  There are to-day over 14 million Brahmans in India, and a very large majority of them have been compelled to adopt agricultural, military, and mercantile pursuits which, as we know from the Code of Manu were already regarded as, in certain circumstances, legitimate or excusable for a Brahman even in the days of that ancient law-giver.  In regard to all other castes, however, the Brahman, humble as his worldly status may be, retains an undisputed pre-eminence which he never forgets or allows to be forgotten, though it may only be a pale reflection of the prestige and authority of his more exalted caste-men—­a prestige and authority, be it added, which have often been justified by individual achievements.  How far the influence of Brahmanism as a system has been socially a good or an evil influence I am not concerned to discuss, but, however antagonistic it may be at the present moment to the influence of Western civilization, it would be unfair to deny that it has shown itself and still shows itself capable of producing a very high type both of intellect and of character.  Nor could it otherwise have survived as it has the vicissitudes of centuries.

Neither the triumph of Buddhism, which lasted for nearly 500 years, nor successive waves of Mahomedan conquest availed to destroy the power of Brahmanism, nor has it been broken by British supremacy.  Inflexibly as he dominates a social system in all essentials more rigid than any other, the Brahman has not only recognised the need of a certain plasticity in its construction which allows for constant expansion, but he has himself shown unfailing adaptability in all non-essentials to varying circumstances.  To the requirements of their new Western masters the Brahmans adapted themselves from the first with admirable suppleness, and when a Western system of education was introduced into India in the first half of the last century, they were quicker than any other class to realize how it could be used to fortify their own position.  The main original object of the introduction of Western education into India was the training of a sufficient number of young Indians to fill the subordinate posts in the public offices with English-speaking natives.  The Brahmans responded freely to the call, and they soon acquired almost the same monopoly of the new Western learning as they had enjoyed of Hindu lore through the centuries.  With the development of the great administrative services, with the substitution of English for the vernacular tongues as the only official language, with the remodelling of judicial administration and procedure on British lines, with the growth of the liberal professions and of the Press, their influence constantly found new fields of activity, whilst through the old traditional channels it continued to permeate those strata of Hindu society with which the West had established little or no contact.