=Caste.=—­In this new society there were no longer, as in the time of the Vedas, poets who chanted hymns to the gods.  The men who know the prayers and the ceremonies are become theologians by profession; the people revere and obey them.  The following is their conception of the structure of society:  the supreme god, Brahma, has produced four kinds of men to each of whom he has assigned a mission.  From his mouth he drew the Brahmans, who are, of course, the theologians; their mission is to study, to teach the hymns, to perform the sacrifices.  The Kchatrias have come from his arms; these are the warriors who are charged with the protection of the people.  The Vaicyas proceed from the thigh; they must raise cattle, till the earth, loan money at interest, and engage in commerce.  The Soudras issue from his foot; their only mission is to serve all the others.

There were already in the Aryan people theologians, warriors, artisans, and below them aborigines reduced to slavery.  These were classes which one could enter and from which one could withdraw.  But the Brahmans determined that every man should be attached to the condition in which he was born, he and his descendants for all time.  The son of a workman could never become a warrior, nor the son of a warrior a theologian.  Thus each is chained to his own state.  Society is divided into four hereditary and closed castes.

=The Unclean.=—­Whoever is not included in one of the four castes is unclean, excluded from society and religion.  The Brahmans reckoned forty-four grades of outcasts; the last and the lowest is that of the pariahs; their very name is an insult.  The outcasts may not practise any honorable trade nor approach other men.  They may possess only dogs and asses, for these are unclean beasts.  “They must have for their clothing the garments of the dead; for plates, broken pots; ornaments of iron; they must be ceaselessly on the move from one place to another.”

=The Brahmans.=—­In the organization of society the Brahmans were assigned the first place.  “Men are the first among intelligent beings; the Brahmans are the first among men.  They are higher than warriors, than kings, even.  As between a Brahman of ten years of age and a Kchatria of one hundred years, the Brahman is to be regarded as the father.”  These are not priests as in Egypt and Chaldea, but only men who know religion, and pass their time in reading and meditating on the sacred books; they live from presents made to them by other men.  To this day they are the dominating class of India.  As they marry only among themselves, better than the other Hindoos they have preserved the Aryan type and have a clearer resemblance to Europeans.