separation, one branch moving southwards into India. In the Zend-Avesta clear mention is made of this dispute, and although we do not know all the causes which led thereto, we know that religion had much, perhaps most, to do with it.

We saw that the old Aryan faith was an almost pure nature-religion, a worship of the powers which were seen in action around. Out of this there was slowly growing, as the result of man's thought about things and comparison of them with one another, a sense that underneath the many there was the one, and thus he was being led to the highest of all beliefs, that there is one God and none other but He.'

Among the men whom God sends but rarely, charged with this message of His unity, none stand out in purer outline than Zarathustra (commonly spelt, according to the Greek, Zoroaster). To him was given the great work of reforming, as he said, the faith of his country, and of founding a religion which was the grandest of all the Aryan creeds.

He met with bitter opposition from those who clung to the older and grosser faith, but these

were worsted in the struggle; and at last the separation was complete. The tribes who would not accept the new religion had, there is reason for thinking, already crossed the passes of the high mountain-range named the Hindu Kush, and after settling in the Punjab, slowly pushed their way along the valley of the Ganges, spreading themselves in the course of centuries over India.

India is a land of mixed races. There are found among her tangled forests and rugged hills remnants of a savage people whose forefathers were probably the earliest dwellers, makers of the rough stone weapons found in various parts. These were subdued by invaders from the north-west, who were of a race allied to the Finns, Lapps, Mongols, &c., a race which seems to have covered large tracts of country, and to have laid the foundation upon which both the Aryan and Semitic families built their higher culture. They were far above the wild creatures whom they displaced and therefore no mean foes for the Aryans to meet. The many huge erections of stones, in the form of circles, tables, &c., which India contains and which are older than the rock-cut temples of

the Buddhists, are their handiwork. But they had to yield before the greater force and skill of the Aryans, and when caste was established, to take their place in the lowest class; their language, religion and customs being more or less altered.

Up to the time of the entrance of the Aryans into India scarcely a date is at hand to help us, neither does history become much clearer afterwards, since the Hindus have been strangely careless in such a matter; unlike the Egyptians, who put down the time when the smallest events of daily life took place.

We will now pass on to some account of the Vedic faith and the religion which sprang there. from.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ANCIENT AND MODERN HINDU RELIGIONS.

THE religion known as Brahmanism or Hinduism includes at this day the many Hindu sects who differ very much from one another, each having its own form of belief and worship, but all revering the Vedas as the inspired word of God, and numbering together about 120 millions of mankind, or one-tenth of the human race. Some, however, state their number at 150 millions. Unlike the religions founded by Christ, Zoroaster, and Mohammad, the history of Brahmanism does not gather round a person. A lifetime would not compass the study of its sacred books, and it is a religion very hard to explain, indeed we know far less about it than we know about the old Aryan religion of which it is the corrupt offspring. like a mass of shapely and shapeless things huddled together, which no manner of art could arrange into a well-set whole. It is rich with the

It is

profoundest and the saddest thought of a deeply religious people, but teaching that it should be the end of every life to shut its ears to the call of duty, to be unmoved by pleasure or by pain, and to sit down to dreamy thinking, it has caused the Hindus to run into the grossest and most loathsome superstitions, and to obey the most foolish, priest-made rules about food and cleansing and such like things.

This must be the case with every religion which strives to dry up the passions and emotions of men, instead of turning them into channels where they may flow to benefit and bless others.

In tracing the history of Brahmanism, we must begin with some account of the religion of the Aryan Hindus, of which a knowledge is obtained from the Vedas.

The discovery of these ancient scriptures has been an immense gain, for without them we should have remained ignorant of the causes which led to the founding of Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, as well as of the nature of the old Aryan religion and from which the Vedic religion differs but little.