wait three years after she is marriageable, but after this period she may choose a husband of equal caste as herself."

The following quotations from the code will be sufficient to throw light upon the position of women and the relations of the castes to each other. Manu, v, 147-149: "A maiden, a young woman, a matron, must do nothing according to her own pleasure, even in her own house. In childhood a maiden ought to depend on her father, in youth on her husband; her husband being dead, on her sons. If she have no sons, she must be dependent upon the kinsmen of her husband; if he left no kinsmen, on the kinsmen of her father; if she have no paternal kinsmen, on the rajah. A woman must never seek to be independent. She must never try to separate herself from her father, her husband, or her sons, for by such a separation she would expose both her father's family and her husband's family to contempt." Manu, v, 154: "Although the conduct of her husband be blamable, and he indulge in other loves and be devoid of good qualities, a virtuous woman ought to continually revere him as a god. A virtuous woman, who desires to obtain the same abode of happiness as her husband, ought never to do any thing that would displease him, either during his life or after his death. Let her weaken her body voluntarily by living on flowers, roots, and pure fruits; but after having lost her husband, she must not pronounce even the name of another man." Manu, i, 93: "By his origin, which he takes from the noblest member as he is the first-born, as he possesses the Veda, the Brahman is by right the lord of the whole creation." Manu, ix, 319: "Even when the Brahmans indulge in all kinds of base occupations, they must constantly be honored, for they have in them something pre-eminently divine." Manu, ix, 322: "The Kshatriyas cannot prosper without the Brahmans, the Brahmans cannot rise without the Kshatriyas; by co-operation with each other the priestly and military class rise in this world and in the other."

In addition to the passages just quoted many others might be given of a like tenor, all of them indicating that the brahmanical hierarchy, with its castes and their insurmountable barriers, was firmly established at the time of the promulgation of the law. Thus a narrow theocratic despotism had taken the place of the former free Vedic state; the opening scenes of the

latter passed, as we have seen, in the land of the seven rivers at a time when the Sarasvati still flowed into the Indus, long before the triad of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the doctrine of transmigration, and the system of castes, had been introduced. It was a time when the joyous Svayamvara flourished in its primitive character, and long before the horror of the burning of widows had come into existence, a practice unknown even in the code of Manu.

As the Brahmans appeal in all things to the Veda as the source of their doctrines and customs, they likewise assert that the system of castes is based on Vedic authority. Yet there is absolutely nothing in the earlier hymns of the Rig-Veda which would justify such an assumption, and, therefore, even the Brahmans must admit that the institution of castes can at least not be referred to the highest antiquity of India. Indeed, they might raise the objection that although the earlier portion of the Rig-Veda contains no allusions to castes, the latter may nevertheless have existed at that time; but then the argumentum a silentio seems to be fairly applied here, as the whole character of the Vedic age is irreconcilable with the institution of castes. On the other hand, it is true that references to the castes are found in the other portions of the sacred Hindu literature, especially in one of the later hymns of the Rig-Veda, as also in the Atharva-Veda and in the Brahmanas, or the canonical expositions of the four Vedas, the Rig-Veda, SámáVeda, Yajur-Veda, and Atharva-Veda, which all together are comprised under the collective term of "The Veda." Yet the more recent portion of the Rig-Veda and the three other Vedas, with the Brahmanas, belong to an age subsequent to the first era of Indian antiquity, when either the caste system began to be introduced or was already fully established.

The earliest account of the origin of caste appears in the socalled Purusha Sûhta or the hymn to Purusha, (the supreme spirit,) the ninetieth of the tenth book of the Rig-Veda, belonging to the later portion of that collection. It is related there that the Brahman was the mouth of the deity, the Rajanya (Kshatriya) was made his arms, the Vaiçya his thighs, and the Cûdra sprang from his feet. Apart from the Cûdras, who naturally stood from the beginning in a position inferior to that of the Aryan Hindus, the allegorical language of the hymn simply

refers to the mutual relations of the different classes toward each other; it seems to mark the transition period from the earlier institutions to the approaching introduction of the caste system, and it is certainly still very far from implying those doctrines and customs that have been deduced from it in later times. In the code of Manu the figurative meaning of the hymn is altogether distorted, and the Brahman is set up as the supreme lord of the whole creation. The accounts given by Hindu authors in regard to the origin of caste are, upon the whole, very unsatisfactory. They are mostly mythical and inconsistent with each other, especially in post-vedic works, as the Mahabharata, Râmâyana, and the Purânas. Some accounts agree with that of the Purusha Sûkta, and are probably borrowed from it; among the rest we notice one passage from the Mahâbhârate as particularly remarkable. It affirms explicitly that there were originally no castes, and that the distinction between the different classes of the community has afterward arisen from differences of character and occupation.

It is not surprising that the change from the earlier Vedic institutions to the later brahmanical hierarchy was accompanied and partly caused by a corresponding transformation of the whole system of worship; in fact, the ancient Vedic gods had gradually lost their hold upon the people, and came to be subordinate to a new dynasty of deities. Thus, although the Brahmans continued to appeal to the Veda as the foundation of their religion, the practical worship of the Hindus had become foreign in character and tenor to that enjoined by Vedic authority. The triad of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva was entirely unknown during the Vedic age. Vishnu is the only one of these three great gods of the later era who was also worshiped in the Rig-Veda, yet the position he held there does not necessarily suggest any thing which would indicate the prominent place he was afterward to occupy. The peculiar trait of Vishnu in the Veda is found in his famous three strides, signifying the rising, culmination, and setting of the sun. It is true there are also hymns in which a higher character is ascribed to him, and from one passage (R. V., vii, 99, 2) we might infer that he was considered the chief of all the gods. Yet there are but few passages where Vishnu is exclusively and particularly wor

shiped in comparison with the great number of hymns addressed to Indra and other gods, and which ascribe to them likewise the highest attributes. In fact, each individual god was in the imagination of the worshiper for the time being the god, the supreme ruler, before whom the other deities disappeared. The process by which Vishnu attained the prominent position he has held in the mind of the Hindus for centuries is not quite clear, while the history of Siva is still more obscure. The artificial link to connect Vishnu and Siva, and in some way to unite the adherents of both, is Brahma, the mere product of later metaphysical speculation.

It is hardly necessary to say that the system of castes became greatly disturbed by the convulsions that agitated the Indian State for centuries. At first it was the rising of Buddhism, the national revolution against brahmanical despotism; then, after the overthrow of the new religion, the revival of Brahmanism; and later, the Mohammedan invasions, which, in connection with the intermarriages between the different castes, greatly modified the ancient order. Thus the division of the people into four castes has long been only theoretical. With the exception of the Brahmans, most of the old pure castes have been extinct for a long time, and at present there are about as many castes as there are different trades and professions.

ART. IV. THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD: ITS ORIGIN.* THE persistent efforts of the human mind to interpret the volume of nature is no more to be discouraged than the like persistent effort to discover the meaning of the volume of inspiration. Truths are precious, not because they were found in the one volume or the other, but because they are truths.

*The System of the World. Newton.- -The System of the World. Laplace.The Nebular Hypothesis and Modern Genesis. Rev. S. Parsons, in Methodist Quarterly Review.- ·Outlines of Astronomy. Sir John Herschel. Popular Astronomy. F. Arago.-Experimental and Theoretical Researches on the Figures of a Liquid Mass withdrawn from the Action of Gravity. J. Plateau.- Recent Researches on the Secular Variations of the Planetary Orbits. John N. Stockwell, in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.Sketches of Creation. Alexander Winchell, LL.D.

If one truth is more precious than another it must be because of its relation to human conduct as affecting human welfare. Truths of nature and truths of revelation may be submitted alike to this criterion.

Does it matter whether we know that "In the beginning God created the world" or not? If this be a truth it is a fundamental truth. Accepted, it will inevitably give color to every department of human science, making all science theistic. Especially it suggests as a corollary that all things are related to each other according to the plan of the one intelligent Creator. Also, that all laws put upon matter, upon worlds, upon organisms, upon mind, upon intelligent moral agents, are laws having the seal of his authority. In the department of moral government it will also follow that law is something more than an established order of antecedence and sequence-something more than the relation of cause and effect; a prescription to be followed by the free volition of a responsible agent. If, on the other hand, it be truth that matter, motion, and force are the eternal trinity, this also is a fundamental truth, and it will give color to all science, making it materialistic and atheistic.

The theory of evolution is advocated with equal zeal by partisans of theistic and atheistic ideas. To the former the divine wisdom is magnified by the conception of evolution. To the latter the conception of evolution is consistent only with the postulate of eternal matter, motion, and force, and the presumption of a divine original is summarily disposed of as a superstition of very low pedigree. Hence, in modern atheistic essays and discourses there is much stress laid on the doctrine of evolution as fundamental truth. These opposite conceptions are well illustrated by the opposite conclusions of the two greatest mathematicians of their respective times. Newton viewed the mechanism of the world and exclaimed, "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being!" Laplace looked upon the same mechanism and declared, "I have no need of such an hypothesis."

The Nebular Hypothesis.-In the theory of evolution there is necessarily an hypothetical beginning; not, indeed, of matter or of force, but of the evolutionary processes. Matter is supFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXIX.-41