Ancient Indian Bas-relief
CHAPTER IV. BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM
THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF BRAHMANISM
In the vast highlands formed by the conjunction of the great mountain chains of Bolor-Tagh in the northwest of the Himalayas, where, not far from the sources of the Oxus and other great rivers the tableland of Pamir, “the roof of the world,” extends, a well-built nomadic race, possessing the rudiments of civilisation and calling themselves the “excellent” Aryans, in prehistoric times pastured their horses and flocks. Shut off on the north and east by impassable mountains from Central Asia, the country on the west and south was appointed them for the evolution of their natural capacities. When the Aryans, following the inborn wandering instinct of all pastoral races, left their home, one part of them settled in the mountain districts north and west of the Hindu Kush (Paropamisus), which in the Greek writers bore the names of Sogdiana, Bactriana, Hyrcania, and Arachosia; another part went farther, wandered through the southwestern passes of these mountains, and took possession of the rich, fertile country on the banks of the Indus (Sindh). The former, called the Iranians, or according to their sacred language, the Zend people, evolved in time the state of culture which their conquerors—the Medes and Persians—adopted from them. The latter, called among the other nations of the ancient world, Indians or Hindus, after the principal river of their land, became the creators of that perfected system of religion, of those peculiar political and legal forms, and of that Sanskrit literature, which we still admire in its remains and traditions.
The aborigines, dark-skinned races, of rude customs and wild mode of life, were partly exterminated or pushed back into the forests by the Aryan immigrants, partly subjugated and reduced to the condition of servitude and slavery, and in this way an impassable barrier was erected between the two races.
The deep contempt with which the conquerors looked down upon the conquered increased in the Indian consciousness that self-satisfied conceit which led the Brahmans to consider all people who spoke another language, or who were under other laws, as barbarians, called by them Mlechcha (i.e., weak), with whom they must avoid all intermixture and all social intercourse.
There is no trustworthy historical information of antiquity to throw light on the development and gradual evolution of the culture of the Aryans, and so until the chronicles and legends of the Buddhists in the sixth and fifth and the records of the Greeks in the fourth and third centuries, it can only be gathered from a few traces and analogies. The Brahmans had not the slightest interest in records; on the other hand they endeavoured to blot out all recollection of earlier times and other conditions, so that the conditions and views which developed later might appear to the people as the original ones. So the chronological order of the accounts, derived from the national poems and religious writings, is necessarily so very deficient and intermittent that the more ancient periods can only be surmised.