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unity (among the Persians the same division of priest, warrior and husbandman obtains), but, in all probability, they are much older. For so long as there is a cult, even if it be of spirits and devils, there are priests; and if there are chieftains there is a nobility, such as one finds among the Teutons, nay, even among the American Indians, where also is known the inevitable division into priests, chiefs and commons, sometimes hereditary, sometimes not. There must have been, then, from the beginning of kingship and religious service, a division among the Aryans into royalty, priests, and people, i.e., whoever were not acting as priests or chieftains. When the people becomes agricultural, the difference tends to become permanent, and a caste system begins. Now, the Vedic Aryans appear in history at just the period when they are on the move southwards into India; but they are no irrupting host. The battles led the warriors on, but the folk, as a folk, moved slowly, not all abandoning the country which they had gained, but settling there, and sending onwards only a part of the people. There was no fixed line of demarcation between the classes. The king or another might act as his own priest—yet were there priestly families. The cow-boys might fight-yet were there those of the people that were especially 'kingsmen,' r[=ajanyas, and these were already, practically a class, if not a caste[6]. These natural and necessary social divisions, which in early times were anything but rigid, soon formed inviolable groups, and then the caste system was complete. In the perfected legal scheme what was usage becomes duty. The warrior may not be a public priest; the priest may not serve as warrior or husbandman. The farmer 'people' were the result of eliminating first the priestly, and then the fighting factors from the whole body politic. But these castes were all Aryans, and as such distinguished most sharply, from a religious point of view, from the "fourth caste"; whereas among themselves they were, in religion, equals. But they were practically divided by interests that strongly affected the development of their original litanies. For both priest and warrior looked down on the 'people,' but priest and warrior feared and respected each other. To these the third estate was necessary as a base of supplies, and together they guarded it from foes divine and mortal. But to each other they were necessary for wealth and glory, respectively. So it was that even in the earliest period the religious litany, to a great extent, is the book of worship of a warrior-class as
