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We have shown, also, how difficult it must have been to release the reason from the formal band of the rite. Socially it was impossible to do so. He that was not initiated was excommunicated, an outcast. But, on the other hand, the great sacrifices gradually fell over from their own weight. Cumbersome and costly, they were replaced by proxy works of piety; vidh[=a]nas were established that obviated the real rite; just as to-day, 'pocket altars' take the place of real altars.[12] There was a gradual intrusion of the Hindu cult; popular features began to obtain; the sacrifice was made to embrace in its workings the whole family of the sacrificer (instead of its effect being confined to him alone, as was the earlier form); and finally village celebrations became more general than those of the individual. Slowly Hinduism built itself a ritual, [13] which overpowered the Brahmanic rite. Then, again, behind the geographical advance of Brahmanism[14] lay a people more and more prone to diverge from the true cult (from the Brahmanic point of view). In the latter part of the great Br[ra]hmana[15] there is already a distrust of the Indus tribes, which marks the breaking up of Aryan unity; not that breaking up into political division which is seen even in the Rig Veda, where Aryan fights against Aryan as well as against the barbarian, but the more serious dismemberment caused by the hates of priests, for here there was no reconciliation.
The cynical scepticism of the Brahmanic ritualists, as well as the divergence of opinions in regard to this or that sacrificial pettiness, shows that even where there was overt union there was covert discord, the disagreement of schools, and the difference of faith. But all this does but reflect the greater difference in speculation and theology which was forming above the heads of the ritualistic bigots. For it is not without reason that the Upanishads are more or less awkwardly laid in as the top-stone on the liturgical edifice. They belong to the time but they are of it only in part. Yet to dissociate the mass of Brahmanic priestlings from the Upanishad thinkers, as if the latter were altogether members of a new era, would be to lose the true historical perspective. The vigor of protest against the received belief continues from the Rig Veda to Buddha, from Buddha till to-day.
