found in the hymns, and is unsupported by any more positive statements. That the Hindus were not nomads is evident from the repeated allusions to fixed dwellings, and villages, and towns; and we can scarcely suppose them to have been, in this respect, behind their barbarian enemies, the overthrow of whose numerous cities is so often spoken of. A pastoral people they might have been, to some extent; but they were, also, and, perhaps, in a still greater degree, an agricultural people, as is evidenced by their supplications for abundant rain and for the fertility of the earth, and by the mention of agricultural products, particularly, barley (p. 57). They were a manufacturing people; for the art of weaving, the labours of the carpenter, and the fabrication of golden and of iron mail, are alluded to: and, what is more remarkable, they were a maritime and mercantile people.

Not only are the Súktas familiar with the ocean and its phenomena, but we have merchants described as pressing earnestly on board ship, for the sake of gain (p. 152); and we have a naval expedition against a foreign island, or continent (dwipa), frustrated by a shipwreck (p. 307). They must, also, have made some advance in astronomical computation; as the adoption of an intercalary month, for the purpose of adjusting the solar and lunar years to each other, is made mention of (p. 65). Civilization must have, therefore, made considerable progress; and the Hindus must have spread to the sea-coast, possibly along the Sindhu or Indus, into Cutch and Gujerat, before they

could have engaged in navigation and commerce. That they had extended themselves from a more northern site, or that they were a northern race, is rendered probable from the peculiar expression used, on more than one occasion, in soliciting long life,when the worshipper asks for a hundred winters (himas); a boon not likely to have been desired by the natives of a warm climate (p. 176). They appear, also, to have been a fair-complexioned people, at least, comparatively, and foreign invaders of India; as it is said (p. 259) that INDRA divided the fields among his whitecomplexioned friends, after destroying the indigenous barbarian races: for such, there can be little doubt, we are to understand by the expression Dasyu, which so often recurs, and which is often defined to signify one who not only does not perform religious rites, but attempts to disturb them, and harass their performers the latter are the Aryas, the Arya, or respectable, or Hindu, or Arian race. Dasyu, in later language, signifies a thief, a robber; and Arya, a wealthy or respectable man: but the two terms are constantly used, in the text of the Veda, as contrasted with each other, and as expressions of religious and political antagonists; requiring, therefore, no violence of conjecture to identify the Dasyus with the indigenous tribes of India, refusing to adopt the ceremonial of the Aryas, a more civilized, but intrusive, race, and availing themselves of every opportunity to assail them, to carry off their cattle, disturb their rites, and impede their progress,-to little purpose, it should seem, as the Aryas commanded the aid of

INDRA, before whose thunderbolt the numerous cities, or hamlets, of the Dasyus were swept away.

We have no particular intimation of the political condition of the Hindus, except the specification of a number of names of princes, many of which are peculiar to the Veda, and differ from those of the heroic poems and Puráñas. A few are identical; but the nomenclature evidently belongs to a period anterior to the construction of the dynasties of the Sun and Moon, no allusion to which, thus far, occurs. princes named are, sometimes, described as in hostility with each other; and the condition of the provinces. of India occupied by the Hindus was, no doubt, the same which it continued to be until the Mohammedan conquest,-parcelled out amongst insignificant principalities, under petty and contending princes.

The

Upon a subject of primary importance in the history of Hindu society, the distinctions of caste, the language of the Súktas-of the first Ashtaka, at least,-is by no means explicit. Whenever collectively alluded to, mankind are said to be distinguished into five sorts, or classes, or, literally, five men, or beings (pancha kshitayah). The commentator explains this term to denote the four castes, Bráhmaña, Kshattriya, Vaisya, and Súdra, and the barbarian, or Nisháda: but SAYAÑA, of course, expresses the received impressions of his own age. We do not meet with the denominations Kshattriya or Súdra in any text of the first book, nor with that of Vaisya; for Vis, which does occur, is, there, a synonym of man in general. Bráhmaña is met with, but in what sense is questionable. In the

neuter form, Brahma, it usually implies prayer, or praise, or sacrificial food, or, in one place, preservation (p. 274); in its masculine form, Brahmá, it occurs as the praiser, or reciter, of the hymn (p. 204), or as the particular priest, so denominated, who presides over the ceremonial of a sacrifice (p. 24): and in neither case does it necessarily imply a Bráhmana by caste; for, that the officiating priests might not be Brahmans appears from the part taken by ViśwáMITRA at the sacrifice of S'UNAHSEPA, who, although, according to tradition, by birth a Kshattriya, exercises the functions of the priesthood. There is one phrase which is in favour of considering the Brahmana as the member of a caste, as distinguished from that of the military caste (p. 279): "If you, INDRA; and AGNI, have ever delighted in a Bráhmaña, or a Rájú, then come hither:" but even this can scarcely be regarded as decisive. A hymn that occurs in a subsequent part of the Veda has, however, been translated by Mr. Colebrooke, in which the four castes are specified by name, and the usual fable of their origin from Brahmá, alluded to. Further research is necessary, therefore, before a final sentence can be pronounced.

From this survey of the contents of the first book of the Rig-Veda, although some very important ques

a In the Purusha Súkta, in the eighth Ashtaka, we have this verse: "His mouth became a priest [Bráhmaña]; his arm was made a soldier [Kshattriya]; his thigh was transformed into a husbandman [Vaisya]; from his feet sprung the servile man [Súdra].”—Colebrooke on the Religious Ceremonies of the Hindus, Asiatic Researches, Vol. vii., p. 251.

tions remain to be answered, it is indisputably evident that the hymns it comprises represent a form of religious worship, and a state of society, very dissimilar to those we meet with in all the other scriptural authorities of the Hindus, whether Bráhmañas, Upanishads, Itihásas (or heroic poems), or Purañas. Various notions, and personifications, and persons have, no doubt, been adopted from the Veda, and transmitted to subsequent periods, although, not unfrequently, with important modifications; but the great mass of the ritual, all the most popular deities, possibly the principal laws and distinctions of society, and the whole body of the heroic and Pauráñik dramatis personce, have no place, no part, in the Súktas of the Rig- Veda. That the latter preceded the former by a vast interval is, therefore, a necessary inference: for the immense and complicated machinery of the whole literature and mythology of the Hindus must have been of gradual and slow development; and, as many of the genealogical and historical traditions preserved by the Rámáyaña, Mahábhárata, the poems, plays, and Puráñas, are not likely to be mere inventions, but may have had their foundations in fact, then the course of events, the extension of the Hindus through India, the origin and succession of regal dynasties, and the formation of powerful principalities, all unknown to the Sanhitá, are equally indicative of the lapse of centuries between the composition of the Súktas and the date of the earliest works that are subsequent to the great religious, social, and political changes which, in the interval, had taken place. If the hymns