always with great respect.

Strabo states, on the authority of Megasthenes (who it will be
remembered was Ambassador from Persia, and lived for some years at
Palibothra, about 307 B.C.), that “there were two classes of
philosophers or priests, the Brachmanes and the Germanes, but the
Brachmanes are best esteemed.” Towards the close of his account of the
“Brachmanes” he says:--

“In many things they agree with the Greeks, for they affirm that the
world was produced, and is perishable, and that it is spherical; that
God, governing it as well as framing it, pervades the whole; that the
principles of all things are various, but water is the principle of the
construction of the world; that besides the four elements there is a
fifth, nature--whence heaven and the stars; that the earth is placed in
the centre of all.

“Such, and many other things are affirmed of reproduction and of the
soul. Like Plato, they devise fables concerning the immortality of the
soul, and the judgment in the infernal regions, and other similar
notions. These things are said of the Brachmanes.”

Clemens Alexandrinus, after saying that philosophy flourished in ancient
times amongst the barbarians, and afterwards was introduced amongst the
Greeks, instances the prophets of the Egyptians, the Chaldees of the
Assyrians, the Druids of the Gauls (Galatæ), the Samauæans of the
Bactrians, the philosophers of the Celts, the Magi of the Persians, and
the Gymnosophists of the Indians. The Greek authors distinctly speak of
the Brahmins as the chief of the castes or divisions of the Indian
people from the time of Megasthenes, who wrote of them in the fourth