2. SOCIAL CONSTITUTION OF INDIA.--Hindu literature takes its character
both from the social and the religious institutions of the country. The
social constitution is based on the distinction of classes into which the
people, from the earliest times, have been divided, and which were the
natural effect of the long struggle between the aboriginal tribes and the
new race which had invaded India. These castes are four: 1st. The Brahmins
or priests; 2d. The warriors and princes; 3d. The husbandmen; 4th. The
laborers. There are, besides, several impure classes, the result of an
intermingling of the different castes. Of these lower classes some are
considered utterly abominable--as that of the Pariahs. The different
castes are kept distinct from each other by the most rigorous laws; though
in modern times the system has been somewhat modified.


THE RELIGION.

In the period of the Vedas the religion of the Hindus was founded on the
simple worship of Nature. But the Pantheism of this age was gradually
superseded by the worship of the one Brahm, from which, according to this
belief, the soul emanated, and to which it seeks to return. Brahm is an
impersonality, the sum of all nature, the germ of all that is. Existence
has no purpose, the world is wholly evil, and all good persons should
desire to be taken out of it and to return to Brahm. This end is to be
attained only by transmigration of the soul through all previous stages of
life, migrating into the body of a higher or lower being according to the
sins or merits of its former existence, either to finish or begin anew its
purification. This religion of the Hindus led to the growth of a
philosophy the precursor of that of Greece, whose aims were loftier and
whose methods more ingenious.