caste, the remodeling of marriage customs, the emancipation and education
of women, the abolition of infanticide and the worship of ancestors, and a
general moral regeneration. Their chief aid to spiritual growth may be
summed up in four words, self-culture, meditation, personal purity, and
universal beneficence. Their influence has been already felt in the
legislative affairs of India.




BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE

1. The Accadians and Babylonians.--2. The Cuneiform Letters.--3.
Babylonian and Assyrian Remains.


1. ACCADIANS AND BABYLONIANS.--Geographically, as well as historically and
ethnographically, the district lying between the Tigris and Euphrates
forms but one country, though the rival kingdoms of Assyria and Babylonia
became, each in turn, superior to the other. The primitive inhabitants of
this district were called Accadians, or Chaldeans, but little or nothing
was known of them until within the last fifteen or twenty years. Their
language was agglutinative, and they were the inventors of the cuneiform
system of writing. The Babylonians conquered this people, borrowed their
signs, and incorporated their literature. Soon after their conquest by the
Babylonians, they established priestly caste in the state and assumed the
worship, laws, and manners of their conquerors. They were devoted to the
science of the stars, and determined the equinoctial and solstitial
points, divided the ecliptic into twelve parts and the day into hours. The
signs, names, and figures of the Zodiac, and the invention of the dial are