Page:An Essay On Hinduism.pdf/22

was full of many tribes, many of which probably exist even to-day. These tribes belonged to different races, and it is also possible that there were many Aryan tribes in India prior to Rigvedic immigration. All these different tribes had probably no other superior than tribal consciousness.

With the immigration of the Aryans, a new culture came to India. That culture received good development in the upper valley of the Ganges. Development of this culture and the rise of the Brahmanas, first as a class and then as a caste, were probably contemporaneous. These Brahmanas migrated all over India. They migrated as a caste, and the various castes of the Brahmanas have been caused by the process of subdivision mostly. Some writers claim that some Brahmaņas were made out of tribal priests, but the evidence offered for the statement has been too scanty to express an opinion either one way or the other. As these Brahmanas travelled they carried with them the idea of four varnas, and tried to apply that idea to local conditions. The king of the place and perhaps his near relatives became Kshatriyas. Some people they called vaishyas and some others they called shudras. The conditions of different localities varied and so the possibilities of making out four classes in that locality also were varied.

The people who belonged to Kshatriya varņa probably did not meet each other. There was no Kshatriya consciousness excepting in small parts. Again, whether a particular tribe or family was Kshatriya or not was always indefinite. The ruler of the part could easily become a Kshatriya, but how many people in the tribe besides the ruler were to be recognized as Kshatriya was a matter of great difficulty. In many places only the ruler was recognized as Kshatriya on account of his office, and when the