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There is at this time no centre of learning, no stoa, no monastery, no university. With the beginning of the growth of the higher religion there are connected many names, but not one name. There is no great teacher of genius like Buddha who is of a later time. We have no reason to look to some confined space within which this business of world philosophy was carried on exclusively. Indeed, the sporadic, tentative nature of the earliest high thought, the way in which it was approached from many different sides and in many different moods, shows that it flitted about from place to place, and was the play-ball of many minds. But, I believe, we can tell pretty definitely the kind of environment from which theosophy received its first impulse, and within which it prospered up to goodly size and strength. That, curiously enough, was the great Vedic sacrifice with its mock business and endless technicalities, calculated to deaden the soul, and apparently the very thing to put the lid tight on higher religious inspiration and aspiration.

The great Vedic sacrifices, the so-called çrauta sacrifices, such as the rājasūya (coronation of a king), or the açvamedha (horse-sacrifice) were performances intended to strengthen the temporal power of kings. They were, of course, undertaken either by kings or at least rich Kshatriyas, rather than by the class of