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The Religion of the Veda

tions of melted butter. And in the long run their minds, which somehow, the hocus-pocus of the sacrifice had neither deadened nor satisfied, rose to those higher and permanent requirements which led to practical abandonment of the sacrifice and lasting devotion to philosophic religion.

The question, next, as to who carried on the higher religion has been answered incidentally in what has just been said. If what is stated there is stated correctly, we shall not go astray if we assume that the Brahmans were the mainspring in the advance of higher thought, just as they were the main factors in the worship of the gods and in ceremonial practices. But this same question requires to be stated more precisely for the following reason. A number of distinguished scholars have recently advanced the theory that Hindu theosophy is not, as has been tacitly assumed, in the main the product of Brahmanical intellect, but that it was due to the spiritual insight of the Royal or Warrior Caste.[1]

Professor Garbe of the University of Tübingen, an eminent student of Hindu philosophy and at the same time a scholar well versed in the early literature of the Vedas, is the most ardent advo-

  1. ↑ See Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. i., part 2, pp. 354 ff.; Garbe, Beiträge zur Indischen Kulturgeschichte, pp. 3 ff.; Winternitz, Geschichte der Indischen Litteratur, pp. 196 ff.
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