The History of Indian Literature c8.26.3

c8.26.3

and thus it came about that these families of singers became families of priests, whose influence was more and more consolidated in proportion as the distance between the people and their former home increased, and the more their ancient institutions were banished from their minds by external struggles. The guardians of the ancestral customs, of the primitive forms of worship, took an increasingly prominent position, became the representatives of these, and, finally, the representatives of the Divine itself. For so ably had they used their opportunities, that they succeeded in founding a hierarchy the like of which the world has never seen. To this position it would have been scarcely possible for them to attain but for the enervating climate of Hindustán, and the mode of life induced by it, which exercised a deteriorating influence upon a race unaccustomed to it. The families also of the petty kings who had formerly reigned over individual tribes, held a more prominent position in the larger kingdoms which were of necessity founded in Hindustán; and thus arose the military caste. Lastly, the people proper, the *Viśas*, or settlers, united to form a third caste, and they in their turn naturally reserved to themselves prerogatives over the fourth caste, or Śúdras.