The History of Indian Literature c8.76.3

c8.76.3

‘Give me, and I will render to thee,’ he says,²⁷ claiming therewith a right on his part to divine help, which is an exchange, no grace. In this free strength, this vigorous self-consciousness, a very different, and a far more manly and noble, picture of the Indian is presented to us than that to which we are accustomed from later times. I have already endeavoured above to show how this state of things became gradually altered, how the fresh energy was broken, and by degrees disappeared, through the dispersion over Hindustán, and the enervating influence of the new climate. But what it was that led to the emigration of the people in such masses from the Indus across the Sarasvatí towards the Ganges, what was its principal cause, is still uncertain. Was it the pressure brought about by the arrival of new settlers? Was it excess of population? Or was it only the longing for the beautiful tracts of Hindustán? Or perhaps all these causes combined? According to a legend preserved in the Bráhmaṇa of the White Yajus, the priests were in a great measure the cause of this movement, by urging it upon the kings, even against their will [*I. St.*, i. 178]. The connection with the ancestral home on the Indus remained, of course, at first a very close one;