The Religions of India c8.9.3

c8.9.3

the priest may not serve as warrior or husbandman. The farmer ‘people’ were the result of eliminating first the priestly, and then the fighting factors from the whole body politic. But these castes were all Aryans, and as such distinguished most sharply, from a religious point of view, from the “fourth caste”; whereas among themselves they were, in religion, equals. But they were practically divided by interests that strongly affected the development of their original litanies. For both priest and warrior looked down on the ‘people,’ but priest and warrior feared and respected each other. To these the third estate was necessary as a base of supplies, and together they guarded it from foes divine and mortal. But to each other they were necessary for wealth and glory, respectively. So it was that even in the earliest period the religious litany, to a great extent, is the book of worship of a warrior-class as prepared for it by the priest. Priest and king—these are the main factors in the making of the hymns of the Rig Veda, and the gods lauded are chiefly the gods patronized by these classes. The third estate had its favorite gods, but these were little regarded, and were in a state of decadence. The slaves, too, may have had their own gods, but of these nothing is known, and one can only surmise that here and there in certain traits, which seem to be un-Aryan, may lie an unacknowledged loan from the aborigines.