Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.t1.7

c7.t1.7

A second wave of the great tide of immigration brought with it new groups of Aryans, a number of tribes closely interconnected, who, surpassing their brothers intellectually, have produced the most ancient great monuments of the Indian mind which we possess, and which we call by the name of the Vedas. We find these tribes at the time of which the hymns of the Rig Veda give us a picture, near the entrances of the Indian peninsula, at the Indus and in the Panjáb; later on they are driven to the south-east and have founded on the upper stream of the Ganges and on the Yamunâ those kingdoms, which are called in “Manu’s Institutes” the land of the “Brahmarshis,” the home and the type of holy, upright living: “By a Brahman who has been born in this land,” says the Law (Manu), “shall all men on earth be instructed as to their conduct.” The names of the Bharata tribe, Kuru, Pancâla, stand out among the peoples of this classic land of Vedic culture, which lies before our gaze in clear illumination as a land rich in advanced intellectual creation, while the destinies of the other tribes, who had immigrated at an earlier date, remained in darkness until the period when they came into contact with the culture of their brother tribes.*