Fragments of a legal treatise in prose and verse, attributed to the brothers Çankha and Likhita, who became proverbial for justice, have been similarly preserved. This work, which must have been extensive, and dealt with all branches of law, is already quoted as authoritative by Paraçara. The statement of Kumarila (700 A.D.) that it was connected with the Vajasaneyin school of the White Yajurveda is borne out by the quotations from it which have survived. Sutras need not necessarily go back to the oldest period of Indian law, as this style of composition was never entirely superseded by the use of metre. Thus there is a Vaikhanasa dharma-sutra in four praçnas, which, as internal evidence shows, cannot be earlier than the third century A.D. It refers to the cult of Narayana (Vishnu), and mentions Wednesday by the name of budha-vara, "day of Mercury." It is not a regular Dharma Sutra, for it contains nothing connected with law in the strict sense, but is only a treatise on domestic law (grihya-dharma). It deals with the religious duties of the four orders (açramas), especially with those of the forest hermit. For it is with the latter order that the Vaikhanasas, or followers of Vikhanas, are specially connected. They seem to have been one of the youngest offshoots of the Taittiriya school. Looking back on the vast mass of ritual and usage regulated by the Sutras, we are tempted to conclude that it was entirely the conscious work of an idle priesthood, invented to enslave and maintain in spiritual servitude the minds of the Hindu people. But the progress of research tends to show that the basis even of the sacerdotal ritual of the Brahmans was popular religious observances. Otherwise it would be hard to understand how Brahmanism acquired and retained such a hold on the population of India. The originality of the Brahmans consisted in elaborating and systematising observances which they already found in existence. This they certainly succeeded in doing to an extent unknown elsewhere.