Brahma was simply an allegory, which, in the course of time, hardened into a literal statement of fact. The Brahmins, of course, came out of the mouth of Brahma; and, considering that they were the authors and compilers of all the principal books relating to castes and customs, it would have been extremely odd if they had not exalted their own order, and indulged in a tone of Oriental exaggeration which was eminently calculated to deceive, not perhaps, their successors, but the Englishmen who went to India. But the most curious thing is, that it never seems to have occurred to our missionaries to suspect that what they took as evidence of facts, and of a state of things really existing, was, in reality, only evidence of what an order or set of people could write, with the view of exalting themselves, and depressing the rest of the society amongst which they lived. The Brahmins chose to assert that the castes were of divine origin. They wrote that down and handed it on. We came to India, and finding these statements ready to hand, have simply swallowed them down, and added them to the number of illusions existing as regards India. But the facts really are, that castes and orders of men sprang up, we don't exactly know how. Brahmin writers described the castes, or at least part of them, and, in the course of time, the writings were said to have caused the castes, instead of the castes having caused the writings. But whatever may be the facts as regards caste, we know that caste can exist without idolatry, and idolatry without caste; and that though the Brahmins, with their usual desire to incorporate everything in life with religion, gathered caste into their garners, and endeavoured to increase and extend it, still there is fair evidence for asserting that these two institutions have no necessary connection, and that, as it was perfectly possible to wind them up together, so it is perfectly possible to unwind them and produce again an entire separation. In a word, it is perfectly possible for a man to retain caste, not as believing it to be part of his native idolatrous religion, but as believing it to be (what it really was till the Brahmins seized hold of it and attached it to their faith) a civil institution which had sprung up in remote times, and had been inherited by him, just as rank and station are inherited in this country.[40] And that caste can exist without religion, and alongside of a religion as opposite to Brahminism as Christianity is, we have the most indisputable evidence supplied by the late Sir Emerson Tennent, in his "History of Christianity in Ceylon."