Gunpowder was not invented by the Hindus: its discovery by them would have fallen little short of a miracle. The extinction of Buddhism about the ninth century A.D., and the consequent establishment of a dominant priestly class, were a deathblow to the cultivation of physical science. By the seemingly innocent institution of _caste_, the Brahmins succeeded in trampling science in the dust. One caste was not permitted to touch this, another caste could not touch that substance; and the higher the caste, the greater the number of forbidden objects. The study of experimental science was consequently thrown back upon the lowest and poorest classes, who had neither the means, the leisure, nor the inclination to pursue it. Thus “the spirit of inquiry gradually died out,” says a Hindu Professor of Chemistry, “and the name of India was all but expunged from the map of the scientific world.”[280] CHAPTER VII THE CHINESE China, like India, affords an example of “arrested civilisation:” the Chinese intellect and language became petrified while still in a primitive stage of development. But, unlike the Hindus, the Chinese betook themselves at an early period to historical pursuits. “Debarred both by the nature of the material at their command and by a lack of original genius from indulging in the higher branches of imaginative writing, Chinese authors devoted themselves with untiring energy and with very considerable ability to the compilation of information concerning their own and neighbouring countries.”[281] Among the results of their labours are the “Twenty-One Histories,” from the third century B.C. to the middle of the seventeenth century, sixty-six folio volumes, and a number of vast Encyclopædias, of which the _Koo-kin-too-shoo_, &c., occupies 6109 volumes. From such immense compilations and other sources Chinese scholars have supplied us with much information about the present subject.