of fighting, mark them as a very different race from the peaceful shepherd immigrants of the earlier age, and point much more distinctly towards a Tartar, trans-Himalayan origin, than to the cradle of the Aryan stock in Central Asia. As if to mark the difference of which they themselves felt the existence, they distinguished themselves, by name, as belonging to a Lunar race, distinct from, and generally antagonistic to, the Solar race, which was the proud distinction of the purer and earlier Aryan settlers in India. Five or six hundred years after this, or about B.C. 700, we again find a totally different state of affairs in India. The Aryans no longer exist as a separate nationality, and neither the Solar nor the Lunar race are the rulers of the earth. The Brahmans have become a priestly caste, and share the power with the Kshatriyas, a race of far less purity of descent. The Vaisyas, as merchants and husbandmen, have become a power, and even the Sudras are acknowledged as a part of the body politic; and, though not mentioned in the Scriptures, the Nagas, or Snake people, had become a most influential part of the population. They are first mentioned in the ‘Mahabharata,’ where they play a most important part in causing the death of Parikshit, which led to the great sacrifice for the destruction of the Nagas by Janemajaya, which practically closes the history of the time. Destroyed, however, they were not, as it was under a Naga dynasty that ascended the throne of Magadha, in 691, that Buddha was born, B.C. 623, and the Nagas were the people whose conversion placed Buddhism on a secure basis in India, and led to its ultimate adoption by Asoka (B.C. 250) as the religion of the State.[7]