But all these were only contributory causes. There were still deeper influences at work which have operated in the Punjab in the same direction as the forces of unrest in the Deccan and in Bengal, but differ from them nevertheless in their origin and in some of their manifestations. In the Punjab too the keynote of unrest is a spirit of revolt not merely against British administrative control, but, in theory at least, against Western influence generally, though in some respects it bears very strongly the impress of the Western influence which it repudiates. The motive force is not conservative Brahmanism as in the Deccan, nor does it betray the impetuous emotionalism of Bengal. It is less rigid and purely reactionary than the former, and better disciplined than the latter. Orthodox Hinduism ceased to be a dominant factor in the Punjab when the flood of Mahomedan conquest swept over the land of the Five Rivers. Even Islam did not break the power of caste, and very distinct traces of caste still survive amongst the Mahomedan community itself. But nowhere has caste been so much shaken as in the Punjab, for the infinity of sub-castes into which each caste has resolved itself gives the measure of its disintegration. Sikhism still represents the most successful revolt against its tyranny in the later history of Hinduism. Hence the relatively slight ascendency enjoyed by the Brahmans in the Punjab amongst the Hindus themselves, even the Brahmans having split up into so many sub-castes and sub-sub-castes that many a non-Brahman Hindu will hardly accept food cooked by the lower order of Brahmans--and, next to inter-marriage, food is the great test of caste. Nevertheless it is amongst the Hindus of the Punjab that one of the earliest apostles of reaction against the West has found the largest and most enthusiastic body of followers. Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, was a Brahman of Kathiawar; he was not born in the Punjab, and it was not in the Punjab but in Bombay, where, however, it struck no roots, that he founded the Arya Samaj. Only in the later years of his life did the Punjab become the chief centre of his activities. The doctrines he taught were embodied by him in his _Satyarath Prakash_, which has become the Bible of his disciples, and in his _Veda Bashya Basmika_, a commentary on the Vedas. He had at an early age lost faith in the Hindu Pantheon, and to this extent he was a genuine religious reformer, for he waged relentless war against the worship of idols, and whether his claims to Vedantic learning be or be not conceded, his creed was "Back to the Vedas." His ethical code, on the other hand, was vague, and he pandered strangely in some directions to the weaknesses of the flesh, and in others to popular prejudices. Nothing in the Vedas, for instance, prohibits either the killing of cattle or the eating of bovine flesh. But, in deference to one of the most universal of Hindu superstitions,