In the van of Aryan immigration settling along the plains of the Ganges from Hurdwar down to the eastern frontier of Oude and the Raj-Mahal Hills were the Brahmans, founders of the great cities Hastinapoora ("abode of elephants"), Indraspatha, Delhi, Canouge on the Doab, Ayodhya (Oude), Benares, and Palibothra (Patna). They concentrated themselves in the upper part of the Ganges valley, but did not attempt to pass into Lower Bengal, as may be seen to-day by the physical and mental inferiority of the Bengalees to the populations of Northern Hindostan. All travellers and historians agree in stating that the early Aryan settlers in the valley of the Ganges closely resembled the Hellenic race in Greece in almost every feature of their military, domestic, and social life. They were split up into a number of small states or communities. The Kshatryas, though originating in their military profession, and not in a single family, were not unlike the Heraclidæ, who became the royal race of the Peloponnesus. But in process of time these Kshatryas were absorbed into the Rajpoots, who are supposed to have arrived in India about the time of Alexander's invasion of the Panjaub. They settled where we find them to-day, in the neighborhood of Rohilcund and Bundelcund, and shortly after them came the Jâts, another branch of the Indo-European or Aryan family, thus completing the four great waves of the so-named Pandya, or white-faced, immigration--the Brahmans, Kshatryas, the Rajpoots, and the Jâts. It was the Brahmans who founded the celebrated Pandhya kingdom, so called from their white skins, and established the "Meerassee" system--_i. e._ an aristocracy of equality among the four conquering races. They shared the land equally among themselves, and regarded all others as servants or subjects. In this primitive village-system the Brahman, or priest and poet, the Pundit, or schoolmaster, the Vakeel, or pleader, were as essential as food and drink to the community. Priest, teacher, and pleader by virtue of their high functions enjoyed peculiar and unquestioned privileges: land free of all tax was religiously assigned to them, and servants to cultivate it for their use were attached to the grant.