at all likely that they found it in their interest to do so.”​[825] Again, in the introduction to his translation of the _Kausika Sūtra_, Dr. W. Caland observes: “He who has been wont to regard the ancient Hindoos as a highly civilised people, famed for their philosophical systems, their dramatic poetry, their epic lays, will be surprised when he makes the acquaintance of their magical ritual, and will perceive that hitherto he has known the old Hindoo people from one side only. He will find that he here stumbles on the lowest strata of Vedic culture, and will be astonished at the agreement between the magic ritual of the old Vedas and the shamanism of the so-called savage. If we drop the peculiar Hindoo expressions and technical terms, and imagine a shaman instead of a Brahman, we could almost fancy that we have before us a magical book belonging to one of the tribes of North American red-skins.”​[826] Some good authorities hold that the very name of Brahman is derived from _brahman_, “a magical spell”; so that, if they are right, the Brahman would seem to have been a magician before he was a priest.​[827] {p230} [Sidenote: Confusion of magic and religion in ancient Egypt.] Speaking of the importance of magic in the East, and especially in Egypt, Professor Maspero remarks that “we ought not to attach to the word magic the degrading idea which it almost inevitably calls up in the mind of a modern. Ancient magic was the very foundation of religion. The faithful who desired to obtain some favour from a god had no chance of succeeding except by laying hands on the deity, and this arrest could only be effected by means of a certain number of rites, sacrifices, prayers, and chants, which the god himself had revealed, and which obliged him to do what was demanded of him.”​[828] According to another distinguished Egyptologist “the belief that there are words and actions by which man can influence all the powers of nature and all living things, from animals up to gods, was inextricably interwoven with everything the Egyptians did and everything they left undone. Above all, the whole system of burial and of the worship of the dead is completely dominated by it. The wooden puppets which relieved the dead man from toil, the figures of the maid-servants who baked bread for him, the sacrificial formulas by the recitation of which food was procured for him, what are these and all the similar practices but magic? And as men cannot help themselves without magic, so neither can the gods; the gods also wear amulets to protect themselves, and use magic spells to constrain each other.”​[829] “The whole doctrine of magic,” says Professor Wiedemann, “formed in the valley of the Nile, not a part of superstition, but an essential constituent of religious faith, which to a {p231} great extent rested directly on magic, and always remained most closely bound up with it.”​[830] But though we can perceive the union of discrepant elements in the faith and practice