But they had no external means for enforcing obedience to their law, respect for their purifications, expiations, and penances, in case it was not rendered willingly. They did not extend their power beyond the limits of the conscience of the king and the people. They were as absolutely the subjects of the king as the other orders; no political limitations, no institutions, checked the authority of the king in its operations on the Brahmans; and the knowledge of the Veda and the law was accessible to him. The princes held up in the Epos as patterns are praised for their knowledge of the holy Scriptures and the law. The kings, not the Brahmans, offer the great sacrifices; but they cannot offer them without the Brahmans, the Purohita (p. 202), and other priests. This position of the Brahmans at the side of the king, and that which they subsequently obtained by the side of the people in the clans, enabled them by moral means, by conviction and faith, to shape the life and politics of the Indians according to their system, and establish a lasting dominion over them. If the Brahmans had no rights upward, they had at any rate forced the Kshatriyas out of the first place; and they did not intend that the aristocratic position which they had obtained over the other orders, their privileges and advantages in regard to those beneath them, should rest on moral authority merely. The book of the law is never weary of impressing in every direction the pre-eminence of the Brahmans, the subjection of the other orders. But as the wisdom of the Brahmans was throughout unacquainted with the foundations and supports used by aristocracies elsewhere to acquire and maintain their position--as they were unable to create institutions of this kind--only one real and effective means remained for legalising and securing their importance, position, and privileges--and this was the exercise of penal jurisdiction. In the division of penances and punishments, according to the various orders, they attempted to bring the pre-eminence of their own order into a position recognised and established by law. This fact no doubt helped in causing the Brahmans to estimate the power of punishment so highly. "Punishment alone," says the book, "guarantees the fulfilment of duties according to the four castes; without punishment a man out of the lower caste could take the place of the highest." But here again there was a difficulty; it was not the Brahmans but the kings who in the first instance had to dispense justice; the application of the law depended on the princes.