According to the book, the members of all the castes, like every created being, fulfil duties imposed upon them, _i.e._ carry on the occupations allotted to them. The life of the Brahmans is to be devoted to the Holy Scriptures, the sacred services, the teaching of the Veda and the law (the latter could be taught by none but Brahmans), and, finally, to contemplation and penance in the forest. But how was it possible to keep the whole order of the Brahmans to the study of the Veda, to sacrifice and worship, when it was also necessary for them to find support? How could the whole order disregard the care of their maintenance, especially when it was a duty to bring up a numerous family, or give up every desire to amass property? True it is, that liberality to the Brahmans was impressed on the kings and the other castes as a supreme duty; the pupils of the Brahmans were bidden to support their teachers by gifts; and the law permitted the Brahmans to live by gifts, to beg, to gather corn or ears of rice. From the Buddhist sutras we know that the kings followed the commands of the law, and that a multitude of Brahmans lived at the royal courts. We also know from the Greeks that every house was open to the wandering Brahman, and in the market they were overburdened with presents of the necessaries of life. Greek and Indian accounts inform us that troops of Brahmans wandered through the land--a mode of life which in India is not the most unpleasant; and it is certain that a considerable number lived as anchorites in the forests. But these habits required that a man should give up all thoughts of wife and child, house and home; and this all could not undertake to do. On what, then, were the Brahman householders to live, who possessed nothing, and were without land sufficient for their support? There were only two means for keeping the whole order to the study of the Veda and the performance of sacrifice; either they must be provided with sufficient land, or they must be maintained at the cost of the state. Among the Egyptians the priesthood lived on the land of the temples; among the Phenicians and Hebrews, on the tithes of the harvest, paid to the temples; in the middle ages our hierarchy lived on its own land and people, on tithes and other taxes: but all these were political institutions, and the Brahman lawgivers had neither the capacity to discover them, nor had their states the power to establish and maintain them. Still less could refuge be taken in a law forbidding to marry; all Brahmans could not be allowed to live from youth up as anchorites in the forest, if the Brahmans were to continue to exist as a caste by birth, and it was on superiority of blood that their whole position rested.