Brahmans; further advance was due to the foreign help gained by closer contact with the kingdom of the Seleucids, and the influence of the Græco-Bactrian kingdom, which extended its power to the east beyond the Indus, and the Græco-Indian kingdom which succeeded it in the second century.[364] The result of their grammatical and astronomical studies were collected by the Brahmans as auxiliary sciences to the explanation and interpretation of the Veda; and they termed them the members of the Veda (Vedanga). They enumerated six of such members; the doctrine of pronunciation and intonation, the doctrine of metres, grammar, etymology, the ritual, and astronomy. The two first were declared to be indispensable for the reading of the Veda, the third and fourth for understanding the Veda, the fifth and sixth for the performance of sacrifice.[365] From all antiquity, as has been already observed, the Indians were greatly given to magic. It was the mysterious secret of the worship, the power of the rightly-offered prayer, which exercised compulsion on the gods. Out of this power grew their Brahmanaspati, and then Brahman. Consequently, the Brahmans ascribed the greatest efficacy to the severities of asceticism, the annihilation of the body. The sacrifice of sensual enjoyment was more meritorious and powerful than all other sacrifices. Was it not this devotion, this mortification, this concentration, which annihilated the unholy part in men? Did not a man by these means approach the holy nature of Brahman--did he not thus draw into himself Brahman and its power? The Brahmans were convinced that great penances and absorption into Brahman conferred a supernatural power and a command over nature; and imparted to the penitent a superhuman and even superdivine power, like that of Brahman. The Indians invariably transferred the new point of view to the past. The past was with them a mirror of the present, and therefore the ancient priests who were supposed to have sung the hymns of the Veda, the mythical ancestors of the leading priestly families, were not only patterns of Brahmanic wisdom, but also great ascetics, examples of energetic penances. By such penances these ancient saints, the Maharshis, _i.e._ the great sages as they were now called, had obtained power over men and gods, and even creative force. Hence in the order of beings the seven or ten great saints received the place nearest to Brahman, above the gods--a change which was rendered easier to the Brahmans because passages in the Rigveda spoke of the "ancient-born sages" as illuminated, as seers and friends of the gods.[366] With the Brahmans the force of asceticism was so preponderant, and absorbed the divine nature to such a degree, that it was soon regarded by them as the highest divine potency; in their view the gods and Brahman itself exercised creative power only by virtue of ascetic concentration on self, and severe penances. The theory of creation was modified from this point of view.