In every nation which has gone beyond the primitive stages of life, wealth and occupation form the basis of a division into more or less fixed forms, more or less close orders. The states on the Ganges were no exception. Here, beside the Kshatriyas, beside the minstrels and priests, or Brahmans, stood the bulk of the immigrant Aryas, whose land required the personal labour of the owner, to whom the name Vaiçya, at first common to all, gradually passed as a special name. Below these three orders were the Çudras. The name given by the Indians to their orders, _varna_, _i.e._ colour, proves that the difference between the light skin of the immigrants and the dark colour of the native population was of considerable influence, and if a doubt were raised whether or not another population is concealed in the fourth order or Çudras, it would be removed by the close union of the three orders against the fourth, the uncompromising exclusion of the latter in all matters of religion, and the fact that the law of East Iran (the Avesta) as well as that of the Ganges, recognises warriors, priests, and peasants, but no fourth order. The sharp distinction between the Aryas and Çudras may subsequently have had an influence on the orders of the Aryas, so as to mark the divisions more strongly; resting on such a foundation, the division of orders might strike deeper roots on the Ganges than elsewhere. The higher and more favoured strata of society will seldom be free from the desire to bequeath to posterity the advantages they possess; and this feeling makes itself felt with greater force in earlier stages of civilisation than in later. As the possessions and occupation of the father descend to the son who grows up in them, the favoured orders are inclined to maintain this natural relation, and elevate it into a legal rule; they believe that the qualification for their special calling depends on birth in it, or better blood, and make it so to depend. In the states on the Ganges these tendencies must have been the more strongly marked, as in this case the Aryas saw beneath them, in the Çudras, a class of men less capable and less cultivated than themselves; to descend to this class and mingle with it, seemed to them as disgraceful as it was dangerous to the maintenance of their empire over these men. Here it was more natural than elsewhere to pursue this analogy further--to regard even the classes of their own tribe, according to their more or less honourable occupation, as separate circles, as races having different characters and higher or lower gifts, and to transform these distinctions of occupation and social position into rigid castes. Thus the Kshatriyas, in the full consciousness of their aristocratic life, proud of their brave deeds and noble feeling, must have rendered difficult or impossible all approach to their occupation and order; they regarded the minstrels and the priests, and the Vaiçyas, as classes of inferior birth. When the minstrels had sung