The religious and moral condition of the Aryan races of India is to be found impressed upon the sacred writings of the ancient Brahmans, for a knowledge of which we are largely indebted to that industrious student of Sanskrit, Professor Max Müller of Oxford, who considers that the period embraced by the Rig-Veda or Sacred Books extended back indefinitely from 1200 B.C., and that the hymns which they contain were first committed to writing between 600 and 200 B.C.,[54] about the same time, therefore, as the writings of Confucius and Mencius were published in China. And what can these Brahminical writings teach us concerning the drinking customs of the people? the reader may inquire. At the risk of offending his susceptibilities, and even of laying ourselves open to the charge of irreverence, we will ask him what he would think of a body of worshippers in our day, who, instead of addressing their hymns and prayers to the Almighty Father and Ruler of the universe, the One ineffably good, and wise, and holy, were to appeal to Him as a mighty Ruler in heaven who was to be propitiated and bribed with unlimited offerings of brandy, and who, until he became completely intoxicated, was incapable of performing any great or benevolent act? And yet this, or even lower than this, was the estimate which the Aryan people had formed of their god Indra, as well as of his less powerful companions in heaven; and the only inference we are able to draw—one that we are sure the reader would extract from the study of those so-called hymns—is that the nature of the Deity was but a reflex of the character of his worshipping multitudes.