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One general observation about India may be made at the outset. Here more than in any other country the national mind finds its favourite occupation and full expression in religion. This quality is geographical rather than racial, for it is possessed by Dravidians as much as by Aryans. From the Raja to the peasant most Hindus have an interest in theology and often a passion for it.
Four hundred years after the Rig-Veda was composed we come to the Brahmanic age, when the laws of Menu were written, when the Aryans were living in the valley of the Ganges, and the caste system had become national.
The more inaccessible tops of the same mountains, the Rajmahal, are occupied by a much ruder set of people, the Mâlers, who appear to have been pushed up here by the Sontals, as the Sontals were themselves pressed by the incoming Aryans.
"When the Aryans, who came from Europe, and Asia farther north than India, obtained a foothold here, and established themselves, they looked down upon other people in the land, and called themselves the twice-born, or born again, as some modern sects have it.
Here then, in widely distant regions, in early European, American, Melanesian, African societies, we find those factors in religion which the primitive Aryans are said to have dispensed with, helping to construct society, rank, property.
But whereas in other parts of India the idea of social reform came to be associated with that of Western ascendency and therefore weakened and gave way before the rising tide of reaction against that ascendency, it has been associated in the Punjab with the cry of "Arya for the Aryans," and the political activities of the Arya Samaj, or at least of a number of its most prominent members who have figured conspicuously in the anti-British agitation of the last few years, have secured for it from Hindu orthodoxy a measure of tolerance and even of good will which its social activities would certainly not otherwise have received.
Driven, lured, coerced, these Aryan tribes have inundated the earth. Passing beyond the boundaries of Europe, they have crossed the seas into Africa, Asia, America and Australia. Among the Aryans, after bitter strife, the Teutons have attained supremacy.
"The music of the ancient Aryans is an antediluvian plant, no doubt, but nevertheless it is well worth studying, and deserves every consideration. This is perfectly proved now by a compatriot of mine, the Raja Surendronath Tagor.... He is a Mus.
Whether the Aryans were in possession of other ideas and sounds for “shine,” etc., before the formation of div, Dyaus, and deva, must be left uncertain; at all events we see how naturally the first consciousness of God developed in them, how the idea conditioned the language, and the language the idea, and both originated and continued inseparable one from the other.
Nor are we to think that when they worshipped beings who could be found in every place, the Aryans overlooked the sacred places, and the sacred objects worshipped formerly. They had themselves risen out of savagery, and still held many of the ideas of savages. Though they had a few great gods they could still believe in a large number of smaller ones.
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