some Aryan bands, journeying from the northwest, settled first the plains
of the Indus and then occupied the valley of the Ganges. They reached the
banks of the latter river as early probably as 1500 B.C.

These fair-skinned invaders found the land occupied by a dark-skinned,
non-Aryan race, whom they either subjugated and reduced to serfdom, or
drove out of the great river valleys into the mountains and the half-
desert plains of the peninsula.

THE ORIGIN OF CASTES.--The conflict of races in Northern India gave rise
to what is known as the system of castes; that is, society became divided
into a number of rigid hereditary classes. There arose gradually four
chief castes: (1) Brahmans, or priests; (2) warriors; (3) agriculturists
and traders; and (4) serfs, or Sudras. The Brahmans were those of pure
Aryan blood, while the Sudras were the despised and oppressed non-Aryan
aborigines. The two middle classes, the warriors and the cultivators of
the soil, were of mixed Aryan and non-Aryan blood. Below these several
castes were the Pariahs, or outcasts, the most degraded of the degraded
natives. [Footnote: At a later period, the Brahmans, in order to
perpetuate their own ascendancy and to secure increased reverence for
their order, incorporated among the sacred hymns an account of creation
which gave a sort of divine sanction to the system of castes by
representing the different classes of society to have had different
origins. The Brahmans, the sacred books are made to say, came forth from
the mouth of Brahma, the soldier from his arms, the farmer from his
thighs, and the Sudra from his feet. ]

The system of castes, modified however by various influences, particularly
by the later system of Buddhism (see p. 11), has characterized Hindu
society from the time the system originated down to the present, and is