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ORIGIN OF THE VANAPRASTHAS
503
In fact, these
learn their character by their behaviour.
penitents were wont to assume a kind of superiority over
the gods, and punished them severely when they found
them to blame. The evil deeds, and especially the lasci-
viousness, of Brahma, Siva, and Devendra, brought upon
them the curses of many penitents.
The mythologies which relate these adventures, however
absurd they may be, at any rate prove in what high estima-
tion these hermits were held, and how ancient is their
origin.
On this last point I wish to add certain considera-
tions to those which I have already mentioned, and will
then leave the subject to my reader's own judgement.
I start again with the very probable hypothesis that in
the seven Hindu Penitents who escaped the catastrophe of
the Flood, are to be recognized the seven sons of Japheth,
some of whom at the time of the dispersion of mankind
must have come by way of Tartary and established them-
selves in India, becoming the first founders of Brahminism
and the lawgivers of the families whose descendants peopled
this portion of the globe.
As is the case with all ancient
civilized nations, time wrought changes in the laws which
they instituted, regulating religious worship, morality, and
the maintenance of social order
indeed, in all the wise
measures which they took to preserve the well-being of
their fellow-men.
This is the common fate of all institu-
They either
tions which do not bear the impress of God.
collapse altogether or become disfigured under the ever-
repeated attacks of prejudice, passion, and, above all,
personal interest.
The simple but wise maxims of the
first Hindu lawgivers soon degenerated into an abstract
and subtle system of metaphysics, quite beyond the com-
and these latter,
prehension of all but a few adepts
moved by a common ambition to lord it over their fellows,
gradually formed an exclusive community isolated from
the rest of the nation. The privacy of their life, their
frugality, their contempt of riches, the purity of their
morals, could not fail to gain for these earliest Brahmins
the respect and veneration of the common people.
There can be no doubt that philosophy flourished in
India before it had been so much as thought of in Greece.
Of what account, in truth, was the learning of Greece, of
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