File:Cyclopedia universal history - embracing the most complete and recent presentation of the subject in two principal parts or divisions of more than six thousand pages (1895) (14596491179).jpg

Identifier: cyclopediauniver1950ridp (find matches)
Title: Cyclopedia universal history : embracing the most complete and recent presentation of the subject in two principal parts or divisions of more than six thousand pages
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Ridpath, John Clark, 1840-1900
Subjects: World history Ethnology World history
Publisher: Boston : Balch Bros.
Contributing Library: UMass Amherst Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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rance of theOld Aryans into theIndian valleys all theethnic harmonies ofthe race were softenedinto a minor key.There was a loss ofintellectual force, with a gain of imagi-nation ; a loss of bodily energy, with aGeneral effect of gain of activitv; a lossth:Eiftr;ans of adventure, with a gaininto India. of dreaming. Every ele- ment of the originally robust Aryancharacter, as it had shown itself throughall the stages of drifting from the Bac- trian homestead through the mountainpasses into the Punjab, was toneddown and soon forced, by a new disci-pline, to vibrate to a softer chant.Every force of nature conspired by itsreaction on the faculties of man toabridge freedom, cool passion, assuagetribal heat, and diffuse a calmer mood. We come now to consider the old lifeof India, always an obscure problem inthe history of mankind. We-have al-ready considered those ancient migra-tory movements which carried down thepeoples of our ancestral race, by succes-sive waves into the Punjab, and thence
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656 GREAT RACES OF MANKIND. southward and eastward to the oceanand the mountains. We have evennoted some of the original conditionswhich surrounded the immigrants andconduced to tlie formation of a new racecharacter. The attentive reader is bythis time tolerably informed with re-spect to the ethnic inheritance which theAryans brought with them into India;of their dispositions and peculiarities,and the beginnings of the institutionalform which they carried along on theirway from the highlands of Iran into thelowlands of Sapta Sindhu. It shallnow be our object to take up the trans-planted life of the Old Aryans, and tonote its evolution into new forms pecul-iar to the East. We are here on the threshold of Brah-manism. Perhaps it will be well first ofindioanreugious all to uote the peculiaritiesoped by^tl?^ of this ancient faith, and es-Brahmans. pecially its divergence from the system of Zoroaster. The term isderived from the Brahmans, the sacer-dotal caste of the Hindu family, whohave,

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