only under Brahmanical authority, and the supreme sanction for all caste laws rests solely with the Brahmans, whilst of all caste laws the most inexorable is the supremacy of the Brahman.  Therein lies the secret of the great influence which, for good as well as for evil, he has always wielded over the masses.  For though in theory there could be no escape from the bondage of caste, individuals, and even a whole group, would sometimes find ways and means of propitiating the Brahmans who ministered to their spiritual needs, and the miraculous intervention of a favouring god or the discovery of a long-lost but entirely mythical ancestor would secure their social uplift on to a higher rung of the caste-ladder.

Such a system, by creating and perpetuating arbitrary and yet almost impassable lines of social cleavage, must be fatal to the development of a robust body politic which can only be produced by the reasonable intermingling and healthy fusion of the different classes of the community.  It was perhaps chief among the causes that left Hinduism with so little force of organised political cohesion that the Hindu states of ancient India, with their superior culture and civilisation, were sooner or later swept away by the devastating flood of Mahomedan conquest, whilst the social structure of Hinduism, just because it consisted of such an infinity of water-tight compartments each vital and self-sufficing, could be buffeted again and again and even almost submerged by the waves without ever breaking up.

CHAPTER III

MAHOMEDAN DOMINATION

Of all the great religions that have shaped and are still shaping the destinies of the human race, Islam alone was borne forth into the world on a great wave of forceful conquest.  Out of the sun-scorched deserts of Arabia, with the Koran in the one hand and the sword in the other, the followers of Mahomed swept eastward to the confines of China, northward through Asia Minor into Eastern Europe, and westward through Africa into Spain, and even into the heart of medieval France.  But it was not till the beginning of the eleventh century that the Mahomedan flood began to roll down into India from the north with the overwhelming momentum of fierce fanaticism and primitive cupidity behind it—­at first mere short but furious irruptions, like the seventeen raids of Mahmud of Ghazni between 1001 and 1026, then a more settled tide of conquest, now and again checked for a time by dissensions amongst the conquerors quite as much as by some brilliant rally of Hindu religious and patriotic fervour, but sweeping on again with a fresh impetus until the flood had spread itself over the whole of the vast peninsula, except the extreme south.  For three centuries one wave of invasion followed another, one dynasty of conquerors displaced another, but whether under Turki or Afghan rulers, under Slave kings or under the house of Tughluk, there was seldom a pause in