[Footnote 126:  Only tradition preserves the memory of an older and freer system, when warriors like Visvamitra were able by their religious austerities to become Brahmans.  See Muir’s Sanskrit texts, vol.  I. pp. 296-479 on the early contests between Warriors and Brahmans.  We hear of Kings like Janaka of Videha and Ajatasatru of Kasi who were admitted to be more learned than Brahmans but also of Kings like Vena and Nahusha who withstood the priesthood “and perished through want of submissiveness.”  The legend of Parasurama, an incarnation of Vishnu as a Brahman who destroyed the Kshatriya race, must surely have some historical foundation, though no other evidence is forthcoming of the events which it relates.]

[Footnote 127:  In southern India and in Assam the superiors of monasteries sometimes exercise a quasi-episcopal authority.]

[Footnote 128:  Sat.  Brahm. v. 3. 3. 12 and v. 4. 2. 3.]

[Footnote 129:  The Markandeya Purana discusses the question how Krishna could become a man.]

[Footnote 130:  See for instance The Holy Lives of the Azhvars by Alkondavilli Govindacarya.  Mysore, 1902, pp. 215-216.  “The Dravida Vedas have thus as high a sanction and authority as the Girvana (i.e.  Sanskrit) Vedas.”]

[Footnote 131:  I am inclined to believe that the Lingayat doctrine really is that Lingayats dying in the true faith do not transmigrate any more.]

[Footnote 132:  E.g.  Brih.-Ar.  III. 2. 13 and IV. 4. 2-6.]

[Footnote 133:  This is the accepted translation of dukkha but perhaps it is too strong, and uneasiness, though inconvenient for literary reasons, gives the meaning better.]

[Footnote 134:  The old Scandinavian literature with its gods who must die is equally full of this sense of impermanence, but the Viking temperament bade a man fight and face his fate.]

[Footnote 135:  But see Rabindrannath Tagore:  Sadhana, especially the Chapter on Realization.]

[Footnote 136:  Cf.  Shelley’s lines in Hellas:—­

 “Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
  From creation to decay,
  Like the bubbles on a river
  Sparkling, bursting, borne away.”]

[Footnote 137:  Nevertheless deva is sometimes used in the Upanishads as a designation of the supreme spirit.]

[Footnote 138:  E.g.  Brih.-Ar.  Up.  IV. 3. 33 and the parallel passages in the Taittiriya and other Upanishads.]

[Footnote 139:  The principal one is the date of Asoka, deducible from an inscription in which he names contemporary Seleucid monarchs.]

[Footnote 140:  E.g. a learned Brahman is often described in the Sutta Pitaka as “a repeater (of the sacred words) knowing the mystic verses by heart, one who had mastered the three Vedas, with the indices, the ritual, the phonology, the exegesis and the legends as a fifth.”]

[Footnote 141:  There had been time for misunderstandings to arise.  Thus the S^{.}atapatha Brahmana sees in the well-known verse “who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifices” an address to a deity named Ka (Sanskrit for who) and it would seem that an old word, uloka, has been separated in several passages into two words, u (a meaningless particle) and loka.]