to have been elected; and his title of Vis-pat, literally “Lord of the Settlers,” survives in the old Persian Vis-paiti, and as the Lithuanian Wiez-patis in east-central Europe at this day.  Women enjoyed a high position; and some of the most beautiful hymns were composed by ladies and queens.  Marriage was held sacred.  Husband and wife were both “rulers of the house” (dampati); and drew near to the gods together in prayer.  The burning of widows on their husbands’ funeral pile was unknown; and the verses in the Veda which the Brahmans afterwards distorted into a sanction for the practice, have the very opposite meaning.  “Rise, woman,” says the Vedic text to the mourner; “come to the world of life.  Come to us, Thou hast fulfilled thy duties as a wife to thy husband.”

The Aryan tribes in the Veda have blacksmiths, coppersmiths, and goldsmiths among them, besides carpenters, barbers, and other artisans.  They fight from chariots, and freely use the horse, although not yet the elephant, in war.  They have settled down as husbandmen, till their fields with the plough, and live in villages or towns.  But they also cling to their old wandering life, with their herds and “cattle-pens.”  Cattle, indeed, still form their chief wealth—­the coin in which payment of fines is made—­reminding us of the Latin word for money, pecunia, from pecus, a herd.  One of the Vedic words for war literally means “a desire for cows.”  Unlike the modern Hindus, the Aryans of the Veda ate beef; used a fermented liquor or beer, made from the soma plant; and offered the same strong meat and drink to their gods.  Thus the stout Aryans spread eastward through Northern India, pushed on from behind by later arrivals of their own stock, and driving before them, or reducing to bondage, the earlier “black-skinned” races.  They marched in whole communities from one river valley to another; each house-father a warrior, husbandman, and priest; with his wife, and his little ones, and his cattle.

These free-hearted tribes had a great trust in themselves and their gods.  Like other conquering races, they believed that both themselves and their deities were altogether superior to the people of the land, and to their poor, rude objects of worship.  Indeed, this noble self-confidence is a great aid to the success of a nation.  Their divinities—­devas, literally “the shining ones,” from the Sanscrit root div, “to shine”—­were the great powers of nature.  They adored the Father-heaven,—­Dyaush-pitar in Sanscrit, the Dies piter or Jupiter of Rome, the Zeus of Greece; and the Encompassing Sky—­Varuna in Sanscrit, Uranus in Latin, Ouranos in Greek. Indra, or the Aqueous Vapor, that brings the precious rain on which plenty or famine still depends each autumn, received the largest number of hymns.  By degrees, as the settlers realized more and more keenly the importance of the periodical rains to their new life