3. The Brahminical religion has prevailed in India from the earliest period. The first literary productions of the people are the Vedas, the sacred books of the Brahmins. This religion is tolerant and inclusive. Its pantheon recognizes so many gods that each barbarous tribe from the North found their own deity represented, so that their crude religious notions readily merged in the more complicated system of the people they had conquered. The great Buddhistic reform spent its force, and, although triumphant in other lands, it left but little impress in India where it originated. The whole people believed the Brahminical creed and practiced the Brahminical precepts. It was a religion that included the purest abstractions and the grossest form of idolatry. While absorbing all other creeds, it never sought to make converts to its own.
4. The later incursions from the northwest were essentially different from their predecessors. The tribes of the table-lands had been converted to the fanatical and proselyting faith of Mohammed. About the middle of the sixteenth century, a Mongol tribe, strong and stalwart from late successful wars, and full of the fierce zeal of recent converts to Moslemism, appeared at the northern gate of India, and in a short time overspread the country and established the Mogul Empire, with its capital at Delhi. The stern conquerors never rested until they had firmly established their authority over the whole country.
5. The first great Sultan, Baber, had a genius for government. He was firm and temperate in his administration, and he protected the common people from the worst rapacity of their former rulers. Out of the chaos of native rule he evoked something like civilized order, and he established the Mogul Empire upon the foundation of a higher form of justice than had ever before been practiced in the East. After a reign of fifty years, this great monarch died in 1605, two years before the adventurous John Smith set foot upon the territory of Virginia.
6. For another hundred years, the Mogul Emperors, descendants of Baber, held firm possession of India, and in that time the country reached the height of its power in wealth and influence. Temples and palaces, in richness and beauty surpassing the most gorgeous dreams of western-bred people, arose on every side. Arts flourished as never before, and the commerce of India overland to the West was so great that large cities sprung up along its track, solely supported by the trading caravans. The gold from all the nations toward the setting sun was drained to pay for Indian fabrics, and India became the richest country of the world.