( lxxiii. ) India had not yet become hereditary, and a man became a Brahman, a Kshatriya, or a Vaisya in accordance with the profession he followed, that is in accordative with the merit he acquires by his own exertion. From Kusa descended the sage ViswaMitra, the author of numerous hymns, verses, and incantations of the Vedas, whose quarrel with his rival Vasishtha has been so vividly described in the Pauranic legends. Behari Lal Mitra, however thinks that their quarrel was not so much a contest between super human and human forces, or in other words between Brahmanical and kingly powers, as between two systems of philosophy of which they were the authors and exponents. He also thinks that. ViswaMitra was the ancestor of the Kayasthas, at least of that section which bears the surname of Mitra. He supports his theory not only by the surname Mitra, but also by the fact that while all the Mitra Kayasthas of Bengal belong to the Viswa-Mitra Gotra no division of the Brahmans claims the honour of having the same connection with this great sage of the Vedic times, Behari Lal Mitra next brings down the history of his race to the time when the empire of Magadha (modern Behar) swayed the destiny of India, when Buddhism flourished, and when missionaries were seat abroad to convert to the religiqn of ревоe the 'blood-thirsty savages of distant lands. He finds one Pushpa-Mitra quietly (or not quietly) step into the throne of Pataliputra, the capital of Magadha, identified by some with Patna of our
