In the 17th century, pagans in Lithuanians were often called by the euphemism ‘Stara Litwa’ (which became ‘Staralitva’ in Latin) in official records, a Slavonic term meaning ‘Old Lithuanian’
“Why were the Lithuanian heathens most successful in holding out against the Christian steamroller?” [MT16]
Thus, despite their many victories, broken by the Mongol strike and incessantly attacked by the crusades the heathen Lithuanian finally succumbed to Christianity in 1387 CE.
“The answer we present is related to the unusual archaism of their language and potentially religion. Thus, we posit that they were in many ways parallel to the Hindus. The Hindus were remarkably successful in preserving their Indo-Aryan archaism and their now withering Iranian cousins in preserving their Avestan traditions in face of several assaults. This relates to a well-developed ritualist caste with a powerful oral tradition and specifically a grammatically tradition that allowed preservation of the language, especially in ritual, close to its old Indo-European state. While this was potentially ancestral to the Indo-Europeans as suggested by the Roman ritualist guild, the combination with a rigorous grammatically oriented oral tradition is clearly attested best in the Indo-Aryans and then the Iranians [Notably, of the local Indian languages Tamil, a non-Aryan language, was the next best in its preservation of archaic tradition in India precisely because it adopted the Aryan linguistic methodology very early in its history]. Hence, we hypothesize that the Lithuanians had such a tradition which approached the Indo-Iranian state to certain degree [Totally contra-Rowell, who rather idiotically asserts that Germanic, Slav and Balt pagans built shrines to imitate Christians! A sign of how deep-rooted Abrahamistic prejudices are in academia]. … In support of this we have evidence from whatever scraps of information survive regarding the heathen Lithuanian state that they had a well-organized ritualist guild along with the duchy elite with whom they intermarried – a parallel to the brahma-kṣatra elite of the Hindus.”
[MT16]