IIRBARYOFroiNCSPN 
 
 JUN30 
 TMFhl OGICAL SBJ 
 
HINDUISM 
 
 AND ITS 
 
 RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. JOHN ROBSON, D.D. 
 
 ABERDEEN 
 
 NEIV EDITION 
 
 EDINBURGH & LONDON 
 OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER 
 
 1893 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 MORRISON AND GIEB, EDINBURGH, 
 
 FOR 
 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON, & FERRIER, 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 * rpHIS book is offered to those who take an interest 
 
 J- in India, and especially in Indian missions, as an 
 
 attempt to enable them better to understand the religion 
 
 of the great majority of the people of that land. I have 
 
 found prevalent in this country ideas of Hinduism very 
 
 different from those which a twelve years' practical study 
 
 of it in constant contact with its folloAvers has led me 
 
 to form. Generally, among friends of missions, there is 
 
 an undue depreciation of Hinduism — an ignoring or an 
 
 io-norance of the amount of truth and vitality still to be 
 
 found in it ; "whilst, among those indifferent or hostile 
 
 to missions, there is an equal ignoring or ignorance of the 
 
 falsehood which vitiates that truth and poisons that 
 
 vitality. ISTot only does Hinduism contain a subtle 
 
 philosophy, express high moral truths, and enjoin many 
 
 social virtues ; it even in one guise or other embodies 
 
 many of the leading religious truths wdiich Christianity 
 
 teaches. But that there is in it an ineradicable vice 
 
 which neutralises all that is good, which has paralysed, 
 
 and must paralyse, all those efforts at reform within 
 
 Hinduism that more enlightened Hindus have made and 
 
 are now making, and which leaves Christianity the only 
 
 hope for India — is what I liave endeavoured to show. 
 
 Ill 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 hold its own, anticipated twenty years ago, is therefore 
 not surprising. There is danger, however, of the mistake 
 being made of attributing its faihire to internal dissen- 
 sions, whereas it was inherent in the character of the 
 movement from the beginning. 
 
 On the other hand, the rise of the Arya Samaj has 
 introduced an element into the religious situation which 
 was hardly even suspected twenty years ago. That move- 
 ment has attracted much less notice in this country, and 
 has met with much less sympathy than the Brahma 
 Samaj. The cause of this is not far to seek. The Brahma 
 Samaj was a product of European rather than of Hindu 
 thought, and was welcomed as such by the leaders of 
 thought in this country. The Arya Samaj is an entirely 
 Indian movement ; and, while obliged to reckon with 
 European science and civilisation, it scorns European 
 thought, philosophy, and especially religion. It is the 
 latest effort at reform which has sprung from the midst 
 of Hinduism itself. Its founder, Dayanand Saraswati, 
 was a purely Hindu reformer, of the same type as many 
 who have sought to reform Hinduism previously, with 
 this difference, that he found himself confronted by 
 European civilisation and the advance of the Christian 
 religion, which he looked on as opposed to Vedic religion 
 as much as were the corruptions of Hinduism. There are 
 indications of his followers coming to take the position 
 of another Hindu sect, with the name of Dayanandis. 
 Meanwhile it has secured a far firmer hold on the native 
 mind than the Brahma Samaj ever did, and will be a 
 much more serious element in the religious struggle in 
 India. 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 Amid all this, Christianity, especially the Protestant 
 Church, has been making steady progress. The increase 
 of the whole Christian community during the last twenty 
 years has been 50 per cent., while the increase of the 
 Protestant portion has been about 150 per cent, a result 
 which bears witness to the vigour with which Protestant 
 missions have been prosecuted. At the same time, it must 
 be noted that the greater part of this increase was during 
 the first decade, the progress during the second being both 
 relatively and absolutely smaller. This may be partly 
 owing to the more active attitude of Hinduism, but it is 
 also to be feared that some methods of evangelisation have 
 been introduced the results of which are not so permanent 
 as some of the older methods. The situation is one requir- 
 ing the earnest consideration of those who are leading 
 the missionary enterprise in India. The emergence of 
 these questions has led to the last three chapters of the 
 book being entirely rewritten. 
 
 While, in the contact between the West and the East, 
 European thought has been affecting that of India, Indian 
 thought has also been affecting that of Europe and 
 America. The most remarkable outcome of this is the 
 Theosophical Society. Theosophy claims to be an old 
 form of religious thought, and to be akin, not only with 
 Vedism and Buddhism, but also with the esotoric teach- 
 ing of older religions. It has made some attempts to 
 establish itself in India as a cult, amid the unsettlement 
 of religious thought there, as the worship of Isis sought 
 to establish itself in Italy in the unsettlement of religious 
 thought there in the first century. And between some of 
 
-/ 
 
 ^ 
 
 viii Preface. 
 
 the methods used to commend modern Theosophy to the 
 people of India, and some of the methods used to com- 
 mend the worshiiD of Isis to the people of Italy, as 
 revealed by the discoveries at Pompeii, there is sufficient 
 resemblance to give the modern system a claim to be 
 regarded as the heir of the earlier one. But, putting 
 aside its quasi magical sanctions and alleged communica- 
 tions from those sublimated human beings called Ma- 
 hatmas, the Theosophists claim that their system can 
 stand on its own merits. And in it there are two main 
 doctrines, that of Metempsychosis, or, as they prefer to 
 term it. Re-incarnation, with its associated doctrine of 
 Karma; and that of Universal Brotherhood. The latter 
 is a Christian doctrine, which we all admit. The former 
 is the Indian doctrine, vehemently diluted indeed with 
 the sentimentalism of the nineteenth century, but prac- 
 tically the same. We have thus a system Avhich seeks 
 to promote efforts after perfection, and recognition of 
 universal brotherhood, by a doctrine the practical outcome 
 of which has been to paralyse all sense of responsibility 
 and annihilate all faith in human brotherhood. In the 
 following pages the reader may trace the development 
 and practical effects of some of those dogmas which are 
 now being commended as the remedy for the evils of the 
 nineteenth century, and the solution of its religious and 
 philosophic difficulties. 
 
 Aberdeen, Decemhei-' 1892. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 1 
 
 Conflicting elements in Hinduism, 1 ; Macaulay's opinion 
 of Hinduism, 2 ; Ballantyne's opinion, 2 ; character- 
 istics of Hindu philosophy, 3 ; practical application 
 of Hindu philosophy, 3 ; materials for a history of 
 Hinduism, 4 ; plan of the book, 5. 
 
 PART I. EARLIER RELIGIONS OF INDIA, ... 6 
 
 Chapter I. Eaeliest Vedic Religion, . ; . .6 
 
 Earliest record of Indian religion the Rig Veda, 6 ; 
 India three thousand years ago : the Aryas, 7 ; the 
 aborigines, 7 ; religious beliefs : traces of primitive 
 Monotheism, 8 ; modes of expressing God by His attri- 
 butes and works, 9 ; Aryan gods : Dyaus and Prithivi, 
 9 ; Varuna, 10 ; Monotheism, Polytheism, Henotheism, 
 13 ; deterioration of religious ideas, 14 ; Indra, 15 ; 
 Agni and other gods, 15 ; the unknown God, 17 ; 
 Vedic worship, 18 ; future life, 19 ; religion of the 
 aborigines, 20; contemporary history of Abraham, 21. 
 
 Chapter II. BrxViimanism, 22 
 
 Changes among the Aryas, 22 ; origin of caste : the 
 
 Sudras, 22 ; subjection of the Sudras, 23 ; caste among 
 
 the Aryas : Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, 24 ; caste 
 
 legislation, 24. Religious ideas: Brahman priests, 25 ; 
 
 the Four Vedas, 26 ; the Brahmanas, 26 ; development 
 
 of Polytheism, 27; Brahma, 28; Brahmanical and 
 
 Levitical sacrifices, 28 ; Levitical sacrifice typifal, 28 ; 
 
 Brahmanical sacrifice sacramental, 30 ; ditticiillics in- 
 
 ix 
 
Co7itents. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 volved in tliis idea, 31. Brahman sages: the Upani- 
 shads, 32 ; germs of Pantheism, 32 ; metempsychosis 
 and asceticism, 33 ; influence of philosoj)hy on reli- 
 gion, 84. Other sources of religious ideas : struggle 
 betAveen Brahmans and Kshatriyas, 34 ; Rama Chandra, 
 35 ; Krishna, 36 ; aboriginal worship, 37 ; extent of 
 Brahmanism, 37. 
 
 Chapter III. Buddhism, 39 
 
 Buddha's life : his birth, 39 ; married life, 40 ; causes of 
 change of life, 40 ; he renounces royalty, 41 ; leaves 
 his kingdom, 42 ; takes to an ascetic life, 42 ; dis- 
 covers the Four Verities, 43 ; communicates them to 
 others, 44 ; subsequent life, 44. 
 
 System of Buddha : the Four Verities, 45 ; trans- 
 migration, 46 ; Karma, 47 ; difference between Bud- 
 dhist and Hindu ideas, 47 ; Nirvana, 48 ; means to 
 attain it : law of Buddha, 49 ; its character, 49 ; laws 
 for the priesthood, 50. 
 
 Spread of Buddhism ; character of its founder, 50 ; 
 superior to ca§te, 51 ; and nationality, 52 ; his instru- 
 ment persuasion, 52 ; zeal of his followers, 53. 
 
 Defects of Buddhism : contrast between Christ and 
 Buddha, 54 ; aim, annihilation, 56 ; atheism, 57 ; 
 absence of revelation, 57 ; and power, 58 ; deification 
 of Buddha : introduction of idolatry, 59 ; want of 
 satisfactoriuess, 60 ; disappearance from India, 61 ; 
 failure as a religion, 61. 
 
 Jainism : founders, Parswanath and Mahavira, 62 ; 
 Tirthankaras, 63 ; way of salvation, 63 ; S5'stem, 64 ; 
 relation to Buddhism, 64 ; inferiority to Buddhism, 65 ; 
 subdued by Hinduism, 66. 
 
 PART II. HINDUISM, G8 
 
 Chapter IV. Hindu Philosophy, 68 
 
 Rise of Hinduism, 68 ; difficulties of the subject, 69 ; 
 
 75 
 
 two features of Hinduism, philosophy and religion, 69. 
 Hindu philosophy : cause of the intellectual revival, 
 70 ; the chief end of man. Liberation, 70 ; funda- 
 mental principles : ex nihilo nihil Jit, 71 ; the Supreme 
 
Contents. xi 
 
 pa<;e 
 Spirit tlie only existence, 71 ; the Supreme Spirit 
 
 unconditioned, 72 ; Vcdantic and Cliristian Trinity, 
 72 ; man's spirit and matter, 73 ; Maya, or delusion, 
 74 ; analogy of dreamland and monomania, 74 ; 
 nature of the illusion, 75 ; difficulties to be met, 76 ; 
 metempsychosis proved by reminiscence, 76 ; and 
 moral necessity, 77 ;Wicarious atonement, 77 ; Karma :' „ 
 deeds, bonds of the spirit, 78 ; analogy of vapour, 
 79; the * eighty- four,' 80; testing questions: origin 
 of the illusion, 80 ; the law of transmigration, 81 ; 
 knowledge :the way of Liberation, 82; Hindu philo- 
 sophy and Buddhism, 83 ; popularisation of Brah- 
 manism, 84 ; Hindu philosophy and Christianity, 85. 
 
 Popular Hindu philosophy : transmigration, 86 ; 
 deeds are bonds, 86 ; man's spirit part of the Supreme, 
 87 ; popular failure of the philosophical solution, 88. 
 
 Chapter V. Pantheism and Caste, . . . .89 
 
 Meaning of caste, 89 ; occupations, 90 ; family sj^stem, 
 90 ; pantheistic explanation of caste, 92 ; penalties 
 for caste breaking, 93 ; lower castes recognised, 93 ; 
 subdivisions of the Brahmanical caste, 94 ; dis- 
 appearance of intermediate castes, 94 ; power of caste, 
 95; vitality of caste, 96; tyranny of caste, 96; effect 
 of caste on the English, 97 ; caste propagandism, 98. 
 
 The worship of the cow : the sacrament of caste, 98 ; 
 the common bond of Hinduism, 98 ; similar ideas in 
 other religions, 99 ; its origin in India, 100 ; Manu's 
 laws, 101 ; growth of cow worship, 101. 
 
 Chapter VI. Pantheism and Polytheism, . . . 103 
 
 Place of idol worship in Hinduism, 103 ; apparent in- 
 consistencies, 104 ; pantheistic reconciliation, 104 ; 
 pantheistic basis of worship, 105 ; facilities for pro- 
 pagandism, 106 ; main divisions of Hinduism : Vaish- 
 navism and Saivism, 106 ; principle of these divisions : 
 faith and merit, 107 ; limitations of the distinction, 
 108 ; religious records : the Puranas, 108. 
 
 Chapter VII. Vaishnavism, or Worship of Vishnu, 110 
 
 Central principle of Vaishnavism : God's supremacy, 110 ; 
 abstract representation of Vishnu, 111 ; his Avatars 
 
xii Contents. 
 
 PACK 
 
 analogous to man's transmigration, 111 ; fish, tortoise, 
 bear, and man-lion Avatars, 112 ; dwarf Avatar, 113 ; 
 Parasu Rama Avatar, 114; Rama Chandra Avatar, 114. 
 
 Krishna Avatar, 115 ; Krishna's youth, 115 ; Brah- 
 manical adaptation of the story, 116 ; Brahmanical 
 invention, 117 ; and explanation, 118 ; justification of 
 sin, 119 ; images of Krishna, 120. 
 
 Ninth Avatar, Buddha, 120 ; fresh Avatars of 
 Krishna, 120 ; tenth Avatar, Kalkin, 121 ; identifica- 
 tion with the English, 121. 
 
 Hindu Worsldp, 123 ; devotion and works, 123 ; 
 invocation, 123 ; image worship, 124 ; threefold 
 explanation of it, 125 ; charms, 126 ; disai)pearance 
 of sacrifice, 127. 
 
 Vishnu Worship, 128 ; presentation of body, soul, 
 and wealth, 128 ; Avorship of his images, 129 ; im- 
 purities of worship, 130 ; vice a fruit of Hinduism, 
 131. 
 
 Vaishnaua Reformers, 132 ; Ramanuja and Raman- 
 anda, 132 ; other reformers, 133. 
 
 Chapter YIII. Saivism, . . . . . . .134 
 
 Principles of Saivism, 134 ; the Vedic god Rudra, 135 ; 
 popular conception of Siva, 135 ; tlie Liuga, 136 ; 
 myths and legends regarding him, 136 ; asceticism 
 the mainstay of his worship, 137 ; popular ideas of 
 asceticism, 138 ; drying up of the blood, 139 ; prac- 
 tices of modern ascetics, 139 ; their degraded character, 
 140. 
 
 Saiva Pro])ar)andism : other worships connected 
 with that of Siva, 141 ; his wives and servants, 141 ; 
 Pushkar, 142 ; Tirths, 143 ; primitive worship of 
 Pushkar, 143 ; Saiva manipulation of the legends, 
 144 ; object of the Brahmans to assimilate, 145 ; 
 Parihar Minas, 145 ; bad moral influence of the Brah- 
 mans, 146 ; bloody worship, 148 ; secret sects, 148. 
 
 Chapter IX. Reconciliation of the Sects — Review 
 OF Hinduism, 150 
 
 Original enmity of the sects, 150 ; sectarian contro- 
 versies, 151 ; reconciliation of the sects, 151 ; the 
 
Contents. xiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Trimurti, 152 ; analogy with the Christian Trinity, 
 152 ; date of the pantheistic recoziciliation, 153 ; 
 summary, 154. Review of the work of Hinduism, 
 155 ; Hindu tolerance, 156 ; blind faith, 157 ; effects 
 of Hinduism, 157 ; some good effects, 158. 
 
 TART III. HINDUISM AND MOHAMMEDANISM, . 160 
 Chapter X., 160 
 
 Rise of Mohammedanism : its principles, 160 ; way of 
 salvation, 161 ; moral code, 161 ; its spread, 162 ; 
 first contact with India, 163 ; causes of India's resist- 
 ance, 164 ; causes of India's weakness, 165 ; Moham- 
 medan conquest of India, 166 ; Mohammedanism fails 
 to conquer India, 166 ; Akbar's policy, 167 ; Aurang- 
 zeb's policy, 168 ; fall of the Mohammedan power, 
 169, Little effect of Mohammedanism on Hinduism, 
 170 ; deteriorating effects, 172 ; effect of Hinduism on 
 Mohammedanism, 172 ; triumph of Hinduism, 173. 
 Mohammedan revival, Mahdism, 173 ; Mohammedan 
 conspiracy, 174 ; frontier wars, 174 ; discovery and 
 suppression of the conspiracy, 175 ; counter move- 
 ment. Say ad Ahmad Khan, 175. 
 
 Hindu-Mohammedan sects, 176 ; the Panths, 177 ; 
 Kabir Panth, 177 ; the Sikhs, 178 ; Nanak, 178 ; 
 Govind, 179 ; characteristics of Sikhism, 179. 
 
 PART IV. HINDUISM AND CHRISTIANITY, . .181 
 Chapter XI. Their Affinities and Antagonisms, . 181 
 
 First preaching of Christianity in India, 181 ; the Nes- 
 torian Christians, 182 ; Roman Catholic missions, 
 182 ; Protestant missions, 183. 
 
 Conditions of the contest, 184 ; elements of religion 
 common to both, 184 ; message of Christianity to 
 India, 185 ; repentance and remission of sins, 186 ; 
 antagonism in higher principles, 186. Contrast in 
 idea of salvation, 187 ; way of salvation, 188 ; 
 vicarious atonement, 189 ; forgiveness, 189 ; through 
 Christ, 190 ; transmigration, 191. Incarnation : Chris- 
 
xiv Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 tian doctrine, 192 ; Hindu doctrine, 194. Godly life: 
 Christian ideal, 196 ; Hindu ideal, 197. Doctrine of 
 man: Christian brotlierhood, Hindu caste, 199. Future 
 life : Hindu and Christian ideals, 200. 
 
 Modifying considerations : degraded character of 
 many Christians, 202 ; good character of many 
 Hindus, 203. 
 
 Chapter XII. Reform Movements in Hinduism, . 205 
 
 Changes going on in Hinduism, 205 ; limited extent of 
 change as yet, 205 ; Government and mission educa- 
 tion, 206 ; unrest among the educated classes, 207. 
 
 The Brahma Samaj, Ram Mohun Roy, 208 ; first 
 division in Samaj, 209 ; Adi Samaj, 209 ; lapse into 
 Hinduism, 210 ; Chunder Sen and Progressive Samaj, 
 211 ; affinity to Christian Unitarianism, 211 ; marriage 
 of Chunder Sen's daughter, 212 ; secession and forma- 
 tion of the Sadharana Samaj : a deistic, 213 ; and 
 eclectic system, 214 ; its princij)les, 214 ; its failure, 
 215. 
 
 The Arya Samaj, 215 ; its founder, Dayanand Saras- 
 wati, 215 ; first doubts, 216 ; he leaves his family, 216 ; 
 subsequent career, 217 ; interview at Ajmere, 217 ; 
 his relation to the Christian Scriptures, 219 ; his treat- 
 ment of the Veda, 221 ; his final dogmatic position, 
 221 ; his last words, 222 ; constitution of the Arya 
 Samaj, 223 ; principles of the Arya Samaj, 224 ; its 
 criterion of true revelation, 225 ; diff"erence between 
 it and the Brahma Samaj, 226 ; its influence on the 
 educated class, 227 ; its present position and work, 
 228. 
 
 Decaying power of Hinduism, 230 ; modifications of 
 caste, 230 ; caste reforms, 231 ; the Samaj movement, 
 231 ; the Indian Congi'ess, 232. 
 
 Chapter XIII. Position and Attitude of Christianity, 233 
 
 Result of the past : Are missions a failure ? 233 ; progress 
 of Christian community, 234 ; progress of the Protest- 
 ant Church, 235 ; retardation of progress, 236 ; causes 
 of retardation, 237. 
 
 Methods : Salvation Army, 238 ; diff'erent practices 
 
Contents. 
 
 XV 
 
 in administering baptism, 240 ; New Testament prin- 
 ciples, 241 ; need of maintaining individualism, 243. 
 
 Attitude to be preserved : Intolerance, 244 ; Hindu 
 tolerance, 245 ; need of firmness, 245 ; advantages of 
 union -with the Home Churclies, 246 ; temptations to 
 relaxation, 246. Spirit of Christianity : mission amity, 
 248 ; position of Europeans and Eurasians, 250. 
 
 Need and encouragements for further effort : past 
 progress, 251 ; progress of female education, 253 ; state 
 of religious thought in India, 254 ; lesson of religious 
 history of India, 254. 
 
 PAOK 
 
 Appendix A. — Buddha's System, .... 
 B. — Schools of Hindu Philosophy, 
 C. — Hindu Logic, . . . . 
 
 D. — Mohammedan Doctrine of Sin, 
 E. — Natural Eeligion in Hindu Literature, 
 F. — Rev. James Gray on Arya Samaj, . 
 G. — Statistics of Protestant Missions, . 
 
 . 259 
 . 261 
 . 263 
 . 264 
 . 265 
 . 267 
 . 269 
 
I. 
 
INTRODUCTIOK 
 
 ,» N Englishman, entering for tlie first time a 
 -^^ native town in India, will probably not pro- 
 ceed far ^yithout havini:,^ his attention drawn to 
 an open shrine, containing a rudely carved stone, 
 worshipped with rites as senseless as tlieir object 
 is shapeless. Let him ask one of the worshippers 
 a ' reason of the faith that is in him,' and he will 
 as probably be taken aback with a subtle reply, 
 revealing a system of thought entirely distinct from 
 his, depending on other bases and proceeding by 
 other methods, and the faHacy of which he cannot 
 at the moment seize. Further experience will show 
 him that the reply he has received is a stock reply, 
 tlie fruit of the thinking of the nation rather than 
 of the individual ; but the first impression produced 
 will be one of bewilderment, perplexing his reason, 
 and throwing; him back on his instincts for evidence 
 of the truth. 
 
 A similar bewilderment, I fancy, must be pro- 
 duced on many when they read accounts of the 
 religion of the Hindus by persons who have had 
 opportunities of observing it from different points 
 of view. Some speak of it as the grossest of 
 
 A 
 
Introduction. 
 
 superstitions ; others, as the deepest and subtlest 
 of speculations. Macaulay, who had to do with 
 the Hindus as a legislator, can hardly find words 
 strong enough to denounce their faith. ' In no part 
 of the world/ he says, ' has a religion ever existed 
 more unfavourable to the moral and intellectual 
 health of our race. The Brahmanical mythology is 
 so absurd that it necessarily debases every mind 
 which receives it as truth. And with this absurd 
 mythology is bound up an absurd system of physics, 
 an absurd geography, an absurd astronomy. Nor 
 is this form of Paganism more favourable to ait 
 than to relisjion. Through the whole of the Hindu 
 Pantheon you will look in vain for anything re- 
 sembling those beautiful and majestic forms which 
 stood in the shrines of ancient Greece. All is 
 hideous and grotesque aird ignoble. As this super- 
 stition is of all superstitions the most irrational and 
 of all superstitions the most inelegant, so is it of all 
 superstitions the most immoral. Emblems of vice 
 are objects of public worship. Acts of vice are acts 
 of public w^orship. The courtesans are as much a 
 part of the establishment of the temple, as much 
 ministers of the god, as the priests. Crimes against 
 life, crimes against property, are not only permitted 
 but enjoined by this odious theology. But for our 
 interference human victims would still be offered to 
 the Ganges, and the widow would still be laid on 
 the pile by the corpse of her husband, and be 
 burned alive by her own children.' ^ 
 
 Compare this testimony with that of another, 
 
 Speech on the Gates of Somnauth. 
 
Conflicting Opinions. 
 
 who had to deal with tlie Hindus as a scholar and 
 a philosopher, and who declares Hindu philosophy 
 to be ' a calm, clear, collected exposition of prin- 
 ciples, which Germany constantly and England occa- 
 sionally gropes after, without ever grasping them 
 with any such grasp as that with which India has 
 taken hold on them.' ^ This is the language not of 
 an opponent of Christianity but of an advocate, 
 taken from a book designed to lead Hindu pundits 
 to a careful study of its truths. It is, moreover, 
 on the whole a fair statement of the case. Hindu 
 philosophers live in a world of thought such as 
 Europeans can form little idea of. The practical 
 and real questions that are ever present to the 
 mind of the German, and still more of the English- 
 man, leading them to tread with doubt and hesita- 
 tion, if not with humility, never trouble the Hindu 
 metaphysician at all. He moves in the region of 
 pure thought, unimpeded by the contradictions 
 which retard the course of his Western brethren, 
 on to the goal of a transcendental abstraction from 
 which the most daring of them would shrink. 
 
 But man is not all thought ; he has an outward 
 life which he must lead, actual relations which he 
 must fulfil, yearnings and aspirations of the soul 
 which he must satisfy. The real value of a system 
 is found when it comes to deal practically with 
 these questions, and the practical result of Hindu 
 philosophy in dealing with them is that hideous 
 picture which Macaulay has drawn, not one trait of 
 which is too dark, but of which he saw only the 
 
 Ballantyne's Bible for tlie Pundits. 
 
Introduction. 
 
 outer form without notinoj the subtle soul of Pan- 
 theism that pervades it, justifying its grossest 
 excesses and wildest extravagances. It is this 
 union of a subtle Pantheistic philosophy with a 
 gross popular idolatry that constitutes modern 
 Hinduism, and makes it the most redoubtable foe 
 with wdiich Christianity has to contend in India 
 if not in the world. 
 
 Looking at this system as it now exists, examin- 
 ing the books that are current among the people, 
 conversincf with them and debatimjj with their 
 teachers, we can form some idea of the bases of 
 thouHit on which it now rests and of the hold 
 
 o 
 
 which it has on the Hindu mind. But the question 
 irresistibly occurs, How did men come to believe in 
 such a system ? Can there possibly be any kinship 
 between it and the faith which we profess ? Are 
 there common principles in our nature to which 
 both alike appeal ? Hinduism as it now is was 
 not always the religion of India, and, indeed, in its 
 present form it is of comparatively modern date. 
 Just as in looking at the rocks of the Jura or the 
 red sandstone of Cromarty, and studying the fossils 
 imbedded therein, we feel sure that we are looking 
 on the vestiges of a former world ; so, in studying 
 modern Hinduism, we feel that we have the fossilised 
 remains of former faiths gathered into new com- 
 binations and welded together by a new power. 
 yBut as to the real history of the changes that have 
 taken place we are still comparatively in the dark. 
 The student of Hinduism has indeed more to guide 
 him than the student of geology, but after all that 
 
Plan of the Booh. 
 
 lias been done much is still uncertain, much is left 
 to conjecture. 
 
 Yet the main features of the past religious 
 history of India have been determined with suffici- 
 ent accuracy for practical purposes, and modern 
 Hinduism can be best understood by looking first 
 of all at those religions which preceded it. I will, 
 therefore, begin by giving a short sketch of the 
 earlier religions of India, then try to present the 
 main features of Hinduism as it now is, give a 
 short review of its conflict wdth Mohammedanism, 
 and conclude w^ith a more detailed examination of 
 its present conflict wdth Christianity. 
 
PART I.-EARLIER RELIGIONS OF INDIA. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 EAKLIEST VEDIC KELIGION. 
 
 THE earliest records we have of the Hindu re- 
 ligion, as of the Hindu race, are certain old 
 hymns now known in their collected form as the 
 EiG Veda. Of these the oldest are certainly not 
 later than twelve hundred years before Christ, or 
 more than three thousand years from the present 
 date. They are important not only for the light 
 which they cast on the early history of India, but 
 also for that which they cast on the early history of 
 mankind, and especially of that family to which 
 English and Hindus alike belong, called from the word 
 used in these hymns, the Aryas.^ The language in 
 which they are written supplied the key to the 
 relationship of the various languages spoken from 
 Caithness to Cape Comorin, showing that they were 
 originally one, and the peoples that speak them 
 originally one tribe — that the Hindus are our 
 brethren not merely as being members of the same 
 human race, but as members of the same family of 
 that race — that our common forefathers at one time 
 
 ^ Arya is the exact transliteration of the Sanskrit word. Some 
 authors write it Anjan or Arian, which is apt to perplex the 
 ordinary English reader. In the sequel I use Arya as the noun, 
 and Aryan as the adjective. 
 
 6 
 
The Ari/as and Ahoriyines. 
 
 dwelt together in the highlands of Central Asia ; 
 but the progenitors of the Hindus, after seeing their 
 brethren cjo in successive emiirrations westward to 
 overrun and occupy Europe, by some unknown im- 
 pulse turned south towards the sunny plains of India. 
 At the time these hymns were written the Aryas 
 had advanced only as far as the Punjab and the 
 banks of the Indus. They had but recently emi- 
 grated from a colder clime, for they reckoned their 
 age by the number of their winters ; and they still 
 retained the fair complexion of their northern source. 
 Their chief wealth seems to have consisted in flocks 
 and herds, but they also practised agriculture 
 largely. They had made considerable progress in 
 the arts ; they had built cities, and they traded in 
 ships. Besides husbandmen and herdsmen, priests, 
 warriors, and merchants existed among them, but 
 merely as professions, and not in any sense like the 
 castes of modern India. Neither had they any 
 particular rules about food : they even ate the flesh 
 of the cow — now the unpardonable sin of Hinduism 
 — and praised it as the best of food. We can indeed 
 trace among them scarcely any correspondence with 
 the habits and customs of the Hindus as we now 
 know them. But besides these Aryas there were 
 also the Dasyus, of whom we learn little, but that 
 they were dark in complexion and constantly at war 
 with the Aryas ; they had also built cities and made 
 some progress in civilisation. Who they were I do 
 not mean now to discuss.^ The word means natives 
 
 1 There is little doubt, however, that they belong' to the Turanian 
 race, and had probably immigi'ated into India before the Aryas. 
 
8 Earliest Vedic Religion. 
 
 or nations. They \Yere tlie inhabitants of India 
 when the Aryas entered it, and bore to them miicli 
 the same relation as the Gentiles did to the Jews or 
 tlie Barbarians to the Greeks. It is well, however, 
 to bear distinctly in mind that the first glimpse we 
 get of India three thousand years ago reveals the 
 ancestors of the present Brahmans, Ptajputs, and high 
 castes of India, living — a fair-coraplexioned race — 
 in the north-west corner of the Peninsula, whither 
 they had descended from the cool heights of the 
 Himalayas, and all the rest of the Peninsula occu- 
 pied by a darker and more savage race, the ancestors 
 probably of the hill tribes and low castes, called by 
 the Aryan conquerors then, as they are called by 
 the English conquerors now, Dasyus — natives. 
 
 On turning to the Eeligious Beliefs expressed in 
 these hymns we get glimpses of a comparatively 
 pure faith, but in the very earliest already draped 
 in error, which in the later ones becomes grosser 
 and more complete. It is possible that originally 
 the various tribes of the Aryan race, ere the}^ separ- 
 ated from each other, worshipped tlie one God. 
 But the proof for this is anterior to literature, and 
 is derived entirely from philology. By the time 
 the earliest Sanskrit hymns w^ere written, we find 
 physiolatry, or nature-worship, asserting itself. The 
 Aryas seem to have sought to realise the presence 
 of God by naming Him after some of the noblest of 
 His visible works. The hymns of the Vedas are 
 addressed to various deities, whose names also 
 express some of the phenomena of nature, or may 
 
Source of tlic Idea of God. 
 
 be traced to them. But while this is tlie case, there 
 is also evidence in the language that the worshipper 
 originally looked ' from nature up to nature's God/ 
 and sought to worship the Creator by the name of 
 His works. 
 
 It was a fine sentiment which led the Hebrew 
 priests of old to omit the name of Jehovah in public 
 worship, and substitute for it ' the incommunicable,' 
 or some such expression ; for human language can 
 never give a name to the Supreme. All that we 
 have been able to do has been to take some attribute, 
 and ascribe to it the other attributes of Deity. 
 This will be found to be the case with nearly all 
 the names which we employ, whether God — the 
 good, Jehovah — the existent, the Eternal, the Lord, 
 the Almighty, or the Supreme. All these are names 
 which our moral consciousness testifies to us must 
 be applicable to God ; each describes only a part of 
 His nature, but we think of it as comprehending 
 the whole. This difficulty, which we have got over 
 by taking an attribute for the possessor of that 
 attribute, the old Aryas got over by taking the work 
 for the Maker — creation or part of creation for the 
 Creator. These are the two currents of religious 
 thought which seem to have divided mankind when 
 left to their own efforts to feel after and express 
 God — the one looking at Him as concealed in the 
 sanctuary of the human heart, the other as concealed 
 behind the veil of nature. The former tendency was 
 most clearly exemplified among the Hebrews, the 
 latter among the Greeks and the Aryas of India. 
 
 The visible object which most naturally calls out 
 
10 Earliest Vedic Beligion. 
 
 man's thoughts to a being above him is the sky or 
 heaven, v^hich in all languages is used also to desig- 
 nate the abode of the Supreme. But the Aryas 
 went a step further and designated God from His 
 abode. This seems to have been done before the 
 various branches broke off from one another, before 
 the Greeks went towards Greece or the Latins 
 towards Italy ; for the Greek Zeus, the Latin 
 e/iipiter, possibly our word divine, are explained by 
 the Sanskrit root dyu, forming the noun Dyaus, 
 genitive divas. This is the name of one of the gods, 
 possibly originally one of the names of the one God, 
 but in Sanskrit it retains also its primitive meaning, 
 which it has lost in all the other languages, namely, 
 ' the sky or heaven.' By the time the earliest 
 hymns were composed, he was conceived of as a 
 distinct god, and the husband of Prithivi, the earth 
 — heaven and earth being spoken of in them as the 
 parents of all things. 
 
 But there is one aspect of the heavens which 
 more powerfully and immediately evokes devout 
 feelings, and that is the appearance they present by 
 night. Of such sentiments the eighth Psalm is a 
 well-known example, and to them the Vedas owe 
 some of their finest poetry, and the highest con- 
 ception of God which is to be found in the first 
 stasje of Vedic relisjion. The oricjinal name of this 
 aspect of the heavens seems to have been Yaruna.^ 
 By the time the Vedic hymns were written the 
 
 ^ The same as tlie Greek miranos ; from a root meaning to 
 cover. In the Vedas Yaruna, as the god of night, is associated 
 with Mitra, the god of the day. In later Hindu mythology he is 
 
 the regent of the Avaters. 
 
Hymns to Varuna. 1 1 
 
 meaning of the word as an appearance of nature 
 had been entirely lost. It never occurs in them as 
 a name of the sky, only as the name of a god ; but 
 in the hymns addressed to him we can trace the 
 sentiment still ruling, which the gaze on the nightly 
 heavens is calculated to rouse in the soul. The 
 thousand stars have become in them the thousand 
 eyes of the god, searching out all that passes on 
 earth, from which even darkness cannot hide. The 
 feelings of awe, sinfulness, and contrition remain in 
 them, and make them liker the Hebrew Psalms 
 than anything else in profane poetry. Here is one 
 that irresistibly recalls the 139th Psalm. I give it 
 in Dr. Muir's spirited metrical translation, which 
 will bring the resemblance more vividly before 
 English readers : — 
 
 ' The mighty Lord on high our deeds, as if at hand, espies : 
 The Gods know all men do, though men would fain their 
 
 deeds disguise. 
 Whoever stands, whoever moves, or steals from place to 
 
 place, 
 Or hides him in his secret cell — the Gods his movements 
 
 trace. 
 Wherever two together plot and deem they are alone, 
 King Varuna is there, a third, and all their schemes are 
 
 known. 
 The earth is his, to him belong those vast and boundless 
 
 skies ; 
 Both seas ^ within him rest, and yet in that small pool He lies. 
 Whoever far beyond the skies should think his way to wing, 
 He would not there elude the grasp of Varuna, the King.' ^ 
 
 ^ The waters above the firmament, and the waters under the 
 firmament. See Gen. i. 7. 
 
 ^ Atharva V. iv. 16, Sanskrit Texts, v. jx 64. 
 
12 Earliest Vcdic Beligion. 
 
 In the following hymn we find the sentiment 
 of guilt and the need of mercy more strongly 
 expressed : — • 
 
 '1. Let me not yet, Variina, enter the house of clay; 
 have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! 
 
 '2. If I go along trembling, like a clone! driven hy the 
 wind, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! 
 
 ' 3. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright God, 
 have I gone to the wrong shore ; have mercy. Almighty, have 
 mercy ! 
 
 ' 4. Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in 
 the midst of the waters ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! 
 
 ' 5. Whenever we men, Varuna, commit an offence before 
 the heavenly host ; whenever we break thy law through 
 forgetfulness ; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy.' ^ 
 
 The language of this hymn scarcely grates on the 
 Christian sense, and if by Yaruna we understand 
 Him wdio dwells in heaven, little fault can be 
 found with its theology. The same god is else- 
 where addressed as ' Lord of All, of heaven and 
 earth.' In the following verse, addressed also to 
 liim, w^e find the sentiment of the Hebrew Psalmist, 
 * My soul thirsteth for Thee,' expressed by an 
 external pastoral image : — 
 
 ' Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move 
 onward as kine move to their pastures.' ^ 
 
 In the following prayer for forgiveness we find 
 the germ of the tendency, now universal in India, to 
 attribute sin to fate, contrasting strongly with the 
 
 1 R. Y. vii. 89. Trans. Max Miiller's Ancient Sanskrit 
 Literature. 
 
 2 R. Y. vii. 86. Ihid. 
 
ITcnothcism and Polijtlicism. 13 
 
 feeling of responsibility and guilt expressed in the 
 Hebrew Psalms: — 
 
 'Absolve us from the sins of our fathers and from those 
 which we committed with our OAvn bodies. 
 
 'It was not our own doing, Varuna, it was necessity, 
 an intoxicating drauglit, passion, dice, thouglitlessness. The 
 old is near to mislead the young : even sleep brings un- 
 righteousness.' ^ 
 
 These extracts present us with some of the highest 
 religious ideas we find in the Yedas ; and as they are 
 the highest so they are, according to all probability, 
 the earliest. We cannot say that they express the 
 very earliest religious ideas of the race. On the con- 
 trary, these hymns have all the appearance of being 
 the product rather of a religious revival bringing 
 fresh stimulus to the faith of the nation. We must 
 take them for what they are, and give their testi- 
 mony to the early faith of the Aryas its true value. 
 
 The religious basis of these poems is certainly 
 not pure monotheism. But do they exhibit traces 
 of antecedent monotheism ? Now, monotheism in 
 the modern sense of the word can scarcely be 
 supposed to have existed as a primitive religious 
 conception ; it could come into existence only in 
 opposition to polytheism and pantheism. We seem 
 to have here an illustration of Heo^el's law of 
 thought — from the positive to the negative and then 
 to the absolute. Monotheism is the absolute of 
 religious thought. Polytheism is the negative, in 
 opposition to which it defines itself. But what 
 is the positive ? Max Miiller has given to this the 
 
 1 R. Y. vii. 86. 
 
14 Earliest Vedic Religion. 
 
 name of Henotlieism, or One God only being present 
 to the mind of the worshipper. This may practically 
 be defined as worshipping God as the only God 
 with whom the worshipper has to do. It is 
 manifest that this can become absolute monotheism 
 only when the question has been raised whether 
 there are any other gods. The worshipper sees 
 others worshipping God, and hears Him called by 
 other names : are these the same or different ? 
 According to the answer given will monotheism 
 affirm itself or polytheism take its place, and be 
 impelled by the need for unity into pantheism. 
 The beginninfT of the struizsle between these two 
 
 O O CO 
 
 tendencies marks the stacte of religious thougjht 
 expressed in the Yedic poems. Many gods are 
 worshipped, but there is an endeavour to look on 
 them all as one. We see this in the hymn to 
 Varuna w^iich I have quoted ; he is there spoken of 
 as equivalent to the gods. 
 
 The later hymns of the Vedas show great de- 
 terioration ; and the source of this deterioration is 
 evident. It is the tendency to express God by His 
 works. While the Hebrews, following the evidence 
 of their moral consciousness, preserved the idea of 
 the spirituality of God, till the hope of their nation 
 — the ' Word made flesh ' — presented to the world 
 what it had vainly been feeling after, the Aryas, 
 following their observation of God's works, soon 
 clothed their idea of Him with a material garb, 
 which gravitated ever more rapidly to its earthly 
 centre. They lost sight of the Creator and wor- 
 
Indra and other Gods. 15 
 
 shipped the creature, whether the phenomena of 
 nature or the heroes of their nation. It is only in 
 the very earliest hymns that we get a glimpse of the 
 soul of nature-worship. In the later ones it is the 
 mere body, and these form by far the largest part of 
 the Vedas. To judge of these books by the extracts 
 I have given would lead to a far higher estimate of 
 their general character than they deserve. We 
 are constantly met with lower ideas, the material 
 mastering the spiritual. 
 
 After the Ayras had entered the plains, and 
 seen how by the blessing of the rain they were 
 changed from dry sandy wastes to verdant pas- 
 tures, that aspect of nature came to be of more 
 importance to them, and was symbolised as Indra, 
 whose worship superseded that of Varuna. He is 
 the favourite god of the Vedas, though a later con- 
 ception than those already named. He had from 
 the bef]finning a more material character than the 
 others ; his birth is spoken of, and in general the 
 progress of anthropomorphism is visible. This is 
 not to be wondered at. Even to persons less under 
 the influence of natural phenomena than the Vedic 
 bards, the approach of the monsoon sweeping over the 
 plains, the piled clouds moving up in sharp distinction 
 against the clear blue sky, wdth the lightning flash- 
 ing beneath and the thunder rolling, readily suggests 
 the idea of a kinor leadim:; his hosts to battle. 
 
 After Indra, Agni, the god of fire — manifested in 
 the firmament as the sun, in the air as lightning, 
 and on the altar as fire — was most revered, and lie 
 was especially the god of sacrifice. So too Vayu, 
 
16 Earliest Vcdic Religion. 
 
 the wind, SuRYA, the sun, and other objects of 
 nature, were addressed as gods ; and as conceptions 
 of the Deity became more gross, a census of the 
 gods, numbering thirty-three,^ was taken. 
 
 In the midst of all this, however, we find a 
 marked difference between Indian and Greek 
 mythology. In the latter the places and re- 
 lations of the various gods are distinctly arranged ; 
 in the former the henotheistic sentiment I have 
 referred to of there being one God, who alone 
 should be worshipped, made the worshippers of 
 each god exalt him as such. In most of the 
 hymns, the god who is addressed is spoken of 
 as thouG^h he alone existed, and as though the 
 writer was not conscious of any other. Sometimes 
 he is expressly identified with others. ' Whatever 
 we offer in repeated and plentiful oblations to any 
 other deity is assuredly offered to thee (Agni).' ^ 
 This is in some hymns carried so far as to present 
 the germs of pantheism — another characteristic of 
 modern Hinduism. In a hymn to Aditi ^ we find 
 the following : ' Aditi is the sky (Dyaus) ; Aditi is 
 the air ; Aditi is the mother, and father, and son ; 
 Aditi is the collective gods ; Aditi is the five 
 persons ; * Aditi is whatever has been born ; 
 Aditi is whatever is to be born.' But, again, 
 
 ^ In modern Hinduism this has swelled to thirty-three crores, 
 or 330,000.000. 
 
 2 R. V. 1, 2, 3, 6. 
 
 ^ The meaning of this word is properly the Infinite, though the 
 aspect of the dawn opening up the gates of the infinite seems to 
 have suggested it as the name of a goddess. The sun is called 
 Aditya, or son of Aditi. 
 
 ^ Possibly the modern Panchayat, or court of five arbitrators. 
 
Yearnings after the Unknoivn God. 17 
 
 several gods are occasionally addressed in one 
 hymn; and later, as the conceptions become 
 grosser, jealousies and quarrels take place among 
 them. These are characteristics of the religion 
 of India to the present day. 
 
 But alongside of this there was also a struggling 
 after an expression of the conception of the one 
 God. While a daily deteriorating polytheism 
 satisfied the majority, some more thoughtful minds 
 recoiled from it, and, unable to find satisfaction 
 elsewhere, looked to the unknown God. The 
 following hymn is perhaps the most striking ex- 
 pression of this yearning of the mind to be found 
 in any literature : — 
 
 ' Then there was neither Aught nor Nought, no air nor sky 
 beyond. 
 
 What covered all ? Where rested all 1 In watery gulf pro- 
 found ? 
 
 Xor death was then, nor deathlessness, nor change of night 
 and day, 
 
 That One breathed calmly, self - sustained ; nought else 
 beyond It lay. 
 
 Gloom hid in gloom existed first — one sea, eluding view, 
 
 That One, a void in chaos wrapt, by inward fervour grew. 
 
 Within It first arose desire, the primal germ of mind, 
 
 Which Nothing with Existence links, as sages searching find. 
 
 The kindling ray that shot across the dark and drear abyss. 
 
 Was it beneath ? or high aloft % What bard can answer this ? 
 
 There fecundating powers were found, and mighty forces 
 strove, — 
 
 A self-sup23ortirig mass beneath and energy above. 
 
 AVho knows, who ever told from whence this vast creation rose? 
 
 No gods had then been born — who then can e'er the truth 
 disclose ? 
 
 B 
 
18 Earliest Vedic Religion. 
 
 Whence sprang tliis world, and wlietlier framed by Land 
 
 divine or no, — 
 Its Lord in heaven alone can tell, if even He can show.' ^ 
 
 111 this hymn we find the theistic idea still 
 struggling to express itself, but nearly crushed by 
 a sense of the mystery of creation, and seemingly 
 ready to yield to the pantheism that was already 
 asserting itself in Aryan thought. 
 
 Turning from the gods to tlie Worship paid 
 them, the following passage may be taken : — 
 
 ' We deprecate thy wrath ^\\\h. 'prostrations, with sacrifice, and 
 with oblations ; averter of misfortnne, wise and illustrious, be 
 present amongst ns, and mitigate the evils we have committed. 
 
 'Yaruna, loose for me the upper, the middle, the lower 
 band (of sin) ; so, son of Aditi, shall we, through faultlessness 
 in thy worship, become freed from sin.' ^ 
 
 These verses show the kind of w^orship paid and 
 its purpose. The object of the worshipper was to 
 be freed from sin and to avert the wrath of God 
 consequent thereon. For this purpose hymns were 
 chanted, prostrations performed, and flowers and 
 clarified butter offered in oblation ; but the chief 
 means to this end was the sacrifice, which was of 
 four kinds — the goat, the cow, the horse, and man. 
 This last is the most savage feature in early Aryan 
 worship, but it is one which we find in almost all 
 ancient religions. The sacrifice of the horse seems 
 to have been considered the most important,^ and is 
 
 1 E. V. X. 129. Trans, by Dr. Muir in Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. 
 
 2 AYilson's Hig Veda, p, 64. 
 
 3 In some respects it was also the most revolting. The Yajur 
 Veda, in which -vve have the details of the ceremony, was perhaps 
 compiled later than this period ; but it seems to show that the 
 
Forms of Worship. 19 
 
 one rite which links the Aiyas with northern 
 tribes. As to liow sacrifice delivered the sacrificer 
 from sin we find no attempt at explanation till a 
 later period; and I therefore defer further con- 
 sideration of it. 
 
 Of a Future Life the Aryas seem at first to 
 have had no idea. Immortality seems afterwards 
 to have been looked on as a gift that might be 
 granted by the gods, but not an inherent property 
 of man's nature. The good and virtuous man 
 midit attain to it, while annihilation awaited the 
 
 ancient religion of India, like the modern, combined high con- 
 ceptions of God with very loathsome conceptions and very loath- 
 some worship. The following incident will show its character and 
 some consequences that have recently resulted from it : — ' In the 
 October number of the IiidUm Evangelical Revieio the Rev. T. 
 Williams, of Rewari, exposes the abominable character of the 
 Yajur Veda. Three years ago, Mr. W^illiams in his annual report 
 attacked the character of this Veda, and declared that Dayananda 
 Saraswati, the first leader of the Arya Somaj, had deliberately 
 falsified his translation of it, so as to gloss over its obscenity. 
 Since that time a controversy has raged over it between the 
 orthodox party, which objected to his translation, and the Aryas, 
 Avho maintained it. As the question was largely one as to the 
 trutlifulness of the great commentator, JMahidhara, the Aryas 
 translated his commentary into Urdu, and published it in the 
 Nagri and Urdu characters. Thereupon the Hindus, under the 
 impression that the translation was a forgery, directed the atten- 
 tion of the police to the book. The police took it up, and prose- 
 cuted the authors, printers, and publishers for publishing obscene 
 literature. The charge of ol)scenity was proved, and heavy fines, 
 which have been reduced on appeal, were passed upon six members 
 of the Arya Somaj. 'We wonder how the average Hindu Avill 
 regard this prosecution and its result. A perfectly true com- 
 mentary on the Veda is pronounced obscene ! But the Veda is 
 believed by him to be the very word of God, perfectly pure, vd%e, 
 and eternal ! One result of this prosecution will be that the 
 Christian 15ible will be left in its vernacular translations with- 
 out a rival as a religious and moral guide.' — Lidkm b'Uiiulard, 
 December 1891. 
 
20 Earliest Vedic Religion. 
 
 sinner.^ Future blessings they did not desire. 
 The boons they asked of their gods were temporal 
 gifts, abundance of cattle, increase of children, life 
 to a good old age, freedom from pain, triumph- 
 ing over their enemies. They seem, from their 
 hymns, to have been a vigorous, hearty race, en- 
 joying life, and living and acting only for the 
 present. 
 
 In all this we find but little resemblance to 
 modern Hinduism, and though religious develop- 
 ment will account for much, it will not account for 
 all the change. But we must remember that this 
 was the creed of the inhabitants of only a small 
 corner of Hindustan. From the Sutlej to Cape 
 Comorin were spread the Dasyus, tribes and nations 
 of an alien race and alien religion, of which the 
 Vedas take no account, but which has probably 
 helped to mould Hinduism as much as the purer 
 faith of the Aryas. Of the primitive religion of 
 these tribes we have now no literary remains, the 
 Tamil and Telugu literature having grown up since 
 these nations were Brahmanised. But, judging 
 from ruined monuments and from tradition, from 
 the elements which we see conserved in Hinduism, 
 and from the present state of many aboriginal 
 tribes, we may conclude that fetich ism and devil- 
 worship prevailed among the ruder tribes, and ' tree 
 and serpent' and phallic worship among the more 
 advanced. The whole of India was thus before the 
 Aryas, a vast field for conquest and colonisation, 
 and for civilising with thei r higher social and 
 1 See Muir's Sajishrit Texts, vol. v. pp. 284, ff. 
 
Contowpovary Hcbrcio Religion. 21 
 
 religious culture. How they fulfilled this mission 
 we shall shortly see. 
 
 But before tracing further the religious develop- 
 ment of these Aryas, let us turn for a moment to 
 another migration, which had probably taken place 
 even earlier than theirs to India — a migration of 
 much smaller dimensions, of which we have much 
 fewer records, but which has exercised a far wider 
 influence on the history of the world — the migration 
 of Abraham from Mesopotamia to Palestine. We 
 have only a brief historical account of it ; we have 
 no account of the creed of the patriarch and his 
 followers, only a few indications as to what they 
 believed. We have none of their hymns, if they 
 had any ; and we know nothing of what philosophic 
 views they held. But we find one religious element 
 which is wholly wanting in the Vedas — a conscious- 
 ness of the presence and guidance of God. In the 
 Vedas we see man seeking after God if haply he 
 might find Him ; in Abraham we see God seeking 
 man. In the former the want of the human heart 
 is expressed ; in the latter the divine response 
 appears. After centuries have passed, we find in 
 the developments of these two religions in the 
 present day the same features, more strongly marked 
 than ever. 
 
CHAPTER IT. 
 
 BRAHMANISM. 
 
 LET US now pass over a period of six hundred 
 years to the time preceding the first great 
 religious movement in India, which shook not only 
 it, but all Asia to its utmost extremities. The 
 Aryas have pushed forward their conquests as far 
 as the Nerbudda, and have even effected settlements 
 beyond it. Changes have come alike over their 
 social system and their religion : Caste rules with 
 its iron sway ; a degraded polytheism and a rigid 
 sacerdotalism have been developed from the original 
 faith. 
 
 The origin of Caste must be looked for in the 
 relation of the Aryas to the conquered nations. Of 
 these the most important was the Sudras — possibly 
 the Hudralwi of Herodotus. As in Europe, from 
 numbers of the Sclavonic race being reduced to 
 servitude, the name csclare or slave came to be 
 applied to all bondmen, so in India the name 
 Sudra came to be applied to all the conquered 
 tribes. We know what a difference exists in any 
 society between master and bondmen, especially 
 when the latter are of a different race or of a 
 different colour ; and race and colour are the mean- 
 
 22 
 
Origin of Caste. 28 
 
 iiif^s of the two words which in Sanskrit and Hindi 
 
 o 
 
 stand for caste.^ The generation has not yet passed 
 away that lias seen in America how low and 
 degraded the condition of a subject race may 
 become, even when modified by the presence of 
 the Christian reh'gion — how the words of the 
 Bible may be twisted into supporting iniquities 
 utterly opposed to its spirit ; and we may imagine 
 how vast the distinction between the rulers and 
 the ruled would become, when a plastic religion 
 lent itself to be moulded in the hands of the former 
 to confirm their claims. The position assigned to 
 the slaves by the laws of the Southern States of 
 America was noble compared with that assigned to 
 the Sudras by the old code of Manu. No Southern 
 planter ever dreamt of refusing to allow the negroes 
 to be baptized ; but in India, while the lordly 
 Aryas were the Uuice-'boTn, the Sudras were only 
 the once-horn. They could assume no sacred thread, 
 the symbol of the second birth, admitting them to 
 the privileges and hopes of religion, and they 
 were menaced with death if they dared to engage 
 
 1 Caste is not an Indian word. Its original form, casta, belongs 
 to the Portuguese, by whom it was originally nsed among them- 
 selves to express 'cast,' 'mould,' 'race, 'kind,' 'quality.' It 
 was applied by them, when they first arrived in the East, to 
 designate the peculiar system of religious and social distinctions 
 which they observed among the Hindu people, particularly as 
 founded on race. The Indian word which partially corresponds 
 with caste is jciti, 'race' or 'nation.' Varna, another word used 
 for it, originally meant colour. Gradually these Indian Avords, 
 conveniently rendered by caste, have come to represent not only 
 varieties of race and colour, but every original, hereditary, 
 religious, instituted, and conventional distinction which it is 
 possible to imagine. See Indian Caste, by Dr. "Wilson. 
 
24 Brahmanism. 
 
 in any of the acts of worship allowed to their 
 superiors. 
 
 But this tyranny of race could not exist without 
 reacting on the twice-born themselves. We know 
 in America what a gap there was in slave-holding 
 times between the slave-owners and the poor whites, 
 and so, too, class distinctions sprang up among the 
 Aryas, though on quite different principles, and 
 with much more inexorable rules. The lano-uagje 
 of the old hymns had become obsolete, and was 
 known only to a class of men who had made it 
 their business to study it, and who thus held the 
 key to all religious service. These were the wor- 
 shipping or praying ones, the Beahmans, who had 
 come to be looked on as demi-gods, the highest of 
 castes, safe in unapproachable sanctity. It was the 
 greatest of all crimes to put them to death, and 
 therefore, of whatever crime they might be guilty, 
 the utmost the king could do was to banish them 
 from his kingdom. The Kshatriyas, or warriors, 
 imitated their religious teachers, and claimed privi- 
 leges which the priests, who depended on them for 
 protection, readily granted. They formed the second 
 caste, with a position but little inferior to the Brah- 
 mans, while under them the Vaisyas, merchants and 
 farmers, formed the third caste. These were the three 
 castes of the twice-born, while the whole of the 
 Sudras, or once-born, were slumped together as the 
 fourth caste. 
 
 The followinn^ is the account ^^iven in the 
 Institutes of Manu, the great Indian legislator, to 
 account for this division. Though the book was 
 
Occupations of Different Castes. 25 
 
 compiled later, it expresses the idea of caste 
 well : — ■ 
 
 'That the human race mii^ht be multiplied, he (Brahma) 
 caused the Brahman, tlie Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the 
 SuDRA to proceed from his mouth, his arm, his thigh, and his 
 foot.' 1 
 
 This is made the basis of legislation : — 
 
 'A once-born man who insults the twice-born with gross 
 invectives ought to liave his tongue slit ; for he sprang from 
 the lowest part of Brahma.' ^ 
 
 Each caste had its distinctive duties — the Brah- 
 mans to teach and to sacrifice ; the Kshatriyas, or 
 warriors, to rule and defend the people ; the Vaisyas, 
 or merchants, to trade and to tend cattle ; the Sudras 
 to serve the other three. The distinctions between 
 them were souglit to be maintained by strict laws 
 about food and intercourse, and by restrictions upon 
 intermarriage. 
 
 It will be seen from this account that the Brah- 
 nians were at the head of the social system, and 
 that it was their knowledge of the old hymns which 
 was the foundation of their superiority. This 
 knowledge had different effects, as it always will 
 have on different minds. Some used it as a means 
 of impressing their superiority on the more ignorant. 
 Others were led into deeper speculation as to the 
 meaning of what they learned. Hence arose the 
 two classes. Brahman PiiiESTS and Brahman Sages. 
 
 The former developed an elaborate ceremonial of 
 sacrifice, that tended to surround them with religious 
 
 1 Inst, of Manu, i. 31. 2 jj^^ yy^i 270. 
 
 \ 
 
2 6 Brahmanis^n. 
 
 awe. The ancient hymns were gathered into the 
 collection known as the EiG Veda, and two other 
 Vedas were compiled by selections from it — one 
 called the Yajur Veda, the liturgy of a lower order 
 of priests, to whom was entrusted the material part 
 of the sacrifice ; and the other, called the Sama 
 Veda, the hymn-book of a higher order of priests, 
 who sang in chorus at certain points during its 
 performance. The Sanskrit word for these hymns 
 is Mantra, which in Hindi and in modern Sanskrit 
 means a charm. Some of these charms consist of 
 parts of the hymns of the Eig Veda, which the 
 Brahmans now use wdthout having the slightest 
 idea of their meaning or of whence they are derived. 
 A fourth Veda, called the Athakva, was afterwards 
 added, more as a collection of charms than to aid 
 in sacrifice.^ 
 
 It would be tedious to enter into all the details 
 of ceremonial which were at this time instituted, 
 and which were all calculated to surround the 
 Brahmans with a halo of sanctity and power. 
 Attached to each of the Vedas a new literature 
 sprang up, called the Brahmanas, professing to be 
 a sort of rubric for the use of the Vedas during the 
 sacrifice, but in reality containing many additional 
 commands or stories. They may be considered the 
 priestly literature of the age, and they show in a 
 
 1 Many of tlie hymns in the Atharva A^eda are probably as old 
 as any in the Rig Veda ; but they are collected for an entirely 
 different purpose, for imprecation, and not sacrifice. The beautiful 
 hymn quoted p. 1 1 is found in the Atharva, but it is there degi'aded 
 into an introduction to an imprecation. See Prof. Eoth, in IMuir's 
 Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 64. 
 
Brahmanic Deities. 27 
 
 strikiiiQ; manner the bliolitino- effect which their 
 assumed power and priestly formalism had on the 
 minds of the Brahmans themselves. ' No one 
 would have supposed that at so early a period and 
 in so primitive a state of society, there could have 
 risen up a literature which for pedantry and down- 
 right absurdity can hardly be matched anywhere. 
 ... It is most important to the historian that he 
 should know how soon the fresh and healthy growth 
 of a nation can be blighted by priestcraft and 
 superstition. It is most important that we should 
 know that nations are liable to these epidemics in 
 their youth as well as in their dotage. These 
 works deserve to be studied as the physician studies 
 the twaddle of idiots and the ravincf of madmen. 
 They will disclose to a thoughtful eye the ruins of 
 faded grandeur, the memories of noble aspirations. 
 But let us only try to translate these works into 
 our own language, and we shall feel astonished that 
 human lauG^uaGfe and human thouoht should ever 
 have been used for such purposes.' ^ 
 
 On turning to the ideas of God exhibited in these 
 and other records, we see one result of the first 
 error of expressing the Deity by His works — a 
 great development of polytheism. The original 
 meaninfij of the names of the srods of the Vedas had 
 with the chaiiGfe of lan^uaore been lost, and no 
 suspicion is betrayed that they have a personality 
 less defined than that of men. Some had dropped 
 out of worship, and others had assumed a foremost 
 place. Indra was still one of the principal gods, 
 ^ Max Miiller, Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 389. 
 
2 8 Brahmanis7n. 
 
 but Vishnu, a very inferior god in the Vedas, was 
 coming to dispute liis supremacy. An entirely 
 new god, Brahma, had appeared. The origin of the 
 conception of this god cannot now be determined, 
 but the name seems to have originated with the 
 Brahmans, and they as his worshippers seem to 
 have been called after him. Brahman means 
 prayer or sacred rite, and Brahma, he of prayer. 
 It was possibly a name given originally to whatever 
 god was honoured in. sacrifice, and we find him 
 identified with other gods. The root, however, 
 means also increase, and we find Brahma more 
 definitely conceived of as the Creator. Some of the 
 myths with regard to him are merely gross con- 
 ceptions of the process of creation. He is some- 
 times represented as producing the universe from 
 an Qgg, and sometimes by separating himself into 
 male and female. He was specially the god of the 
 Brahmanical caste, but he never came to be popular 
 with the other castes. As old gods assumed new 
 places, or new ones were created, fresh myths, 
 growing constantly more sensuous, gathered around 
 them. 
 
 It will already be seen that at this period sacri- 
 fice was the great centre of religion. It was as 
 priests of sacrifice that the Brahmans obtained their 
 power, and in connection with sacrifice that the 
 sacred hymns were sung. The word itself, yajna or 
 yagal preserves the sacred significance attached to 
 the act in primitive worship ; and some of its prin- 
 cipal features corresponded closely with those which 
 1 From yaja to worship ; of Greek hagio, and Latin sacer. 
 
Significance of Sacrifice. 2 9 
 
 gave significance to sacrifice under the Levitical 
 law. 
 
 The substitutionary nature of sacrifice is clearly 
 affirmed. The sacrificer^'s the animal, and ransoms 
 himself by it. By sacrificing he propitiates the 
 gods, removes his sin, breaks the cords of death, 
 and enters ' the boat that ferrieth over to lieaven.' 
 And if the question be put, How can mere sacrifices 
 effect all this ? the answer is. That it accomplishes 
 all by faith. * By faith the fire of sacrifice is 
 kindled ; by faith the offering is offered.' ^ 
 
 It will be seen that the Brahmans attached to 
 their sacrifices a significance and a purpose not very 
 different from that which was attached to the old 
 Levitical sacrifices. Still more sucfsfestive is the 
 difference between the two ; the latter were at 
 most typical, the former were sacramental. The 
 Hebrews more than any other nation expressed 
 their sense of the utter inadequacy of mere 
 sacrifice : — 
 
 ' For Thou deliglitest not in sacrifice, else would I give it ; 
 
 Thou hast no pleasure in burnt-offering. 
 
 The sacrifices of God are a broken sjnrit : 
 
 A broken and a contrite heart, God, Thou wilt not despise.' 
 
 At the same time, more than any other they 
 persisted in offering them — as divinely commanded, 
 and as the only conceivable way to atone for sin of 
 which they were conscious. The idea of a greater 
 sacrifice — of the Servant of God, who was as a lamb 
 
 1 The late Mr. Hay, of Yizagapatam, in the Indian Evangelical 
 Revieio, January 1874, gives a list of texts from the Brahmanas 
 illustrating these points. 
 
3 Bralimanism. 
 
 sacrificed to bear the iniquity of all — is expressed in 
 Isaiah. At length, in the death of Christ, the Son 
 of God, on Calvary, the types of Jewish sacrifice 
 were fulfilled ; and raay we not also say that the 
 yearnings of the human soul expressed in old 
 Erahmanical sacrifice and liturgy found their re- 
 sponse — the only response that could fulfil them ? 
 
 But well - nigh a thousand years before the 
 coming of Christ, the Brahmans had felt and in 
 their own way expressed the truth that only when 
 the Deity was present in sacrifice could it be 
 efficacious. Conscious seemingly that the animal 
 sacrificed could not of itself bear the sin that it was 
 to atone for, or accomplish the work that by its 
 offering was to be accomplished, they boldly 
 declared that God Himself was in the animal 
 sacrificed, and that thus it was efficacious. In this 
 respect Brahmanical sacrifice was sacramental rather 
 than typical ; it resembled the sacrifice of the host 
 in the Eoman Catholic Church rather than the 
 Levitical sacrifice. The Creator, under the name of 
 PRA.JAPATI, is said thus to be offered in sacrifice, and 
 how this is possible is explained with a subtlety 
 that a Jesuit apologist might envy. 
 
 ' Prajapati is this sacrifice. Prajapati is both of these two 
 tilings, littered and iinuttered, finite and infinite. Wliat the 
 priest does with the Yajiis text, with that he consecrates the 
 form of Prajapati which is uttered and finite. And what he 
 does silently with that he consecrates the form of Prajapati 
 which is Iinuttered and infinite.' ^ 
 
 But it is more frequently Vishnu that is thus 
 ^ Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 393. 
 
FicpclUnt Effects of the Cult. 3 1 
 
 spoken of. He is said to have become incarnate 
 
 in the animal sLain — to have become incarnate in 
 
 order to be sacrificed, and by his sacrifice to have 
 
 become the greatest of the gods. 
 
 'Then the gods said, "Whoever among us, through toil, 
 austerity, faith, sacrifice, and oblation, first comprehends the 
 issue of the sacrifice, let him be the most eminent of us ; 
 this shall be common to us all." To this they consented, 
 saying, " Be it so." Vishnu first attained the proposed 
 object. He became the most eminent of the gods. . . . He 
 who is this Vishnu is sacrifice ; he who is this sacrifice is 
 Vishnu.' ^ 
 
 This idea has never been entirely forgotten, and 
 even in the latest of the Puranas, the Bhagavata, 
 sacrifice is given as one of twenty-two incarnations 
 of Vishnu. Amid all the puerilities and absurdities 
 of the texts relating to this subject, the truth sought 
 after must not be lost si^rht of. 
 
 o 
 
 But this only increased the original difficulty, 
 and by seeking a premature fulfilment of sacrifice 
 hastened its rejection by India altogether. If it 
 was difficult to believe that an animal could bear 
 man's sin, it was much more difficult to believe 
 that an animal could be God. We know the 
 repugnance of some earnest, philosophic minds to 
 accept the idea that Christ was God, even though 
 they exhaust the powers of human language in 
 praise of His Godlike character. So too the idea 
 that God was sacrificed as an animal could not but 
 provoke a reaction and alienate the best thought of 
 
 ^ For this and similar texts see Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. iv. 
 pp. 121-29. 
 
O -J 
 
 Brahmanism. 
 
 the country. It was an idea that could consist 
 only with a blind and tyrannical sacerdotalism, 
 which it helped to exalt, but which it must also 
 help to destroy. 
 
 We find, accordingly, alongside of this ritualistic 
 development a rationalistic development, the records 
 of which, called the Upanishads, may be looked on 
 as the literature of the Brahman sashes, as the 
 Brahmanas are that of the priests. They are the 
 only parts of the Vedas now extensively read in 
 India. They come at the end of the Vedas, and 
 are therefore called Yedant (Veda end) ; whence 
 the name of the most influential school of modern 
 Hindu philosophy, which professes to be founded 
 on them. It would be hard to say what philo- 
 sophical opinion might not be supported on their 
 authority, for the most contradictory statements 
 find a place in them, yet the tendency is on the 
 whole towards pantheism. We have seen that the 
 original error of expressing God by His works 
 developed, on the one hand, into erecting each of 
 the natural phenomena into distinct gods, and thus 
 led to polytheism. In the Upanishads, on the 
 other hand, we see the same error developing into 
 confounding God with His works and His works 
 with God. In the earlier hymns of the Vedas, 
 too, when polytheism had made some way, the 
 worshippers of each individual god sought to exalt 
 it to the position of the one God, by identifying it 
 with other gods, and even with creation. What 
 was at first merely figurative was afterwards viewed 
 as real, what was at first mysticism was afterwards 
 
Tra n s m ig ra tio n — A sect icism. 3 3 
 
 considered perfect pliilosopliy. We find accordingl}'-, 
 in the latter parts of the Vedas, attempts to exphiiii 
 on a rational basis all the poetical figures of the 
 former parts. In one place it is stated that Self 
 or Spirit alone existed, and he thought let me 
 create tlie worlds, and he created these worlds. 
 Again, Delusion is called the great principle, 
 and this world the effect of Delusion on Spirit, 
 while elsewhere Delusion is called one of the 
 powers of Spirit. In a word, we find much pan- 
 theistic thought but no pantheistic pliilosophy. 
 The elements existed, but they had not been 
 systematised. 
 
 One result of this process of thouglit was modify- 
 ing the belief in a future state into the doctrine 
 of the Transmigration of Souls. This doctrine, 
 which makes a man in a future birth atone for the 
 errors of tliis, strikes at the root of the oriuinal idea 
 of sacrifice ; but as it is only in modern Hinduism 
 that we find it fully developed, I defer the con- 
 sideration of it, merely noting that at tliis time it 
 first appeared on the horizon of Hindu thought and 
 religion. One consequence which it had was the 
 growth of asceticism and the practice of austerities. 
 When happiness in a future state was made to 
 depend on a man's exertions in liis present state, 
 it naturally led him to seek to be Iree from those 
 attachments which nii^ht occasion his incurrinc' 
 guilt, and this led again to giving up the plain 
 duties of life for meditation and penance. These 
 came at last to be exalted by some as superior to 
 everything else. Self-denial was sublimated into 
 
 c 
 
34 B)'alimanism. 
 
 self-torture, and became the most geuerallj accepted 
 symbol of sanctity. 
 
 These two ciirrents of thought — pantheism and 
 polytheism, philosophy and sacerdotalism — could 
 not, in such a country as India, co-exist without 
 interpenetrating one another. The demon of heresy 
 had not yet appeared, the sages and ascetics pro- 
 fessed to be devout worshippers of the gods, and 
 the priests adapted their religion to the ideas of the 
 philosophers with a consistent logic such as could be 
 witnessed in no country but India. It was natural 
 enough that they should take advantage of the 
 doctrine of transmigration by prescribing ceremonies 
 and purifications to attain beatitude in a future state 
 of existence. It was natural enough, too, that they 
 should not be behindhand in the practice of those 
 austerities, which gave them an odour of sanctity 
 with the people and of ridicule with the sceptics. 
 But what shall we say of their declaring austerities 
 to be the source of the power of the gods them- 
 selves ^ — the origin of their very divinity, of their 
 calling even the sacrifice of Vishnu an act of pen- 
 ance performed to gain power ? When religion had 
 reached this point it had evidently run to seed 
 and was smitten with decay. 
 
 Thus, by the disintegration and reintegration of 
 ideas, we see that many of the elements of modern 
 Hinduism had already been developed out of the 
 primitive faith of the Vedas, But other elements 
 were imported from other sources. While the 
 
 ^ Sanskrit Texts, vol. iv. p. 181, vol. v. p. 15. 
 
llamas Ejcpcdition. 35 
 
 Brahmaiis had been drivelling and speculating, the 
 Kshatiivas, the warrior caste, had been fiiihtiuG: and 
 conquering. In one conflict, indeed, they seem to 
 have been worsted. They did not at once yield to 
 the Brahmans the superiority which tliey desired 
 without a bloody struggle. The details of it are 
 altogether lost to us, and the results epitomised 
 with an exaggeration which subsequent events prove 
 to have been altogether false. But this nuich is 
 known, that a great warrior, called Pakasu Eama, 
 — possibly himself a Brahman, — espoused the cause 
 of the Brahmans, and fought against the Kshatriyas 
 wdth such success that, in later myths, he is said 
 to have extirpated them three times from the earth. 
 At all events, after this the Brahmans were left 
 undisturbed in their religious and social superiority 
 ■ — the counsellors, the priests, the gods of the 
 w^arriors and kings, while these were carving out 
 the history of their people. 
 
 Two great events belong to this period. The 
 first is the expedition of Eama Chandra from 
 Ayodhia or Oudh to Ceylon to recover his wife, 
 Sita, who had been carried off by the king of that 
 island. On the way he had to encounter many of 
 the savage or semi-civilised tribes south of the 
 Nerbudda, and with many of them he formed 
 alliances. He triumphed at last over Piavana, 
 king of Ceylon, and returned with his wife to 
 Oudh. This was the first great expedition of 
 the Aryas to the soutli, and it is imprinted 
 indelibly on the Hindu mind. It became the 
 theme of song — a mass of tradition and exag- 
 
36 Brahmanism. 
 
 geration gathered round it, and in after ages it 
 became the subject of an epic poem, the Eama- 
 YANA, which, though full of absurdities and over- 
 laid with Brahmanical conceits, yet contains some 
 of the purest and noblest thouglits to be found in 
 profane poetry. 
 
 The second great fact was the struode for 
 supremacy between two rival Kshatriya races, the 
 Pandavs and the Kauravs. After a bloody war the 
 former triumphed, with the assistance of Krishna, 
 a celebrated Indian prince and hero, and their rivals 
 were destroyed. This has produced an even greater 
 impress on the mind of India than the former. 
 Three-fourths of the Hindus are isjnorant of all that 
 has happened since. The rise and fall of Buddhism, 
 the rise and fall of Mohammedanism, even the pro- 
 gress of the English, by whom they are now ruled, 
 are for them blank pages of history ; but the 
 adventures of the Pandav brothers, two thousand 
 five hundred years ago, — their misfortunes, their 
 patience, their sufferings, their ultimate triumph, 
 and the valour of their great ally Krishna, — are 
 present realities for them ; and still, as they are 
 yearly recited at their festivals, melt them into 
 tears, move them into laughter, or excite them to 
 triumph with all the intensity of personal interest. 
 The poem in which their deeds are preserved, the 
 Mahabharat, has been so encrusted with later addi- 
 tions of the Brahmans, didactic pieces, extraneous 
 traditions, and episodes, that it is now almost 
 impossible to say what tlie original poem was. 
 -But we may safely conclude that, at the time 
 
Ahoriginal Worship. 37 
 
 of which we are speaking, the exploits of these 
 warriors were sung and heard with an interest not 
 inferior to that which they now excite ; and thus 
 the foundation was being laid of hero - worship, 
 which afterwards became an important factor in 
 Hinduism. 
 
 And there was yet another element which, though 
 altogether latent in so far as extant literature is 
 concerned, we must believe existed with an extent 
 and power which subsequent revolutions fully 
 showed. All that we have been considerincf, in so 
 far as religion, philosophy, and history are con- 
 cerned, relates only to the twice- born. The once- 
 born Sudras were out of the pale altogether, and 
 considered unfit for any religious exercise or worship. 
 Yet we cannot but suppose that they sought God 
 after their own fashion — that they had a religion, 
 a worship of their own, which their lords might 
 ignore, but which was afterwards to throw its yoke 
 over their own heads. AVe may suppose that most 
 of the Sudras, the majority of the population of 
 India, worshipped their own fetiches and deities, 
 trees and serpents, stones and idols. Already they 
 were beginning to exercise some effect on the upper 
 castes, for we find the worship of images noticed 
 in Mann. 
 
 Such, then, was the state of society before 
 Buddhism appeared in India. An inexorable caste 
 system consigned the bulk of the people to a grind- 
 ing slavery and hopeless perdition, while it exalted 
 
38 Brakmanism. 
 
 the priesthood to tlie level of the gods, and left the 
 warriors to fight and rule, and the merchants to 
 trade and get gain — both to indulge in luxury and 
 sensuality to the extent of their power. A debasing 
 sacerdotalism had been impregnated with a sceptical 
 philosophy, which needed only to be dissociated 
 from it to ensure its overthrow. It must not be 
 supposed that this represented the society of the 
 whole of India at that time. It represents only 
 the Brahmanical conception of society : what the 
 Brahmans wished to make it, and possibly what 
 they had made it where their power was established. 
 But their power was fully established only in a few 
 parts — in others it was less so, and in others not 
 at all. The Sudras in some parts might be able to 
 assert their equality even with the Brahmans, and 
 for whole nations these latter would be but foreicjn 
 priests. The two opposite extremes of consolidated 
 Brahmanism and undisturbed aboriginal society and 
 aboriginal worship existed, and between the two 
 every shade of opinion existed in a seething, un- 
 settled state — a fertile soil for a new and strong 
 religion to take root in. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 BUDDHISM.^ 
 
 BUDDHx4, to whom Baddhism owes its rise, was 
 born about six hundred years before our era in 
 the city of Kapila Vastu, the capital of a kingdom 
 not far from the foot of the Himalayas, of which his 
 father was king. He was of the Kshatriya or warrior 
 caste. The name of the clan was Sakva, whence he 
 is generally called Sakya Muni, or the Sakya sage. 
 His family name was Gautama, by which he is also 
 widely known ; his personal name was Siddharta, 
 bv which he is least known. Buddha, or The 
 Enliiihtened, was the name which he assumed when 
 he discovered the truths of his system ; by it he 
 is most generally known, and by it I will designate 
 him. 
 
 His personal history has come down to us largely 
 overlaid with fable, but from it the main facts of 
 his life have, by various writers, been disentangled 
 with considerable probability. Some of the details 
 that are still accepted may be doubted, but they are 
 regarded as such important factors in the moulding 
 
 ^ In revising tins chapter I have consulted chiefly Rhys David's 
 Buddltism and Hihhcrt Lecture, and Sir IMonier Williams' 
 Buddli ism. 
 
40 Biuldhis7n. 
 
 of his system that they need to be known if it is to 
 be understood. 
 
 His mother, Maya, died in childbirth — an incident 
 the knowledge of which is said to have exercised a 
 great infiueuce on him in after-life. He was edu- 
 cated with great care by his father, who, warned by 
 astrologers that his son would one day leave the 
 kingdom and become an anchorite, brought him up 
 in seclusion. Legends are repeated of his purity 
 in the midst of the luxury of his father's court. 
 There is little doubt that he married, and lived for 
 some years in the married state. We may believe 
 that, having an eye for the sorrows of humanity, 
 and a heart that could feel for them, he felt a 
 growing disgust with the luxury by which he was 
 surrounded that ultimately drove liim to burst 
 asunder all restraints, and give himself up to 
 asceticism. The occasion of this change in his life, 
 and in the wdiole religious history of the East, w^as 
 the following : — One day, wdien he was driving as 
 usual to his pleasure-garden, he saw a man covered 
 with wrinkles, scarcely able to speak from feebleness, 
 walking tremblingly along, leaning on his staff. He 
 asked the driver who that man was. The charioteer 
 replied that he was a man suffering from Old Age, 
 and the consequent decay of all liis powers. * Is 
 that a condition to which he and his family alone 
 are liable, or all mankind ? ' asked the prince. ' He 
 is no exception,' replied the charioteer ; ' all must 
 fall into age and decrepitude.' * Then drive my 
 chariot home again,' said the prince ; ' what have I 
 to do with pleasure who am the future abode of 
 
The Great Remiyiciation. 41 
 
 age and decay ! ' On another day he met a loath- 
 some leper, and learned from his charioteer that all 
 men were liable to Disease. On a third occasion 
 he saw a dead body, and learned that Death is the 
 end of all men. All happiness in his life of luxury 
 had fled, and he set himself to ponder how he 
 might escape the woes of wdiicli he had been witness. 
 As he was drivincf out on a fourth occasion he saw 
 a Eecluse, and learned from his charioteer that he 
 was a man who had renounced this world's wealth 
 and pleasure, lived on alms, and spent his time in 
 meditation. This suggested to the prince how he 
 might attain his end. He did not return at once 
 to his home, but drove on to the garden, where he 
 remained some time meditating on what steps he 
 should take. He resolved to follow the example of 
 the hermit, and lead a life such as his till he liad 
 discovered a cure for the miseries of mankind. 
 
 Full of this great resolve, he returned to the 
 city. The gongs in the temples were sounding, 
 everything betokened that an event of great joy had 
 taken place, and he was met with the news that 
 his w^ife had just given birth to a son, an heir to 
 the throne. This brought no joy to Buddha ; he 
 saw in it only another obstacle to his carrying out 
 his purpose. He retired to his own apartments, 
 and remained there till the festivities of the day 
 had closed, when he went to take farewell of his 
 wife. She was lying asleep, with her new-born 
 babe at her breast. He dared not awake her, for 
 he feared that if he did so his resolution might fail. 
 So he forced himself to leave without saying a word. 
 
42 Buddhism. 
 
 Passing through the banqueting hall, he saw a sight 
 which confirmed him in his resolution. The dancing 
 girls who had been engaged for the amusement of 
 the guests had fallen asleep, and were lying on the 
 floor and on the couches in various positions. They 
 presented an appearance so different from the studied 
 attitudes and movements in which they appeared 
 before the guests, an appearance so repulsive, that 
 it put the finishing touch to Buddha's disgust with 
 the life to which he had been born. Was his 
 infant son to grow up with no better means of 
 escaping from the weariness and sorrows of life 
 than could be supplied by such creatures as these ? 
 
 Then he went out of the palace, called on his 
 groom to saddle his horse, and, taking him with him 
 as his only companion, left the city. He rode all 
 nis;ht, and when mornini; dawned he had reached 
 the limit of his father's kingdom. He dismounted, 
 cut off the locks which as a warrior prince he had 
 worn, assumed the garb of a mendicant, gave his 
 robes and horse to his groom, and sent him back 
 with a message to his father and wife not to seek 
 him ; * for,' said he, ' I will not return till I can 
 bring them tidings of the great deliverance.' So 
 he set out on his quest of a way of deliverance 
 from age, disease, and death. This step is called 
 by the Buddhists the Great Renunciation. 
 
 Brahmanism does not seem to have had a great 
 hold in his father's kingdom ; but the Brahmans 
 were the recognised religious teachers of the day, 
 and he went to Benares to learn what he could 
 from them. He soon found that they were blind 
 
Buddhcis Quest of Truth. 43 
 
 leaders of the blind, utterly unuble to solve any of 
 his difficulties. He resolved, therefore, to go to the 
 jungle, and try a life of the severest abstinence and 
 mortification of the flesh. In this he persevered, 
 though he was entreated by his relatives to return ; 
 and he was followed by some Brahmans who ad- 
 mired his devotion. Six years he continued to 
 afflict himself with fasting, till his strength wasted 
 away and he one day fainted. When he recovered 
 he was overcome with horror at the thoncjht of how 
 nearly he had passed away without having dis- 
 covered the remedy he was seeking. 
 
 He resolved to change his plan, to take more 
 food, and to care for his bodily wants. This implied 
 a renunciation scarcely less great than the former. 
 He cut himself off, also, from the sympathy he 
 had secured. His Brahman followers thought he 
 was relapsing into worldliness. They returned to 
 Benares, and left him alone to solve the problem 
 of humanity. 
 
 He was on the point of giving up the quest, but 
 again he made the endeavour. He took with him 
 food sufficient to support him forty days, went into 
 the jungle, took up his abode beneath a mimosa 
 tree, which has therefore become sacred to Buddhists, 
 and gave himself up to the closest thought and 
 meditation. He had while there, especially towards 
 the close, to endure a fearful mental struc^^le. 
 Demons seemed to assault him, and to try to 
 turn him aside from his search. But at last he 
 saw clearly the solution of all his difficulties. 
 The 'Four Verities,' by which he thought the 
 
44 Buddhism. 
 
 way of deliverance was to be attained, rose before 
 him. Of these I will speak subsequently, when 
 we turn to his system. Meanwhile, I continue 
 the history. 
 
 He had now obtained for himself the desired 
 knowledge ; but he had to pass through another 
 struggle equally severe before he could face the 
 ordeal of teaching the new doctrine in public. At 
 last he triumphed ; he returned to Benares, as he 
 said to one whom he met on the way, to roll ' the 
 wheel of the law ' he had discovered, so that, like 
 a chariot, the news of deliverance might run its 
 course through the earth. He first soucjht out the 
 Brahmans who had followed and then forsaken him, 
 and they became his first disciples. He taught for 
 some time at Benares, and then visited other places. 
 His doctrines spread with rapidity, and kings even 
 became his disciples. He returned to his native 
 town, and persuaded his father, wife, and relatives 
 to accept his law. He never swerved from the 
 manner of life he had chosen, but continued to the 
 end a recluse, without a single worldly possession, 
 never asking for food, but taking all that was given 
 him. He received into his society all who came to 
 him, making no distinction between the low-born 
 Sudra and the hii'h-born Brahman. So he went 
 about from city to city and village to village till 
 he was eighty years of age, when, one day having 
 partaken of some unwholesome food, and having 
 afterward walked a long distance, he was seized 
 with dysentery, and died, or, as the Buddhists now 
 say, entered Nirvana. 
 
The Four Verities. 45 
 
 System of Buddha. — I liave given tliese details of 
 the legend of Buddha's life, as they are needful to 
 understand his system and the influence which it 
 has had. What now was the law which with such 
 agony he discovered, and with such self-denial and 
 success proclaimed ? AVe must lead up to it in tlie 
 way in which Buddha himself led up to it. His 
 svstem is announced in the Four Verities which lie 
 discovered beneath the mimosa tree. It will be 
 remembered that the object of his quest in leaving 
 his father's house was to discover how old age, 
 disease, and death could be conquered. 
 
 1. The first truth then teaches the cause of 
 suffering. If the cause is found it may be removed. 
 The cause he teaches to be existence. The first verity 
 is, ' Wherever there is existence there is suffering.' 
 
 2. The next question was. What causes existence 
 to continue ? The proper question might seem to 
 be. What causes existence ? But Buddha said, ' I 
 have nothing to do with that : I exist, and I have 
 only to find out how I may cease to exist.' Death, 
 he believed, as we shall subsequently see, did not 
 put an end to existence. What prevented its doing 
 so ? The answer he believed to be, The instinctive 
 craving for life in man. So his second verity is, 
 ' The lust of life prevents the cessation of existence.' 
 
 3. Having discovered this, he thought he saw a 
 way to the attainment of his end ; this lust of life 
 man could deal with. His third verity is, ' The 
 conquest of the lust of life will lead to the cessa- 
 tion of existence.' 
 
 4. There remained only to teach how to conquer 
 
46 Baddhisjii. 
 
 the lust of life ; for this he promulgated his law. 
 The fourth verity is, ' The law of Buddha is the path 
 that leads to the conquest of the lust of life.' 
 
 This law we shall presently state ; meanwhile, 
 let lis seek to understand more fully tlie system of 
 the universe enunciated in these verities. Under- 
 lying it is the system of thought and religion in 
 which Buddha himself had been brought up. 
 
 It implies the doctrine of Transmigration. This 
 seems to be inhaled with the very air of the East, 
 and it had secured its place in the Brahmanical 
 system. Buddha adopted it as the only explana- 
 tion he could get of the mysteries of existence, but 
 he did nob adopt it in the sense in which it is 
 usually accepted. He did not believe in the separ- 
 ate existence of the soul, so he could not teach the 
 transmigration of the soul. But he taught that 
 when one being died the same being was born 
 again, in the sense of the same parts and powers 
 being brouglit together again — like the parts of a 
 Chinese puzzle, always the same, though put up in 
 different forms. This involves an idea too abstract 
 to be stable, and the idea of personal transmigration, 
 the transmigration of the soul, has been the practical 
 one anionsj the Buddhists, one from which even 
 Buddha himself could not escape. 
 
 Buddha also accepted the Brahmanical pantheon, 
 its heavens with their gods as well as its hells 
 with their demons, but these, he taught, were merely 
 places and forms of existence analogous to earth 
 and its inhabitants, and subject to the same laws. 
 We have seen that in ancient Brahmanism some 
 
Karma. 4 7 
 
 gods were believed to liave attained their divinity 
 by religious austerities. This practically overthrew 
 their divinity, and made them subject to a higher 
 law ; and Buddha drew from it the conclusion that 
 they were subject to the same laws as man. They 
 had gained their high position by good deeds ; but 
 they were liable to decay, and must, if they con- 
 tinued to exist, pass into another condition — become 
 men, animals, demons, or some otlier form of exist- 
 ence. What was the law that determined this ? 
 It was Karma, and this is a word which all must 
 learn to understand who would understand Buddhism. 
 The conception, and possibly the name, existed 
 before Buddha's time, but, as far as we can judge, 
 he gave it the definite meaning and place which it 
 has in his cosmical system. Karma means properly 
 ' deeds ; ' it means with Buddha the fruition or con- 
 sequences of deeds, and from that the law which 
 regulates these consequences. Every deed must 
 have some result : man's present deeds determine 
 what he shall be and do in his next existence ; his 
 present condition has been determined by his deeds 
 in a previous existence, no deed remaining without 
 its effect. There is in this idea an anticipation of 
 the doctrine of the indestructibility of force ; but it 
 is a moral rather than a physical force, a power 
 which holds together the elements that are dissolved 
 at death, and brings them together in a new form to 
 receive the fruition — the reward or punishment — 
 due to the former. 
 
 This doctrine of Karma is one of the elements of 
 Buddha's system which has survived in modern 
 
 \ 
 
48 Buddhism. 
 
 
 Hinduism, but in the latter it has an even more 
 absolute position. No modern Hindu dreams of 
 the possibility of escaping from the power of Karma ; 
 but Buddha asserted the superiority of the human 
 will Karma regulated, it did not cause, existence ; 
 it necessitated what man must be if he continued 
 to exist, and man could not contrijl it. But it 
 did not necessitate that man should exist ; that 
 depended on man's lust of life, and this lust man 
 I could control and conquer. The object of Buddha's 
 [law is to teach man how to conquer this lust. When 
 be has conquered it, he has attained Nirvana. 
 
 Nirvana is a word as needful for the understand- 
 ing of Buddhism as Karma, but it is as difficult to 
 translate. Its etymological meaning is extinction, 
 or being without possession ; but it is not, as has 
 been said, extinction of being. Buddha, before his 
 death, is said to have used these words : * Through 
 various transmigrations have I passed, always vainly 
 seeking to discover the builder of my tabernacle. 
 Painful are repeated transmigrations, but now, 
 builder, thou art discovered. Never shalt thou 
 build me another house. Thy frames are broken, 
 thy ridge-pole shattered ; to Nirvana my mind has 
 o'one. 1 have attained to the extinction of desire.' 
 This shows the original conception of Nirvana — 
 
 not annihilation, not unconsciousness after death, but 
 ^extinction of desire before death — the extinction of 
 :hat sinful selfishness which leads to renewed exist- 
 ence. Nirvana is thus not annihilation, but the 
 condition which secures it ; it is not a state into 
 which one enters at death, but a state into which 
 
The Law of Buddha. 49 
 
 one enters in life, and which secures that there 
 shall be nothing beyond death. 
 
 And how is this Nirvana to be attained ? For 
 this he prescribed the Law which we have now to 
 consider, and which is the great glory of Buddhism. 
 It is here that he comes into most direct conflict 
 with Brahmanism. Having repudiated the gods, he 
 repudiated all w^orship. Sacrifice was an abomina- 
 tion to him, occasioning pain without securing any 
 good. Caste, too, he ignored, and its rules he set 
 aside. The asceticism and self-torture of religious 
 devotees he also taught were useless. The law 
 which he prescribed for attaining the highest good 
 is the moral law — the law of Christ, without Christ 
 and without God. The first ojreat command of the 
 law, to love God, he could not teach, for he did not 
 believe in God. But the second great command, 
 ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,' he fully 
 taught. * Love your enemies ; bless them that curse 
 you ; do good to them tliat despitefuUy use you 
 and persecute you : ' all these commands have their 
 counterpart in the teaching of Buddha. 
 
 His law has a kernel — like the decaloG^ue. It 
 has five negative commands — forbidding the taking 
 of life, stealing, adultery, falsehood, and tlie use of 
 strong drink ; and six positive commands — enjoin- 
 ing charity, purity, patience, courage, contemplation, 
 and science. These laws are developed into all the 
 relations of life in a manner more extended than 
 even the laws of the Pentateuch. Taking up any 
 section of them, it is impossible not to be struck 
 with the pure and withal kindly morality that 
 
5 Buddhism. 
 
 pervades tliein. We seem to have in them laws 
 which should secure a perfect state of society if 
 it can be secured by law. 
 
 Obedience to this law was, however, only the 
 first step towards attaining Nirvana ; the next step 
 was entering the priesthood. This is the surer 
 method, and only those should enter it who by 
 their lay life have shown a capacity for higher 
 attainment. Both sexes may enter the priesthood. 
 Celibacy is enjoined on those who do ; and in 
 addition to all the virtues enjoined on the laity 
 they are required to avoid all luxury and self-seek- 
 ing, to live abstemiously, to be contented with what 
 is given to them, to engage in meditation, and to 
 teach the laity. Many additional commands are 
 given and restrictions laid down, some of which 
 have a tendency to morbidness ; but the prime idea 
 of the Buddhist priesthood seems to be a condition 
 of further discipline and more exalted usefulness. 
 
 Such was the plan of salvation devised by 
 Buddha — a holy life amid the various occupations 
 of the world, leading to a more exalted life of 
 celibacy and service, this leading to the extinction 
 of all desire, this leading to extinction of existence, 
 ^ and this to release from misery. Cease to be 
 sinful, and you will cease to exist ; become perfectly 
 holy, and you will become nothing. 
 
 Spread of Buddhism. — This was the gospel which 
 Buddha proclaimed, and which soon began to spread 
 rapidly through India. The character of its founder, 
 no doubt, contributed greatlv to this. He is the 
 
Causes of its rapid Spread. 5 I 
 
 one instance of a human teacher who in his life 
 was more than liis teachinoj. Whatever lie miiilit 
 call on his followers to do, he had done more. 
 None of them could renounce more than he had 
 renounced, or endure more than he had endured. 
 The spectacle of liim renouncing all that man most 
 prizes ; going into the desert, and agonising there 
 for six years ; and at last, alone and deserted, 
 Avithout even a ray of hope in a God to cheer him, 
 withstanding all the temptations that came on him, 
 working out his conception of man's deliverance ; 
 then hastening, in overflowing sympatliy, to com- 
 municate it to all who would hear him ; and, when 
 he had attracted thousands of followers, still con- 
 tinuing the poorest of the poor — is one of the 
 grandest pictures of self-denial and service which 
 the world has produced, and was a constant testimony 
 before all men to the sincerity of his convictions, 
 the depth of his sympathy. Let us try to imagine 
 what must have been the effect of this example on 
 the down-trodden Sudras and low castes, who had 
 been trained to believe that they were beyond the 
 pale of religion — to be told that there was no 
 difference between them and their lords — to find 
 themselves welcomed to instruction in the mysteries 
 of religion, no difference being made between the 
 lowest and the highest if there was but a sincere 
 desire for the trutli — to learn that there was but 
 one way of deliverance for the high caste and the 
 out-caste, for the Brahman and the Sudra. They 
 saw all that he had endured to do them tliis good, 
 and they could say, though in an altogether earthly 
 
5 2 Bitddhism. 
 
 sense, ' Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he 
 became poor.' What must the effects of this have 
 been on all those among the higher castes who had 
 any noble or generous feelings left ? When we 
 remember all this we may cease to wonder at the 
 effect which his life and teaching had. 
 
 Buddhism not only rose above caste ; it rose 
 above nationality. It was the first religion adapted 
 equally for all nations. The germs of such uni- 
 versalism were indeed contained in Judaism. Before 
 this time the Jews had sung in the Temple service, 
 ^ God be merciful unto us and bless uS; and cause 
 His face to shine upon us ; that Thy way may be 
 known upon earth. Thy saving health among all 
 nations.' But it was not till six hundred vears 
 after Buddha that this seed fructified, and He in 
 whom Judaism was fulfilled gave the command, 
 ' Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to 
 every creature.' Buddha was the first to teach a 
 religion which might be common to all men, and to 
 seek to awaken in man's heart the idea of a brother- 
 hood as broad as the human race. One fatal defect, 
 even in its humanitarian aspect, prevents Buddhism 
 ever being the universal religion — its teaching that 
 asceticism and celibacy are essentials of religion. 
 But it admits men and women of all castes and of 
 all nations to the priesthood, and thus provides for 
 universal diffusion. 
 
 In spreading his doctrines, Buddha had but one 
 instrument — persuasion. Subsequent legends do 
 represent him as performing miracles, but this was a 
 power which he himself disclaimed. When urged by 
 
Zeal of early Buddhists. 53 
 
 a king to perform miracles so as to confound Lis 
 enemies, he replied, ' The law which I teach my dis- 
 ciples is not — Go before the Brahmans, and by the 
 help of supernatural power perform miracles greater 
 than men can perform. The law I give them is this 
 — Be silent about your good deeds, and confess your 
 sins.' He likewise repudiated all force or constraint 
 in spreading his doctrine. Even when the most 
 powerful kings had become his disciples, and were 
 ready to put their armies at his disposal, he refused 
 all means but persuasion and teaching ; and in this 
 respect Buddhists have obeyed the teaching of their 
 master better than Christians have obeyed the 
 teaching of theirs.^ His own example inspired many 
 to become missionaries of his religion witli a devoted- 
 ness like his own. The following legend may serve 
 as an illustration : — 
 
 A rich merchant of the name of Pnrna Lad become a 
 convert to BuddLa's teaching, and, renouncing all Lis wealtL, 
 resolved to fix Lis abode among a neigliLonring savage tribe, 
 ^vLom Le wisLed to convert to tlie law. BiiddLa at first tried 
 to discourage Lim. 
 
 ' TLe men of Sronaparanta, wLitlier tliou wilt go,' Le said 
 to liim, 'are violent, cruel, furious, and insolent. WLen tLey 
 utter wicked, gross, and insolent words to tliy face, wLen they 
 grow angry witL tliee and abuse tliee, wLat wilt tLou tliink 1 ' 
 
 ' This is wLat I will tliink,' replied Purna ; ' tliese men are 
 certainly good and kind, wlio do not strike me eitlier witli 
 tLeir Lands or witli stones.' 
 
 ' But if tliey strike tliee with tlieir Lands and witL stones, 
 wLat wilt tLou tliink of tliem % ' 
 
 ^ Admirers of Buddhism claim that it has never been spread by 
 force. But it is difficult to distinguish between King Asoka's 
 edicts to abolish sacrifice and establishing religion by force. 
 
54 Buddhism. 
 
 ' I will tliink that tliey are good and kind, as tliey do not 
 strike me witli sticks or with the sword.' 
 
 ' But if they strike thee with sticks or with the sword, what 
 wilt thou think of them ?' 
 
 ' I will think them good and kind, as they do not take my 
 life.' 
 
 ' But if they take thy life, what wilt thou tliink of them ? ' 
 
 * I will think the men of Sronaparanta good and kind, to 
 deliver me with so little pain from this body full of vileness.' 
 
 ' It is well,' replied Buddha, ' with such perfect patience 
 thou canst live among the Sronaparantas. Go then, O Purna, 
 delivered thyself, deliver others ; thyself arrived on the other 
 shore, bring others there ; thyself consoled, do thou console ; 
 thyself arrived at Nirvana, teach others the way.' 
 
 Purna, thus encouraged, went to dwell among that tribe, 
 and by his gentleness and resignation won them from their 
 savage customs to the law. 
 
 Whether this story be true or not, its very 
 conception shows a standard of missionary courage 
 and devotedness that, with all its exaggerations, 
 accounts for the rapid spread of Buddhism through 
 India. 
 
 Defects of Buddhism. — The permanent effects of 
 Buddha's life and teachin^^ on India have been verv 
 great ; and this we shall see when we come to 
 consider modern Hinduism. But Buddhism has 
 also defects and weaknesses which proved fatal to it 
 in the land of its birth, and which must ultimately 
 prove fatal to it throughout the world. 
 
 By some Buddhism is lauded as the best and 
 most rational of all religions. Some have even pre- 
 tended to see in the life of Christ but a Palestinian 
 reproduction of the legend of Buddha. Yet when 
 
Buddha and Christ. 55 
 
 any of the points is examined, the resemblance is 
 but the resemblance of contrast. The temptation 
 of Christ in the wilderness has been compared with 
 the temptation of Buddha ; but the resemblance is 
 merely what is common to human nature. No man 
 ever produced a great effect in religion, either of 
 origination or reform, without having passed through 
 a spiritual struggle himself; and the character of 
 his struggle and triumph has given character to the 
 influence he has exerted on the world. This was 
 true of Luther and Loyola, it was true of Buddha, 
 and it was true also of Christ, who in this, as in 
 everything, was true man. But when we compare 
 the two struggles, nothing could be more utterly 
 unlike. The temptations which came on Buddha 
 were entirely superhuman, and the power in which 
 he met them entirely human. The temptations 
 which came on Christ were such as come on all 
 men, and the means by which He met them such 
 as all men have, but the power with which He met 
 them was divine. Buddha began the conflict in 
 utter darkness, and all that he discovered was a 
 principle of action ; Christ began with a perfect 
 knowledge of all that was required of man, and He 
 resisted every temptation to forget it. Buddha dis- 
 covered the principle of self-renunciation ; Christ 
 acted throughout on the principle. Thy will be done. 
 Buddha attained the hope of eternal death ; Christ 
 acted in the strenoth of eternal life.^ 
 
 1 For a full study of the alleged points of comparison between 
 Buddlia and Christ, see The Light of Asia and the Light of the 
 World, by Dr. S. H. Kellogg. 
 
5 6 Buddhism. 
 
 This initial struc^o-le indicates the fatal defect of 
 Buddha's religion — it is without God, without hope. 
 It looks to annihilation as the final end ; but human 
 nature refuses to accept this, and now practically, 
 wherever it has spread, Nirvana has come to mean 
 a state of blissful, unconscious beatitude beyond 
 death — a state which it is almost hopeless for man 
 to seek to attain. There is a school of Christian 
 thought which teaches that the soul has no natural 
 immortality, but that annihilation is the end of all 
 who do not believe in Christ. What witness does 
 the East bear to the moral influence or practical 
 acceptability of such a doctrine ? Annihilation — 
 whether as taught by the Buddhists or as pantheist- 
 ically modified by the Hindus — is the end sought by 
 the millions of India and the further East. They 
 believe that it is to be attained only by perfect holi- 
 ness. This new doctrine teaches that it is certainly 
 to be attained by continued wickedness. If it were 
 to spread in these lands, morality would lose what 
 sanction it has in religion, and the eternal life 
 offered by Christianity w^ould not seem a boon. 
 Buddhism bears witness to the fact that man desires 
 annihilation ; it also bears witness to the fact that 
 annihilation is unattainable by man even in 
 thought. Nirvana has changed its meaning, from 
 a state of absence of desire before death, to a 
 state of quiet repose after death, in which Buddha 
 himself exists. The Buddhists now say of Buddha 
 lie entered Nirvana, to say he entered death. Both 
 in Buddhism and in Hinduism the immense number 
 of births which they say must be passed through 
 
Fruits of Atheism. 57 
 
 before it is attained is practically saying that it is 
 unattainable. 
 
 This false conception of the end of religion was 
 a necessary consequence of the Atheism which per- 
 vades the system. It denies the soul of man ; it 
 denies God, the soul of the universe. In this it 
 resembles Positivism, and other systems that are 
 now wooing Christendom. All that is best in their 
 systems was offered to the world two thousand 
 years ago in Buddhism, in it presented to man in a 
 way far more satisfying to his religious nature than 
 in any of them, and none the less found wanting. 
 
 One of our best Buddhist scholars ^ says : * The 
 great merit of Buddha is that he swept away the 
 soul theory.' True ; but he could not sweep away 
 the soul fact. We have already seen how he could 
 not escape it for himself, nor could he escape it for 
 the universe. Havinfr with terrible lode classed 
 gods and demons with men as different orders of 
 beings, heaven and hell with earth as places through 
 which the stream of being must pass, while he 
 denied the existence of the soul and the existence 
 of God, he was yet forced to admit a mystery — a 
 power real though unknowable — and in the doctrine 
 of Karma to erect an altar to the unknown God. 
 
 But not the less were the defects of atheism felt 
 in the system. By it Buddha shut himself out 
 from the possibility of having any divine revelation ; 
 he based his authority only on knowledge, and that 
 knowledge intuitional. He, indeed, claimed to have 
 
 1 Rhys David, Hibbcrt Lecture. 
 
5 8 Buddhism. 
 
 arrived at perfect knowledge, and those who became 
 liis disciples were required to acknowledge this, but 
 his claim did not rest on the possession of any 
 power or means of knowledge which other men had 
 not. His religion contrasts in this way most 
 markedly with that of Moses. The Hebrew law^- 
 giver, on the broad basis of a divine revelation and 
 authority, promulgated a religion which offered, in 
 the first instance, only an earthly rest and earthly 
 rewards, and the truth of which every one could 
 test by its fruits. The Indian lawgiver, on the 
 narrow basis of his own intuition and deductions, 
 sought to establish a system of rewards and punish- 
 ments passing through thousands of millions of ages 
 and thousands of worlds, ending in extinction, the 
 evidence of which was beyond the reach of all. 
 
 But a more important defect consequent on 
 atheism is the absence of all power. Buddhism 
 is a moral system, but it is not a moral power. 
 It offered India a perfect morality w^ithout God, 
 but it failed to make India moral, or to secure any 
 hold on it. It offers nothing to satisfy the religious 
 sense in man. Its appeal is to knowledge, not to 
 faith. This prevents a true conception of duty. 
 The conception of accountability to God for the use 
 of our talents is impossible in Buddhism. The 
 
 words of King Arthur — 
 
 ' This life 
 I guard as God's high gift from scathe and wrong,' 
 
 could never have been uttered by a Buddhist king. 
 This want w^as felt by Buddha's successors. He 
 came to be practically deified; legends attributing to 
 
Idolatrous and Liturgical CorriqHion, 59 
 
 him superhuman power gathered round the story of 
 his life; his writings and sayings, and legends regard- 
 ing him, were gathered into a sacred canon. The 
 need of an object of worship was, if tradition may be 
 believed, felt by Buddha himself. Tlie author of 
 Positivism in France felt this too, and tried to satisfy 
 the craving by inventing a worship having for its 
 object ' woman ' in the threefold relation of mother, 
 wife, and daughter. So too the greater author of a 
 greater system, more than two thousand years ago, 
 found that he needed an object of worship. One of 
 his dearest friends having been killed, he preserved 
 some relics of him, w^ith a care and devotion which 
 has introduced the worship of relics into Buddliism. 
 
 In another respect Positivism seems to be follow- 
 ing the course of Buddhism. Statues of great men 
 are set up in its halls of assembly ; days are con- 
 secrated to them, and thus an attempt at a cult is 
 being made. This casts light on the origin of 
 Buddhist idolatry. Statues of Buddha and of other 
 saints were erected, and divine honours were paid 
 to them, till Buddhism, which began by denying 
 that there is a God to be worshipped, has come to 
 include the worship of thousands of idols. 
 
 It is, no doubt, chiefly in Northern Buddliism ^ 
 
 ^ The Southern Buddhists, who follow more closely the teaching 
 of Buddha, are found in Ceylon, Burmah, Anam, and Siam, and 
 number close on 30,000,000. The Northern Buddhists, among 
 whom we get the Buddhist doctrine grossly corrupted, are found 
 in the Himalayan countries and those to the north-east of Asia. 
 They are calculated to number 470,000,000. This would, how- 
 ever, include all Confucianists and Taoists in China and Shintoists 
 in Japan. If they were reckoned separately, it might reduce the 
 number by three-fourths. 
 
G BuddJtism. 
 
 that this lapse into idolatry has taken place. 
 There, too, it has incorporated a system of sacer- 
 dotalism as stringent as the Brahmanical, and a 
 debased ritualism on a level with the lowest 
 fetichism. JSTot only are prayers offered in an un- 
 known tongue, but it is not even necessary to repeat 
 them. They are put into cylinders, and these are 
 made to revolve b}^ the hand, by water power, or 
 by the wind, and each revolution is considered a 
 prayer. Buddhism is the only religion which has 
 sanctioned praying by machinery. But it would be 
 as unfair to charge these corruptions to Buddhism 
 as to charge Eoman Catholic corruptions to Chris- 
 tianity. Tliey were probably old religious practices 
 and tenets of the lands into which Buddhism pene- 
 trated, and were absorbed by it as many of the old 
 pagan festivals were absorbed by Christianity. 
 
 But it has also to be observed that Buddhism has 
 seldom established itself as the sole religion in any 
 land. Even now in Ceylon, where it is supposed to 
 have had undisputed sway for twenty centuries, it 
 fails to satisfy the religious wants of the people. 
 * In Ceylon the people look to Buddhism for 
 deliverance as to the future world. By its instru- 
 mentality they suppose that they can gain merit ; 
 but for present assistance, when the burden of 
 affliction is heavy upon them, their resort is to the 
 demon priest with his incantations and sacrifices.' ^ 
 We cannot suppose that during the time it spread 
 over India it was anything more satisfactory. It 
 was accepted by the people as a protest against 
 ^ Hardy, Legends and Theories of the Buddhists. 
 
Causes of Failure. 61 
 
 priestly pretensions and caste tyranny, but when 
 the test of religion — the hour of trial and affliction 
 — came upon them, they still resorted to the idols 
 and fetiches which they had been wont to worship. 
 A system thus defective and one-sided is smitten 
 with decay ; it has foes in its own stronghold, with 
 which an enemy has only to unite in order to 
 accomplish its overthrow. 
 
 This was what took place with Buddhism in 
 India. In two or three centuries it was triumphant 
 throughout the Peninsula, while Brahmanism was 
 confined to the small kingdom of Kanauj on the 
 Ganges.^ But a struggle then began, which con- 
 tinued till the twelfth century, and resulted in the 
 complete expulsion or absorption of Buddhism, and 
 the establishment of Hinduism throughout India. 
 
 Thus while Buddhism is the only great religious 
 system constructed without a God, it has become 
 the most signal evidence that a religion without 
 God is an impossibility for man — that the purest 
 moral teaching will not make men pure — that a 
 system which ignores God will come to be overrun 
 with utter travesties of deity, and w^ill not be able to 
 hold its own against systems which, however in- 
 ferior to it as codes of morals, frankly acknowledge 
 the Supernatural. Buddhism comes fraught with 
 the experience of twenty-three centuries warning 
 this acre of science and agnosticism, of materialism 
 and scepticism, that man cannot live without God. 
 The most splendid religion of humanity, the most 
 1 Marsliman's History of India, vol. i. p. 11. 
 
6 2 Jainism. 
 
 perfect system of morality that man has produced, 
 has failed because it ignores God. 
 
 Jainism. 
 
 The only religion now in India that has any 
 resemblance to Buddhism is that of the Jains, 
 and it seems to have been of contemporaneous 
 though independent origin. It is interesting chiefly 
 as an evidence that the currents of thought em- 
 bodied in Buddhism were in Buddha's time affecting 
 others besides him.^ 
 
 The orioinal founder of the sect was Parswa, or 
 Parswanath, as he was afterwards called. He was 
 the son of King Aswasena, and of one of the 
 noblest royal families in India. He became an 
 ascetic when he was thirty years old, and died 
 about the age of a hundred, on Sikhar, a mountain 
 in Southern Behar. Two hundred and fifty years 
 after him, according to Jain chronology, MahavTra 
 was born of the same stem. He became an ascetic 
 at the age of twenty-eight, and died when he was 
 about seventy-two. The chief difference between 
 him and Parswanath was, that while the latter 
 always wore one garment, Mahavira carried his 
 mortification of the body further, and dispensed 
 
 ^ The Jains maintain that ]\lahavira was the teacher of Buddha. 
 They fix his death about 570 B.C., or about thirty years before 
 the usually accepted date of the death of Buddha. Some Euro- 
 pean scholars, such as Colebrooke and Stevenson, are inclined to 
 agree with this, while others, such as Benfey, make the origin of 
 this sect to have been about the tenth century after Christ, but 
 the latest investigations conlirm the earlier date. 
 
The TirthanJcaras. 63 
 
 with every sort of covering. Hence the two divi- 
 sions of the Jains have sprung np, the Swetambras, 
 clothed in white, and the Digambkas, clothed in 
 space. The latter, however, while still the stricter 
 sect, do not carry out their principles with regard 
 to dress. 
 
 These tw^o are said to be the last of the twenty- 
 four Jin AS or Tirthankaras,^ who constitute the 
 chief object of Jain - worship. The preceding 
 twenty-tw^o are evidently fictions, but in the first of 
 them, EiKHABH Deva, we have some trace of real 
 historic tradition. Like the Buddhists, the Jains 
 are atheists. They believe in the eternity of the 
 universe both of matter and of mind — the latter 
 including the elements of human souls — which has 
 been undergoing a series of revolutions produced 
 by the inherent powers of nature without the inter- 
 vention of any eternal Deity, no such Being, 
 according to them, existing independent of the 
 world. Certain of the world's elements may be 
 sublimated into gods, who inhabit the various 
 heavens that exist ; but they are inferior to the 
 Tirthankaras, and must again enter the various 
 hells, or become animals and men as they have 
 been before, till they finally triumph over matter, 
 and can exist free from its trammels. This has by 
 meditation been attained by the twenty - four 
 Tirthankaras, and through their merit by several 
 thousand disciples who were on earth when they 
 
 ^ Jina means conqueror, one who has triumplied over tlie 
 passions. This was also a name of Buddha. Tirthankara means 
 the 'author of a tirth,' or place of pilgiimage, visiting which 
 confers salvation. But ' the Jain ^zr^/i is a moral ^/r^/^' 
 
G 4 Jainism. 
 
 attained beatitude. This is the only way in which, 
 according to the Jain rehgion, final beatitude can 
 be attained, and they themselves acknowledge that 
 the way of salvation is thus limited to very few. 
 In this respect it presents a remarkable contrast to 
 Buddhism, in which the way of salvation is equally 
 open to all. In their cosmical system they are 
 nearer the Hindus, while they agree with the 
 Buddhists in their moral code,-^ and in the extreme 
 respect which they pay to animal and even insect 
 life. They have even in some cities erected and 
 endowed hospitals for diseased animals. 
 
 There has been a good deal of discussion as to 
 whether this religion or that of Buddha is the 
 older — as to wdiether Buddhism is derived from 
 Jainism or Jainism from Buddhism. There seems 
 now no reason to doubt the claim made by the 
 Jains that their founder, Mahavira, died thirty years 
 before Buddha ; but it would be quite a wrong 
 inference to conclude that therefore Buddhism is 
 derived from Jainism. It is very seldom that any 
 great movement of reform is absolutely solitary, or 
 that the considerations which influence one mind 
 will not influence another also. When the condi- 
 tions are present, when the same bases of thought 
 and faith exist, when the same perversions and 
 
 1 This consists in enjoining five duties and forbidding five sins. 
 The duties are — 1st, mercy to all animated beings ; 2nd, alms- 
 giving ; 3rd, venerating the sages while living and worshipping 
 their images when deceased ; 4th, confession of faults ; 5th, reli- 
 gious fasting. 
 
 The sins are — 1st, killing ; 2nd, lying ; 3rd, stealing ; 4th, 
 adultery; 5th, worldly-mindedness. 
 
Its Relation to Buddhism. Gij 
 
 abuses are manifest, it is natural that similar 
 remedies will suggest themselves to different minds, 
 thou.i^h one of greater originality and force will 
 probably take the lead. There can be little doubt 
 that, in the era of the lieformation, Luther in 
 Germany and Zwingle in Switzerland worked on 
 entirely independent lines. Both had, as a basis 
 of belief, the Bible ; and both had to face the 
 corruptions of the Church of Eonie. It is not 
 surprising, therefore, that they should both arrive 
 at similar results, while neither derived his theology 
 from the other ; and the difference between the two 
 is manifest till to-day in the Churches which they 
 founded. 
 
 The account I have given, in the former chapter, 
 of the state of religion in India before the appear- 
 ance of Buddhism shows a state of corruption that 
 might well have roused many an earnest mind to 
 seek to reform it. The ideas of Transmigration and 
 of Karma already existed, the merits of an ascetic 
 life were believed in, and the moral law was written 
 on the hearts of all. These are the elements of 
 both religions, and it is not surprising that two 
 such men as Buddha and Mahavira should have 
 appeared simultaneously and worked out these 
 elements independently, and with the different 
 results that appear in their different systems; 
 while Parswanath will fall into a position some- 
 what analogous to that of IIuss or Wycliffe in 
 Europe, the forerunner of a coming Eeformation. 
 But Buddha's was the more thoroughgoing, the more 
 logical and higher moral system. Above all, it was 
 
 £ 
 
G G Jainism. 
 
 humanitarian, and had all the elements of iiniver- 
 salism, while Jainism had those of the narrowest 
 sectarianism. It is thus not surprising that Buddh- 
 ism should have become one of the world-religions, 
 while its rival is only one of the smaller sects of 
 India. At one time its followers seem to have 
 spread extensively, but they are nov/ numerically 
 small, and are found chieHy in Bombay, Guzerat, 
 and Eajputana, They number about 1,400,000, 
 are enterprising men of business, and an altogether 
 disproportionate part of the wealth of the country 
 is in their hands. 
 
 In one respect the present position of Jainism 
 is quite as striking a testimony to the power of 
 Hinduism as the expulsion of Buddhism from India. 
 In its earlier history it opposed Hinduism, or rather, 
 Brahmanism, with a bitterness not found in any 
 of the early Buddhist writings. In the Ivalpa 
 Sutra, the history of Mahavira, that Tirthankara is 
 represented as having been conceived in the womb 
 of the wife of a Brahman, whereupon Indra, the 
 chief of the gods, is represented as reflecting, 
 ' Surely such a thing as this has never happened 
 in past, happens not in present, nor will happen 
 in future times, that an Arhat, a Chakravarti, a 
 Baladeva, or a Basudeva, should be born in a low 
 caste family, a servile family, a degraded family, a 
 poor family, a mean family, a beggar's family, or 
 a Brahman's family.' He is accordingly represented 
 as sending^ a messenger to remove him to the womb 
 of a woman of royal caste. Such was the original 
 attitude of Jainism ; now, however, the Brahmans 
 
Vanquished hy Hinduism. G7 
 
 have regained their ascendency. Some of the 
 Swetambras have them as priests in their temples. 
 The Jains have come in respect of caste and other 
 j)ractices to differ little from the Hindus. By a 
 decision of tlie Bombay High Court, it has been 
 ruled that the laws of the orthodox Hindus are 
 bindin;;^ on them. 
 
 Thus Hinduism has showed in its struggle with 
 Jainism the power of reducing an antagonistic 
 religion to quiescence and a certain degree of 
 similarity and amalgamation, which we shall 
 subsequently see illustrated in its struggle with 
 Mohammedanism and even with Christianity. 
 
PART II.-HINDUISM, 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 BUDDHISM seems to have culminated in India 
 about the beginning of our era. Two hundred 
 years before that time it assumed a character 
 decidedly hostile to Brahmanism. At first, though 
 utterly opposed in principle to its claims, it seems 
 to have existed alongside of it on a basis of mutual 
 toleration. But the decrees of Kins^ Asoka, a con- 
 vert to Buddhism and paramount sovereign of India, 
 showed an intention to make the new faith uni- 
 versal in India, to the destruction of tlie older 
 one. This stirred up the Brahmans to do more 
 earnest battle for their religion, quickened their 
 intellectual life, and made them more pliable in 
 adapting their system to the religious ideas of the 
 various tribes and castes with whom they came 
 into contact. This Brahmanical revival continued 
 to struggle with Buddhism, and by the twelfth 
 century of our era had extirpated it from India. 
 It is to it that modern Hinduism owes its char- 
 acter ; and it is, therefore, of more practical 
 interest, and more deserving the study of those 
 who wish to know the religious condition of the 
 millions of our fellow-subjects whom it has influ- 
 
 68 
 
Difficulties of the Siibjed. G9 
 
 enced, than any form of religious thought that 
 preceded it. 
 
 The brief survey we have taken of the earlier 
 religions of India, while leaving many questions 
 still unanswered, will yet prepare us for better 
 understanding that complex and subtle system witli 
 whicli Christianity has now to contend. I will not 
 touch on the political movements which aided it, or 
 the warriors and kings who established it by force 
 of arms, but will rather seek to indicate those 
 principles and methods, still in operation, by whicli 
 it triumphed over its great foe, and attached to 
 itself, or is still attaching to itself, the various races 
 of India. I must now ask the Encjlish reader to 
 follow me into a somewhat abstruse and difficult 
 field ; to enter a region and method of thought 
 most likely quite foreign to him, but which it is 
 necessary to master to some extent in order to 
 understand Hindu idolatry. To try to explain this 
 on the basis of English ideas is about as hopeful 
 as trying to explain Indian jugglery on the basis 
 of English regimental drill. I can only promise 
 to endeavour to make the subject as clear as it 
 is capable of being made to persons accustomed 
 to entirely other modes of thought. 
 
 There are two distinct features in the Brali- 
 manical revival which must be understood in order 
 to grasp the present character of Hinduism — the 
 intellectual revival among the Brahmans, producing 
 Hindu Philosophy, and the application of that 
 philosophy to the popular superstitions, producing 
 the Hindu Eeligion. 
 
70 Hindu TUiloso'p'hy. 
 
 The first step in the establishment of modern 
 Hinduism was the revival of intellectual activity 
 among the Brahmans. Appeal to the authority of 
 the Vedas was now of no use to them. Their 
 Buddhist adversaries required them to prove all 
 things. They therefore strove to combat them with 
 their own weapons, and in succession rose the six 
 schools of Hindu philosophy.^ These all started 
 with the professed acknowledgment of the Yedas as 
 the rule of faith, but, except one (which, strangely 
 enough, while ignoring God, makes the eternity of 
 the Word its fundamental principle), they all prac- 
 tically ignore the Vedas, and found their systems on 
 the deductions of pure reason. The Vedas are now, 
 for the majority of the Hindus, only the shadow of 
 a name ; so that in this respect Buddhism has 
 practically remained victor; while it again, by accept- 
 ing a sacred canon of its own, may be said to have 
 been vanquished by Brahmanism — a fact which 
 its opponents have not been slow to point out. I 
 do not propose to give any account of these various 
 systems, or of the dialectics by which they are 
 supported, but will seek to exhibit their effect in 
 mouldincj Hindu thoudit to the form in which we 
 actually find it. 
 
 To understand any philosophy or religion aright, 
 we must know what it teaches to be the highest 
 good. Ask a Hindu what is the chief end of man, 
 and he will answer, Libeeation,^ whether he be 
 
 1 See Appendix B, Schools of Hindu Philosophy. 
 
 2 Mukti. 
 
Fitndamental Principles. 
 
 VI 
 
 ]')easant or pundit. Ask him what he means by 
 Liberation, and he will say that it is ' to cut short 
 the eighty-four.' ^ Here we are already in a sphere 
 of thought and expression quite foreign to the 
 European, and requiring explanation. 
 
 The Hindus, then, believe man's spirit to be a 
 part of the Divine Spirit, an emanation from it 
 wliich must return to it acjain. Meanwhile it is in 
 bondage from its union with the body or with 
 matter, and the great aim of man should be to free 
 his spirit from this union, so that it may again be 
 at liberty to join the Supreme. Or, as the Hindus 
 say : Man and God are one ; but man, owing to 
 imorance and delusion, cannot now recosjnise this 
 identity ; his chief aim should, therefore, be libera- 
 tion from this ignorance and delusion, so as to 
 
 recognise his oneness with God. Such is the 
 briefest possible statement of what is meant by 
 Liberation, but I must dwell on it more in detail. 
 
 The fundamental principle of Hindu philosophy 
 is, that out of nothing nothing can be made ; hence 
 wliatever now exists must be accounted for by 
 v/hat has previously existed, and therefore our 
 spirits must have existed before. Another principle 
 now almost universally adopted is that of the great 
 Unity ; ^ that there is only one really existent 
 Being, who is from everlasting to everlasting — the 
 SuPKEME Spirit.^ He alone is, everything else is 
 
 ^ Chaurassi Katna. 
 
 2 Ekamevadwitiyam, one only, without a second. 
 
 '^ Paraniatman. When the Supreme Spirit becomes conditioned, 
 i.e. after what we call creation has taken place, it becomes the 
 Supreme Lord, Parameshwara. 
 
 \ 
 
72 Hindu Philosophy. 
 
 not. Our spirits must, therefore, be part of Him. 
 Such is the argument of the Yedanta, the most 
 influential school of modern Hindu philosophy. 
 
 Now the question comes, Who or what is this 
 Supreme Spirit ? It has often been objected to the 
 Yedantic Deity, that it is a mere abstraction and 
 negation, and that, therefore, the system is atheistic 
 as much as Buddliism. This is founded on tlie 
 word always used in characterising the Supreme, 
 which in popular language means void of qualities. 
 But the word means primarily without bonds, or 
 unfettered, and this is rather the sense in which 
 it is used in Hindu philosophy. Man's spirit is 
 fettered by union with the body, but not so the 
 Supreme Spirit. He is free. The word which in 
 modern European philosophy corresponds most 
 nearly with it is Unconditioned. Those who are 
 not familiar with philosophical expressions may 
 form some idea of what that means by trying to 
 conceive the existence of God before anything was 
 created. This is the point which Ballantyne main- 
 tains Brahmanical philosophers have grasped with a 
 far clearer and firmer hold than EnMish or even 
 German thinkers, — the distinction between the 
 Unconditioned ^ and the Conditioned. ^ Now what 
 do the former declare Unconditioned Spirit to be ? 
 They say that it is Being, Thought, and Joy.^ 
 
 We, trained alike by the testimony of our own 
 consciousness and by the teaching of our faith to 
 believe in the personality of God, and to think of 
 
 ^ Nirgiin. 2 gagun. 
 
 ^ Sat, Chit, Anand, Sachcliidananda. 
 
Tlte Vedantic Trinity. V.3 
 
 Him as distinct from ourselves, have clifficiilty in 
 conceiving an impersonal God, and in perceiving 
 the full bearinc: of the above definition. But let 
 us try to introduce into it the idea of personality 
 and consequent relationship, and chiefly the relation- 
 ship of the Creator to the creature, imparting what 
 He Himself has ; and we have : the imparter of 
 Being — the Creator ; the imparter of Thought — the 
 Word ; the imparter of Joy — the Comforter. Here, 
 then, we have in the Vedantic Trinity a certain 
 analogy to the Christian Trinity. How this may 
 have arisen we cannot now determine. "VYe cannot 
 say what interchanges of thought may have taken 
 place in the earlier ages of the world. Long before 
 this idea of the Supreme Spirit had been formulated 
 by Hindu pliilosophy, the germs of the idea of a 
 Trinity had been introduced into Grecian philosophy, 
 and may have been carried into India in the inter- 
 course which the Greeks kept up with it in the 
 second and third centuries before our era. There 
 was also constant communication between Egypt 
 and India at the time when the Judseo-Grecian 
 school of philosophy flourished at Alexandria, ere 
 the Vedanta school rose in India. But I refrain 
 from enterincj on the field of investiration thus 
 opened up, merely noting the fact, however it may 
 be accounted for, and whatever may be its value, 
 that such is the Hindu idea of the Supreme Spirit, 
 and that on this prime question of theology the 
 distinction between Christianity and Hinduism is as 
 to the personality of God. 
 
 But in maintaining that the human spirit is part 
 
74 Hindu PhilosojjJuj. 
 
 of the DiviDe Spirit, the Hindu is met by those 
 facts which for the EoE^lishman at once decide the 
 question, and against which the whole of Hindu 
 philosophy is a vain struggle — the facts of con- 
 sciousness. We are not conscious that we are parts 
 of the Supreme Spirit ; we are conscious of limita- 
 tion and imperfection contradictory of our idea of 
 God. These facts the Hindus too acknowledge; 
 but ' so much the worse for the facts ; ' they are the 
 effects of Maya. And what is Maya ? This it is 
 very difficult to explain. It means properly illu- 
 sion or delusion. It is an attempt to explain the 
 consciousness of man and the existence of an 
 external world, in accordance with the sole exist- 
 ence of God and the principle — nothing from nothing. 
 Tliey say that the visible universe is a projection 
 of the spirit, as the shadow is the projection of the 
 pillar, or the figure on the screen tlie projection of 
 the picture in the magic lantern. They attribute 
 to it two effects — enveloping the soul, which gives 
 rise to the conceit of personality ; and projecting the 
 appearance of a world, which the individual imagines 
 to be external to himself. Spirit thus invested or 
 deluded is what the universe consists of. 
 
 This abstract speculation will be better under- 
 stood by means of a simile which the Hindus often 
 employ. They say that the world is just like a 
 dream. We fall asleep ; we imagine things to be 
 about us which are only the creations of the brain, 
 but which have for us all the value of realities ; we 
 wake up and find that they are all a delusion. So 
 shall we one day wake up and find that all the 
 
Analogies. 75 
 
 external universe, which we now imagine to be 
 about us, has been but the play of our spirit, and 
 has vanished ' like the baseless fabric of a vision.' 
 
 A pundit, who had some acquaintance with 
 English literature, quoted to me the following 
 incident, which I had previously read, as a proof of 
 the truth of the Hindu theory : — ' A man was once 
 labourinc!: under the influence of a mania that he 
 was so enormously swollen that he could not pass 
 through an ordinary door. Some of his friends 
 tried to persuade him that he was quite able to do 
 so, but he listened to them very much as if they 
 had been trying to persuade him to go through the 
 keyhole. At last they thought the best way to 
 convince him he w^as wrong w^as to pull him 
 through, and this they did, notwithstanding his 
 struo-oles and screams. When he had been got 
 through in this way, he fell down in an agony, as 
 if he had been bruised all over, and died from the 
 effects on his mind.' The door evidently did not 
 appear the same to him as to his friends ; but what 
 right have we to explain it by his madness ? The 
 Hindus maintain that it is all delusion, and the 
 practical effect on the unfortunate madman showed 
 that his delusion was real enough for him. 
 
 Meanwhile spirit is under the influence of this 
 Maya or illusion, and it is therefore subject to con- 
 ditions or qualities.^ As to what these conditions 
 are, they fall back for explanation on an earlier 
 philosophy — the Sankhya, which accounts for tlie 
 creation of the world by an eternal Pkakriti, which 
 
 1 Gun. 
 
76 Hindu Philosophy. 
 
 modern European philosophers would probably trans- 
 late by ' cosmic vapour.' It, in fact, means matter, 
 but the Vedantists have discovered it to be really a 
 delusion, though practically a reality. It is supposed 
 to consist of an equipoise of three conditions or 
 qualities — Intelligence, Passion, and Daekness, or 
 indifference.^ Where intelligence prevails, we have 
 such beings as men ; where passion or foulness 
 prevails, such beings as the lower animals ; and 
 where darkness or indifference prevails, such beiugs 
 as trees and stones. The Spirit or Self,^ im- 
 prisoned in all these, is the same with the Supreme 
 Spirit, and the final end of it is to be freed from 
 all, and identified with its parent source. After 
 this liberation man must consciously strive. Thus 
 the Hindus, groping after the same truth as that 
 expressed by Paul, ' The whole creation groaneth 
 and travaileth in pain together until now,' ^ have 
 changed it into, ' The whole Creator groaneth and 
 travaileth in pain together until now, waiting for 
 the liberation, to wit, redemption from the body.' 
 
 It might seem that at the time of death, 
 when the spirit quits the body, it will be free to 
 join the Supreme. But call it by what names 
 they chose, illusion or eternal matter, the same 
 problems of the world — ^joy and sorrow unequally 
 meted, vice prosperous and virtue oppressed — faced 
 the Brahmanical philosophers which faced Buddha, 
 and for them they could give no better solution 
 than he — the Transmigration of the soul. They 
 
 ^ Sat, Raj, Tamas. ^ Atman. ^ Rom. viii. 22. 
 
Vicarious Atonement. 77 
 
 argue for this partly on tlie same grounds that 
 Plato does, namely, that all knowledge is remin- 
 iscence, and that what we call instinct in a child, 
 leading it, for instance, to take its mother's milk, 
 is but a recollection of what it has learned in 
 a previous existence. But the great argument is 
 the moral one, that we are moral and responsible 
 beino-s. We commit deeds which merit reward oi' 
 punishment ; happiness and misery in this life are 
 not proportioned to the good and evil deeds of each 
 individual. AVe see babes, who have done neither 
 good nor evil in this life, born some to plenty and 
 some to poverty ; some surrounded with every 
 temptation to sin, and with an inherent proclivity 
 towards evil, others surrounded with every influ- 
 ence for o'ood, and with a natural leanincp to virtue 
 and uprightness. Hence they conclude that there 
 must be another life, in which present inequalities 
 are redressed, and a past life, by which present 
 inequalities have been caused. 
 
 The idea of vicarious atonement has in one form 
 or another found a place in nearly all systems of 
 religion, certainly in all earlier systems. The in- 
 stinctive feeling of man, that sin places him in 
 opposition to God and must be punished, found 
 refuge first of all in sacrifice, in which, as we have 
 seen, the principle of vicarious atonement had a 
 place. But this left many of the mysteries of 
 Providence unexplained ; how, for instance, suffer- 
 ings that could apparently not be traced to any 
 cause were to be accounted for, how sacrifice might 
 be attained by some and not by others. This the 
 
78 Hindu Philosophy. 
 
 Hindus account for by saying that men are now 
 reaping the fruit of what they themselves have 
 done in a previous life, though from the effects of 
 Maya they are ignorant of it. They thus try to 
 reconcile the principle of natural justice — that 
 every one should suffer for his own deeds — with 
 the principle of vicarious atonement, which seems 
 man's instinctive refuge from the mysterious in- 
 equalities and consciousness of sin in the present 
 life. We suffer for what we ourselves have done, 
 but the deeds for which we suffer are deeds which 
 we are not conscious of having done. We are not 
 recompensed for what we are doing now, but we 
 shall be recompensed in a future birth. This brings 
 us to the second bond of the spirit, according to 
 Hindu philosophy, that which binds it within its 
 first bond, the chain which prevents its escaping 
 the prison-house of illusion — Deeds, or Karma. 
 This is a conception with whicli, as we have seen7 
 Buddha dowered India. Hindu philosophy has 
 adopted it, though it has endeavoured, with only 
 partial success, to depose it from the sujoreme place 
 which he gave it. 
 
 A pundit with whom I had once occasion to 
 discuss the subject used the following illustration : 
 ' We are bound to our existence,' he said, ' by two 
 chains, the one a golden chain and the other an 
 iron chain. The golden chain is virtue, and the 
 iron chain is vice. We perform virtuous deeds, 
 and we must exist in order to receive their reward ; 
 we perform vicious deeds, and we must exist in 
 order to receive their punishment. The golden 
 
Ayialogy of Vapour. 79 
 
 cliaiii is pleasanter than the iron one, but both are 
 fetters, and from both should we seek to free our 
 spirit.' This comparison is a good ilkistration both 
 of the principles and of the spirit of Hinduism. 
 All action, whether good or bad, binds us, and 
 there is an aim to be sought beyond happiness. 
 If a man of low rank discharges his duty aright, he 
 may in his next birth be a king. If a king rules 
 well, and especially uses his power in the promo- 
 tion of religion, he may in his next state be born in 
 heaven, and spend thousands of ages there. That 
 might be a state to be desired if there were any 
 certainty of its permanence, but in it he may at 
 any moment commit a slip, or he may unconsciously, 
 in a previous birth, have been guilty of a sin still 
 iinexpiated, which will require his being born again 
 in the form of a demon, an animal, or one of the 
 lower castes. There is no security of rest till the 
 spirit is delivered from the idea of its own 
 personality. 
 
 The Hindus try to explain this to themselves by 
 another simile, and with them a simile has all the 
 force of an argument.^ They say : Spirit is one as 
 water is one ; but some water may be drawn up 
 from the ocean in the form of vapour ; then it may 
 become a cloud ; then fall on the earth in the form 
 of rain ; be absorbed by some plant and become its 
 sap, be exhaled from it again to be absorbed in 
 another, and so on, changing from form to form, till 
 at last it may fall into some river and find its way 
 to the ocean. In this figure the ocean will repre- 
 
 1 See Appendix C, Hindu Logic. 
 
80 Hindu Philosophy. 
 
 sent the Supreme, Free Spirit, and the other con- 
 ditions of water, Spirit in connection with matter or 
 illusion. When any portion of the Supreme Spirit 
 is, as it were, exhaled, and comes under the power 
 of illusion, it must pass through men and animals, 
 through gods and devils, through trees and rivers, 
 and even stones — always when it quits one body, 
 being forced by the deeds which it may have com- 
 mitted in that, or in some previous body, to enter 
 another, in order to receive their recompense. So 
 it must continue its devious path, ignorant of whence 
 it has come and whither it is going, till the full tale 
 of appointed births, said to be eighty-four lakhs, or 
 eighty-four hundred thousand, is completed. Then 
 its good and evil deeds may be fully atoned for by 
 its joys and sorrows, the spirit may regain its origin, 
 be emancipated from matter, and free to rejoin the 
 Supreme. But the Hindus have also a vague hope 
 that they may not need to endure all this ; that 
 they may find a clue out of this interminable 
 labyrinth of births ; that they may find a direct 
 passage, as it were, to the Supreme, and be freed 
 from the necessity of being again born either for 
 joy or for sorrow. This is what they mean when 
 they say that ' Liberation is to cut short the eighty- 
 four.' 
 
 Thus far the Hindu system has developed itself 
 with a certain logic. But two testing questions 
 naturally occur here : What led any portion of 
 spirit to come under the power of illusion ? and. 
 According to what law do these transmigrations 
 take place ? 
 
Karma Law — The Unseen. 81 
 
 To the first of these questions the Hindus give 
 some such answer as this: The Supreme Spirit was 
 one, and he tliought, ' I will become many.' There 
 is here a certain recognition of supreme will, but if 
 asked again what led him to wish to become many, 
 they are silent, and allow that there is something 
 there for which they cannot account. 
 
 The second question, — What is the principle 
 which requires certain deeds to be followed by 
 certain births ? what is the power that binds spirit 
 by the bond of deeds to ignorance and illusion ? — 
 is a question which Hindu philosophy has felt the 
 need of facing. In this it has gone a step beyond 
 Buddhism. It has recognised that if in Karma 
 there is a power to bind man to conscious exist- 
 ence, and to regulate the nature of that existence, it 
 must be derived. But it has taken this step only 
 to find the darkness more intense. The only ex- 
 planation it can give of the power inherent in deeds 
 is AdPvISHTA, the Unseen ;^ corresponding to what 
 in modern European philosophy is the Unknown 
 
 ^ Even God is powerless in presence of Adrislita, according 
 to this philosophy. ' God being dependent creates this world 
 of inequalities. If you ask on what is He dependent ? we 
 reply, He is dependent on Merit and Demerit. That there 
 should be an unequal creation of the merit and demerit of the 
 souls created is no fault of God. God is to be looked upon as 
 the rain. As the rain is the common cause of the production 
 of the rice and wheat, but of their specific distinctions as rice 
 and wheat the causes are the varying powers of their respective 
 seeds ; so is God the common cause in the production of men, 
 gods, and others, but of the distinctions between gods, men, 
 and others, the causes are the varying works inherent in the 
 varying souls.' — Sankaracharya, quoted in Bannerjea's Hindu 
 Philosophy. 
 
 F 
 
82 Hindu Philosophy. 
 
 and Unknowable. By intellectual analysis it has 
 resolved the Buddhist Karma into its visible effects, 
 or deeds ; and its invisible cause, the Unseen. It 
 escapes from atheism by agnosticism. But not 
 the less has it to confess itself bafHed, and at last, 
 along with Buddha and the Vedic poets, to erect its 
 altar to the Unknown God. 
 
 And how is Liberation to be obtained ? How are 
 these eighty-four hundred thousand births to be cut 
 short ? It might seem that as there was a Power 
 beyond their ken, which ultimately ordered all, it 
 would be wiser for the philosophers to confess their 
 own inability to discover what It had ordained as 
 the final mode of escape. But the Brahmans 
 have here a better foundation to go on than the 
 Buddhists — they profess to believe in a revelation, 
 however inconsistently, and however little their 
 method may be found in the books which they 
 receive as inspired. Liberation is not to be attained 
 by virtuous life or by works of any kind. Bad 
 works require to be punished and good ones to be 
 rewarded. We must seek a higher end — deliver- 
 ance from pain and pleasure alike — and look for it 
 by nobler means, by being free from works alto- 
 gether. Knowledge ^ is the instrument, meditation- 
 the means, by which our spirit is to be freed. To 
 avoid all contact with the world, to avoid distrac- 
 tion, to avoid works, and to meditate on the identity 
 of the internal with the external spirit till their 
 oneness be realised, is the ' way of salvation ' pre- 
 scribed by the higher Hinduism. The following are 
 1 Gyuii. -' Dhyan. 
 
Its Relation to Buddhism. 83 
 
 the words of one of their principal authorities : ^- 
 
 ' The reckise, pondering the teacher's words, " Thou 
 art the Supreme Being," and receiving the text of 
 the Vedas, " I am God," having thus in three several 
 ways — by the teacher's precept, by the Word of 
 God, by his own contemplation — persuaded himself 
 " I am God," obtains liberation.' This is the Hindu 
 philosophical answer to the question, ' What must I 
 do to be saved ? ' It is called the ' way of know- 
 ledge,' ^ and is said to be the highest and only 
 infallible way; the other ways, at which we shall 
 have to look, being supposed to conduce to it. 
 
 Such is a brief outline — little more, in fact, than 
 an indication — of Hindu philosophy, yet sufficiently 
 full to enable us to understand how it has affected 
 Hindu society and Hindu religion. It will be seen 
 that, in many of its aspects, it differs but little from 
 Buddhism. It may indeed be called a pantheistic 
 protest against it. It is an attempt to supply the 
 void which the absence of all idea of God occa- 
 sioned in the rival system. It thus supplies a 
 solution of man's problem more agreeable to human 
 nature than Buddhism does. It is pleasanter to 
 think of the inner / as eternally existent, coming 
 from the Supreme Spirit and destined to return to 
 It again, than to think of it as destined to ultimate 
 annihilation. It also supplies after a fashion a 
 basis for worship, as we shall see by and by, and 
 thus helps to fulfil a craving of man's soul. But it 
 
 1 Sankaracharya, Bannorjea's Hindu Philosophy. 
 
 2 Gyan Murg — Knowledge way. 
 
84 Hindu Pliilosopliy. 
 
 
 shows how nearly pantheism and atheism, the ' all 
 god ' and the ' no god/ meet. The immortality of 
 Hinduism differs but little from the annihilation of 
 Buddhism, for it is an annihilation of that individu- 
 alism and self-consciousness apart from which man 
 can hardly conceive of his own existence. Yet it 
 enables the Brahmans to charge the Buddhists with 
 atheism, and to call their own system theistic as 
 opposed to it. In other respects — especially the 
 doctrine of transmigration of souls, the way of 
 knowledge, the employment of meditation — it is 
 liker a rival than an antagonist. It may perhaps 
 be said that of the two Hinduism is the more 
 logically consistent, while Buddhism supplies the 
 better rules of life. Buddhism forbids the sinful 
 craving after existence, but enjoins working for 
 the good of others. Hinduism teaches that this 
 too is a fetter to existence, and that work of 
 all kinds should be relinquished for meditation. 
 Hinduism is thus more logical than Buddhism, 
 because both have departed from the truth, but 
 Hinduism has only gone a step further than its 
 rival. 
 
 Had the Brahmans, in carrying out their prin- 
 ciples, been as consistent as the Buddhists, it is 
 probable that they too would have perished from 
 Hindustan, as at one time seemed not unlikelv. 
 So long as they confined themselves to abstract 
 teaching the Brahmanical power made no progress. 
 At last they united it with the popular supersti- 
 tions, and rallied the various tribes of India around 
 them, though to this day there are some which 
 
Ultimate Issues 'ivith Cliristianity. 85 
 
 have escaped their influence, and which they are 
 now seeking to attach to themselves. 
 
 It will be seen that the system which I have 
 tried to describe is not very far removed from many 
 European pantheistic systems, though possibly it is 
 more consistently logical than they are. It will be 
 seen also that, in its ultimate principles, there are 
 two points on which it joins issue with Christianity 
 — one metaphysical and the other ethical. The 
 metaphysical difference is that Hinduism teaches 
 the impersonality, while Christianity teaches the 
 personality of God. The ethical difference conse- 
 quent on the former is, that while Christianity 
 makes good an essential, Hinduism makes it an 
 accident, classing it along with evil as a bond to 
 the spirit. These seem to me to be the two great 
 antagonistic principles of the two systems in their 
 most philosophical aspects ; and if we examine 
 their practical developments, we shall find this 
 antagonism only more clearly brought out. And 
 as, after all, practical results are the best test of 
 any system, an examination of the practical popular 
 developments of Hinduism will be the most con- 
 clusive demonstration of the falsity of its higher 
 doctrines. Let us, then, look at the effects which 
 they have on the society and the popular religion 
 of the Hindus. 
 
 But, before proceeding to this, one question 
 remains to be answered. Is the account I have 
 given of Hindu philosophy a description of the 
 
86 Hindu Fliilosojiliy. 
 
 belief of all Hindus, or of the learned only ? I 
 have stated it as I have heard it explained by the 
 more learned pundits and read it in their books on 
 the subject, and the reader may imagine all the 
 different stages of acquaintance with and belief in 
 it down to the utmost imorance. The foUowinfj 
 tenets I have found held generally by all classes of 
 Hindus. 
 
 The transmigration of souls is universally ac- 
 cepted. Every Hindu that I have met with believes 
 that he has previously inhabited other bodies, and 
 that he must again tenant others after quitting his 
 present one. 
 
 Deeds are looked on as the power binding him to 
 his existence, causing his present condition, and even 
 forcing him to his present action. Tlie Buddhist 
 explanation is the popular one, that of Hindu 
 philosophy — the Unseen being set aside by the 
 . common people, as negations usually are. If I were 
 to translate the word Karma by fate, instead of 
 deeds, it would perhaps be more intelligible. But 
 the European fatalist looks on himself as impelled 
 by a powder altogether external to himself, which, 
 while it deprives him of liberty, excuses him at the 
 same time from responsibility. The Hindu looks 
 on himself as impelled by what he himself has 
 previously done, as reaping the fruit of his own 
 deeds, though not deeds of his present conscious- 
 ness. Thus a dreadful sense of retribution and 
 responsibility is superadded to that of helplessness, 
 making it tenfold more gloomy and terrible. The 
 full force of this can be understood only by one 
 
Popular Ideas. 87 
 
 who has seen a Hindu under sentence of death 
 for a heinous crime, and who, to all appeals to his 
 conscience and responsibility, can only reply by a 
 stolid * Karin! His crime and his punishment 
 alike are the fruit of deeds done, he knows not 
 when or where. How can he escape ? » 
 
 Lastly, nearly all Hindus believe more or less 
 that their inner self — that which passes from body 
 to body — is the Deity. When I have asked a 
 Hindu ' Who is God ? ' the answer I have received 
 about as often as any other, and from peasant as 
 well as priest, is, ' Jo hole ' — he who speaks. It is 
 possible he may never have thought of the meaning 
 of this answer, but it shows how deeply the panthe- 
 istic principle has penetrated into Hindu thought, 
 when even the most uneducated define the Deity 
 as that within them which gives them the power of 
 thought and consequent utterance. The same idea 
 is shown by the w^ords used by many castes in per- 
 forming the last rites for the dead. As the body is 
 borne along to be burned, the bearers and mourners 
 unite in the chant — 
 
 ' Ram, Ram sat liai ; 
 Jo bole gat hai.^ 
 
 ' Eam Ram (God) is existent: he who speaks is 
 passed.' This is their creed of immortality. Man 
 perishes, but God is ever existent. The body dies and 
 is burned, but not so ' he who speaks ' — he has only 
 passed on another step towards his supreme source. 
 Hence the word gati, or passing — the final passing 
 into God — is the popular word for emancipation or 
 salvation. 
 
88 Hindu Philosophy. 
 
 But when the question came to be, What were 
 the multitude to do to obtain salvation ? the philo- 
 sophical solution, the ' way of knowledge,' failed 
 altogether. For every one to become a recluse, to 
 abandon the world, and to devote himself to medita- 
 tion, would have been to destroy the faith, by causing 
 all who received it to perish from the face of the 
 earth. It was, besides, utterly opposed to human 
 nature, and especially opposed to the Brahmanical 
 supremacy, as it involved the sinking of all caste 
 distinctions. The Brahmans, therefore, left the 
 various tribes and castes to seek salvation by their 
 own way, and sought to gain them rather by 
 showing how their various ways practically led to 
 the same result which recluses attained by severest 
 meditation. Thus the various popular gods and 
 demons, idols and fetiches, which the proud ' twice- 
 born ' had so long ignored, at last rose up in power 
 to avenge themselves on the Brahmans, by debasing 
 their high creed to the lowest idolatry and to the 
 vilest worship ; while, at the same time, the lowest 
 orders of Sudras obtained a recognition and a place 
 in the caste system. This union of pantheism with 
 caste and polytheism we now proceed to consider. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 PANTHEISM AND CA^TE. 
 
 THE great vitality of Hinduism lies iu its insti- 
 tution of caste. I have already had occasion 
 to speak of it more than once, but a fuller explana- 
 tion of its leading principles will be necessary to 
 enable us to understand its nature and power. Caste, 
 then, is an institution to preserve purity of tribe 
 and class by preserving purity of blood. The most 
 obvious way to preserve this is by preventing inter- 
 marriage. Accordingly, all the castes of India are 
 endogamous — they marry only within themselves, 
 beyond certain degrees of relationship, varying in 
 different castes. This might be considered sufficient 
 to secure the desired end, but eating and drinking 
 also affects the blood. Members of one caste must 
 not, therefore, eat or drink with those of another 
 — must not eat food that has been cooked or 
 touched by them ; and some even go so far as to 
 believe their food polluted if one of another caste 
 comes near it while it is being cooked. Some of 
 the lower castes are considered so unclean that 
 contact with their shadows is regarded as pollution 
 by the higher castes ; and in Hindu states these 
 castes are not allowed to enter cities at morning or 
 
 89 
 
90 Pantheism and Caste. 
 
 evening, when the sun is low in the heavens, and 
 their bodies cast long shadows. It is no uncleanness, 
 however, for those of lower castes to come into 
 contact with the higher. All may eat food pre- 
 pared by Brahmans, and drink water from their 
 vessels. Some castes of Brahmans even take wives 
 from the lower castes, in which case the offspring 
 are considered to belong to the mother's family ; 
 but Brahmans who do this generally marry one wife 
 of their own caste in order to preserve it. 
 
 Besides these rules about eating and drinking, each 
 caste has its peculiar occupation and peculiar customs. 
 Barbers constitute one caste, carpenters another, iron- 
 founders a third, brassfounders a fourth, and so on. 
 Some have, indeed, a wider range of occupation. 
 Brahmans may be priests or soldiers, beggars or 
 teachers. Eajputs may be farmers or servants as 
 well as soldiers, but there are always some occupa- 
 tions which it is forbidden tliem to enter on. This 
 community of occupation is thus another bond to 
 bind together members of one caste, and to draw a 
 distinction between them and the rest of society. 
 
 But the full strength of the caste system cannot 
 be rightly appreciated without taking into account 
 the family system of the Hindus. Its tendency is 
 completely to annihilate individuality. The Hindu 
 child finds himself in a family consisting of grand- 
 parents, parents, uncles and aunts, and cousins to 
 the second or third degree. His grandfather, or 
 possibly his grandfather's elder brother, is the head 
 of the family, and when he dies he is succeeded by 
 
Family Rites. 9 1 
 
 his younger brother, or the eldest of the second 
 generation. He finds that he has been betrothed 
 ere he could understand anything about it, or when 
 he is seven or eight years old the head of the family 
 chooses a wife for him, and the betrothal takes 
 place with great rejoicings. Among his sisters is 
 one to whom he may not give any present, and who 
 may not wear any ornament. She was betrothed 
 when an infant ; her husband died when she was a 
 few 3'ears old : she is now a widow, looked on as 
 branded with a curse, and must continue the disgrace 
 and reproach of her family to the day of her death. 
 He hears of nothing but the affairs of his caste ; he 
 looks forward to no career but assistini:^ his father 
 and uncles in their trade or profession ; and when 
 he gains anything it does not belong to him indi- 
 vidually, but is thrown into the common income of 
 the family. When he is seventeen or eighteen he 
 takes his wife to his father's house, as his elder 
 brothers have done before him, and a new branch 
 is added to the family. He performs religious 
 ceremonies at his father's death, others a year after, 
 and at least once thereafter he must perform a 
 pilgrimage to some sacred stream or lake, to burn 
 the ^j>mfZ ^ to his father's manes. As his grand- 
 father, father, and uncles, elder brothers, or father's 
 elder brothers' sons die, — for all these relationships 
 
 ^ A large leaf is bent up into a shape like a boat. This is fiHcd 
 with ghl, or clarified butter ; a wick is inserted into it, and lighted. 
 The frail bark is then, with certain invocations, set to float on the 
 waters, and if the devotee can fancy that in its sudden extinction 
 he sees the hand of the dead grasping it and taking it to the 
 invisible world, he feels that all is well. 
 
92 Pantheism and Caste. 
 
 are attended to and distinguished by separate names 
 in India, — he floats on to the patriarchate of the 
 family, to look after the duties and marriages of the 
 younger members. Thus throughout his whole life 
 there is no room for any play of individuality. His 
 whole course is marked out for him by the lines of in- 
 exorable custom ; he cannot disentangle himself from 
 family ties, much less break loose from caste fetters. 
 
 We have already seen how caste may have 
 originated, and we have seen how Buddha sought 
 to overthrow it. He taught, as a consequence of 
 his doctrine of transmigration and final extinction, 
 that all men were equal, and caste, therefore, a sin. 
 But it had struck its roots too deeply into society 
 to be speedily eradicated, and when the Brahmans 
 sought to regain their power, they turned Buddha's 
 own doctrines, or rather, their modification of them, 
 into an argument in its favour, and thereby of 
 establishing their own supremacy. For, they say, 
 just as a man's deeds in his former life may have 
 led to his being born a god or a demon, or an animal, 
 so they have led to his being born a Brahman, a 
 warrior, or a sweeper. There is this disadvantage 
 in having been born a man, that, having freedom of 
 judgment and action, he may leave the duties appro- 
 priate to his own caste and discharge those of some 
 other ; he may quit the society of his own people, 
 and eat and drink with others. But so surely as 
 he acts thus he is involvino- himself in some miser- 
 able birth in the future — he is forging a new link 
 in the iron chain of his existence. 
 
Formation of the Lower Castes. 9 3 
 
 If a man is born in the highest caste, for instance, 
 that of a Brahman, the Hindus believe that it is on 
 account of merit acquired in a previous birth. If a 
 Brahman should quit his appropriate duty — if he 
 should seek to gain his food by manual labour 
 rather than by begging, by merchandise rather than 
 by teaching ; if, above all, he should mingle socially, 
 eat and drink with the lower castes, or teach the 
 sacred books to the out-castes, he is leaving some of 
 his merit not fully rewarded ; he must undergo 
 another birth in order to receive its full reward, 
 and, meanwhile, he is committing a sin which will 
 necessitate his being yet again born in some miser- 
 able condition, that expiation may be made for it. 
 
 And as it was for themselves, so the Brahmans 
 taught it was for every man. Whatever the con- 
 dition in which he was born, it had been determined 
 by his previous deeds ; he could expiate them only 
 by fulfilling the duties of that condition, but, by 
 fulfilling them aright, he could gain a step towards 
 future bliss as surely as the Brahmans. Thus the 
 Brahmans no longer ignored the Sudras ; they 
 recognised them by teaching that they too were 
 bound by the same order of things, and that by 
 accepting and obeying that order they could in 
 future births rise to be their eCj[uals or superiors. 
 But on two points the Brahmans always insisted : 
 first, that they must be acknowledged as the 
 supreme caste — served, worshipped, and fed as gods 
 on earth ; and, second, that the cow must be pre- 
 served, revered, and worshipped as a sacred animal. 
 Each tribe or family or trade among the Sudras 
 
94 Pantheism and Caste. 
 
 was glad to accept this condition, and to have its 
 respectability and importance in the social system 
 increased by its being recognised as a distinct caste. 
 Thus they were one after the other attached to tlie 
 Brahmanical system, and instead of the four old 
 castes we have now writers, carpenters, iron workers, 
 brass workers, barbers, and others, too numerous to 
 mention; each with its old customs, its rules of eating 
 and drinking, marriage and social intercourse, erected 
 into sacred duties. Many of the lower castes are 
 now much greater sticklers for caste customs and 
 privileges than are the Brahmans. 
 
 Two consequences flowed from this — the breakiug- 
 up of the Brahmans into various castes, and the 
 disappearance of the two intermediate castes. The 
 Brahmans are now broken up into numerous sub- 
 castes, which refuse to intermarry or eat and drink 
 wdth one another. Each of these has generally its 
 separate clients in one of the lower castes. The 
 distinctive character of some is determined by the 
 place of their origin and their sacrificial duties. It 
 w^ould be vain to attempt here any description of 
 all the distinctions that exist among them, so I 
 merely indicate the principles on which these dis- 
 tinctions proceed.^ But a more important result of 
 this movement was the disappearance of the warrior 
 and mercantile castes as such. Many of the present 
 
 1 It is difficult to say what constitutes a Brahman. The 
 Pushkara Brahmans are said to be descended from a Mer— one of 
 the aboriginal tribes of India — who was taught the Atharva Yeda 
 by a recluse in return for certain services he performed. This 
 would seem as if the possession of a Yeda gave the right to Brah- 
 manical distinction. 
 
Disappearance of Intermediate Castes. 95 
 
 mercantile castes do indeed claim to be descendants 
 of the old Vaisyas, and the Rajputs claim to be 
 descendants of the old Kshatriyas or warriors. But 
 the Bralimans refuse this claim, or allow it ouly 
 where it is politic in them to do so. In Rajputana, 
 where the Rajputs rule, they are acknowledged as 
 the second caste, but in Gujerat they are looked on 
 as inferior to many others. On the other hand, the 
 Kayaths, or writers, who do the principal business 
 in the courts in the North-West Provinces, and who 
 are therefore much more useful to the Brahmans 
 there than the Rajputs, obtained some time ago a 
 declaration from a Brahmanical college in Benares 
 that they are not ordinary Sudras, but are sprung 
 from the warrior caste. But this does not imply 
 any restoration to those privileges of intercourse 
 with the Brahmans themselves, or to that degree of 
 intermarriacje with them that was allowed to the 
 Kshatriyas in the code of Manu. The general state 
 of Hindu society may now be described as being 
 divided into two great castes — the Brahmans or 
 twice-born, who are worshipped as gods, and the 
 once-born, who worship them, and who constitute 
 the great mass of the people. 
 
 Meanwhile, I trust I have exhibited with suffi- 
 cient clearness how pantheistic doctrine has been 
 allied to caste practice. It may be conceived what 
 an iron hold universal custom, backed up by such 
 doctrine, has on the minds of the people. Accord- 
 ingly, we find that the Hindus pay much more 
 attention to the law of caste than to the law of 
 
96 Pantheism and Caste. 
 
 conscience. A Brahman may be guilty of theft, 
 adultery, or murder, and he will yet he received 
 without hesitation by his caste fellows. But let 
 him be guilty of eating and drinking with those of 
 another caste — let forbidden meat cross his lips, 
 even though this be by no fault of his own, but by 
 violence having been forced upon him, and he then 
 becomes an out-caste, with whom it is pollution to 
 eat, drink, or have any dealings. Caste, in some of 
 its features, is fast being obliterated, as we shall see 
 in considering modern changes in Hinduism ; but 
 there are, I suspect, few Hindus who would not shun 
 one of their own caste who had eaten with those of 
 another, much more than they would shun one who 
 had been convicted of a heinous crime. 
 
 The following is a picture given by a native 
 reforming journal, the lyidu Prahash, of the tyranny 
 of caste. It was written apropos of the refusal of one 
 caste to allow one of its number to go to England : — 
 
 'The proliibition to go to England is the least of our 
 complaints against the tyranny of caste. Does a Brahman 
 wish to marry his daughter at a mature and properly mar- 
 riageable age % There'comes the tyrant caste, and says, " You 
 shall not keep your daughter unmarried beyond the age of 
 eight or ten, unless you choose to incur the penalty of excom- 
 munication." Does a man wish to countenance either by deed 
 or by word the marriage of little girls plunged into life-long 
 misery and degrading widowhood 1 Caste says, " No, you 
 will be excommunicated." Does a Brahman wish to dine 
 with a man of another caste ? However thick friends they 
 may be of one another, caste says, "No, you must not do 
 that, or you will be excommunicated." Does a man wish to 
 dispense with any of the unmeaning idolatrous ceremonies 
 with which Native society is hampered ? Caste says, " No, or 
 
Its Effect on the English. 97 
 
 you will be excomniiinicated." Does a man wish to dispense 
 with silk cloth and wear ordinary clothes at the time of meals? 
 (Jaste says, " No, or you will be excommunicated." If a Brah- 
 man feels thirsty and has no other water but such as is 
 brought by a Sudra near him, he cannot drink it ; for caste 
 forbids it on the pain of excommunication. Why, the tyianny 
 of caste extends from the most trifling to the most important 
 affairs of Hindu life. It cripples the independent action of 
 individuals, sows the seed of bitter discord between the 
 different sections of society, encourages the most abominable 
 practices, and dries up all the springs of that social, moral, 
 and intellectual freedom which alone can secure greatness, 
 whether to individuals or to nations. It has pampered the 
 pride and insolence of the Brahmans, by teaching them to 
 look upon themselves, notwithstanding all their weaknesses, 
 as the favourites of gods, nay, the very gods on earth, who are 
 to keep the lower orders in a state of utter degradation and 
 illiterate servitude. Such is our caste system ; so unjustifiable 
 in principle, so unfair in organisation, and so baneful in its 
 consequences to the highest interests of the country.' 
 
 One other effect of caste I would notice, the gap 
 that it has opened between the English and the 
 Hindus. Englishmen in this country often reproach 
 their cuuiitiynien in India with the antagonism, the 
 enmity, the total want of sympathy that seems to 
 exist between them and the natives. It is a sad 
 fact that such a feeling does exist, but it is the 
 natives who are mainly responsible for it. It is they 
 who have made friendly social intercourse between 
 the rulers and ruled impossible. Governed as they 
 are by the English, owning tlicir sway, and acknow- 
 ledging that it is a just one, they yet look down on 
 them as uncleau. It is the Hindu who looks on 
 himself as polluted by the touch of an Englishman, 
 who will throw away his food as unfit for being 
 
 G 
 
98 Cow Worship. 
 
 eaten, if an Englishman comes within a few feet of 
 it while it is being cooked ; not the Englishman who 
 looks on himself as polluted by the touch of the 
 Hindu. Tliis has, no doubt, reacted on the English, 
 and produced in their mind a feeling of dislike and 
 antagonism to the Hindus ; but the original blame 
 lies with the latter. 
 
 Not only has the system of caste thus riveted 
 Hinduism on the Hindus, but it also gives facilities 
 to the Brahmans for gaining over those of the 
 aborigines who are still outside the pale of Hin- 
 duism. Whenever they undertake the conversion 
 of any tribe, the first lesson they teach them is, 
 that they must continue performing the customs of 
 their tribe as sacred duties — as duties to which 
 they are bound by their previous births, attending 
 in addition to those relative duties which are the 
 result of their new position, especially worshipping 
 the holy Brahman and reverencing the holy cow. 
 When these points have been acceded to, the}^ are 
 raised out of the position of out-castes and become 
 part of the Hindu system, enforcing with all the 
 zeal of neophytes the old customs and the new 
 privileges and duties. 
 
 TJie Worship of the Coiv the Sacrament of Caste: 
 
 I have mentioned as one of the duties imposed 
 on all Hindus the reverencing of the cow. This 
 is, in fact, the only common bond of union for all 
 castes. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to 
 name anything else that commands the assent of 
 
Its Origin. 99 
 
 all. Some castes worship one god and some another, 
 some have Brahmans for their priests and some 
 Iiave priests of other castes ; but, in whatever they 
 disagree, on one point they agree, and that is in 
 considerini^ the cow a sacred animal, and in looking: 
 to the attainment of ceremonial purity through it. 
 It is the sacramental symbol of Hinduism in which 
 sectaries of all shades unite. The formal acknow- 
 ledging of its sanctity is tlie act by which an 
 aboriginal tribe is erected into a caste and received 
 within the pale of Hinduism ; just as receiving 
 baptism is the act by which any one is received 
 into the Christian Church. The bullock-driver 
 wdiose clothes have been defiled by contact with a 
 sweeper will rub the polluted part on the nose of 
 his bullock, and thus restore himself to purit}'. 
 The Brahman who has lost caste may be restored 
 to it by taking the sacred pills composed of the five 
 products of the cow.^ As far as I have noticed, 
 however, it is only for the conservation of caste and 
 purity that it is thus honoured. The Hindus do 
 not pray to it, or seek temporal and spiritual 
 blessings from it, as they do from their idols. 
 
 The origin and grow^th of this idea it is difficult 
 to trace. It is probable that even in ante-Vedic 
 times, before the worshippers of fire had separated 
 from the worshippers of Varuna and Indra, a certain 
 reverence was attached to the bull or cow. The 
 Parsees in Bombay preserve a sacred white bull in 
 
 ^ Viz. milk, curds, butter, urine, and dung. Notices some- 
 times appear in the newspapers of Hindus who have visited this 
 country undergoing purification, of which ceremony partaking a 
 compost of these five elements forms a part ! 
 
100 Cow Worship. 
 
 one of their fire temples, and the whole of Parseedom 
 was some time since thrown into consternation by 
 the announcement that its tail had been cut off during 
 the night by some mischievous rascal. This recalls 
 the worship of Apis in Egypt. We must remember, 
 too, that Assyrian sculptures show the bull to have 
 been recofrnised as a sacred animal in Nineveh and 
 Babylon. These lands were quite likely in com- 
 munication with the land of the Aryas before they 
 turned towards India, as they were afterwards with 
 those who remained in their original abode. 
 
 We need not, however, look to any abstruse 
 origin of the worship. We can imagine how with 
 a pastoral people the cow would come to be looked 
 on with a certain degree of sacredness, especially 
 when they also became an agricultural and more 
 civilised people, and used the same animal for 
 drawing the plough and pulling their carts and 
 chariots. We can imagine, too, how it would come 
 poetically to symbolise other things. In some of the 
 Puranas — the more modern relioiious books of the 
 Hindus — an ancient legend is referred to, telling how 
 the earth at first gave its products with difficulty, and 
 how a certain great king called Prithu, having made 
 a great sage the calf before it — ScoHce tulchan — 
 
 obtained milk from it. This was probably originally 
 a simple allegory to express that the ' rugged, all- 
 nourishing earth,' Prithivi, supplied food to those 
 who wrought it, as the cow supplied milk to those 
 who milked it. Ultimately tlie cow came to be the 
 symbol of the earth, and the bull, of religion. But 
 this for a long time did not seem to imply any 
 
Tlie Si/mhol of Hinduism. 101 
 
 sacredoess in the whole genus. In the Vedas the 
 cow is spoken of as used both for sacrifice and for 
 food, and is praised as the best of all food. In the 
 chapter of Manu's Institutes relating to assault, 
 tlie cow is classed with other larcje animals. * For 
 killing a man (unintentionally) a fine equal to that 
 for theft shall instantly be set — half that amount 
 for large brute animals, as for a bull or cow, an 
 elephant, a camel, or a horse.' ^ In the chapter on 
 penance, which is evidently much later, the cow 
 occupies an intermediate position between man and 
 other animals, and killing ^ it is classed along with 
 adultery and other crimes as a sin of the third 
 degree, to be expiated by a long and heavy penance. 
 In it too we find the five products of the cow 
 prescribed as a means of ceremonial purification. 
 
 When once this start had been made we can 
 easily conceive how the idea grew. The Buddhists 
 might oppose to the reverence which the Brahmans 
 paid to the cow the care which they took of all 
 animals, might ridicule them for their attention to 
 one in particular, and call on tliem for reasons for 
 their preference. The cow would thus come to be 
 identified with the existence of the Brahmanical 
 religion. At all events, when the Eajputs con- 
 quered the Buddhists, the cow was for them the 
 symbol of triumph. In the temples erected to 
 celebrate the victory of Hinduism over Buddhism, 
 a bull is represented as standing on a prostrate 
 Buddha. In later ages, when they again struggled 
 with the Mohammedans, and expelled them from 
 1 ^lanu, viii. 296. 2 Manu, xi. 109. 
 
102 Cow Worship. 
 
 Eajputana, the point which the chronicler always 
 notices, when he records the triumphs of a Eajput 
 prince, is that he put a stop to the slaughter of 
 kine. There is no article in their treaties with the 
 British Government on which modern Hindu princes 
 insist more strenuously than that prohibiting the 
 slaughter of kine within their territories. It is a 
 crime on which they now look as much greater than 
 that of murder. About the year 1865, the regent 
 of one of the native states having adjudged a man 
 guilty of this crime, punished him by having him 
 tied to the foot of an elephant and dragged about 
 till he was dead — an act for which he was deprived 
 of the regency by the British Government, but for 
 which he had the sympathy of all good Hindus. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PANTHEISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 REVERENCE of the cow is the common charac- 
 teristic of all Hindu castes, but, as I have 
 said, it is not the object of adoration and worship 
 in the way of seeking temporal or spiritual benefits. 
 The Hindus do not look to it for deliverance from 
 sickness or misfortune, for success in business or 
 for ' cutting through the eighty-four,' for obtaining 
 future happy births or for final deliverance. For 
 these they look to their various gods and idols. Each 
 caste has its own gods, sometimes the same as those 
 of other castes, though perhaps originally different. 
 We have seen that it is probable that, during the 
 supremacy of Buddhism, the people resorted to their 
 various gods and fetiches in those conjunctures of 
 life where they found the atheism of that system 
 insufficient. When the Brahmans tried to reconquer 
 India, they allied their religion with those aboriginal 
 deities which Buddhism had not availed to over- 
 throw. They thus strengthened their own influence, 
 and formed what may be more appropriately termed 
 the Hindu than the Brahmanical religion, as it 
 embraces elements to which all castes of Hindus 
 have contributed. 
 
 103 
 
104 Pantlieis7ii and Polytheism. 
 
 We are thus brought face to face with the 
 countless gods of Hinduism — the thirty-three of 
 the Vedas having swelled to thirty-three crores, or 
 three hundred and thirty millions. It may seem 
 at first to be somewhat contradictory to the doctrine 
 \ of there being one Supreme Spirit, that the worship 
 of so many gods should be admitted, and that, if 
 we are ourselves parts of the Supreme Spirit, we 
 should be required to \vorship other parts. But 
 pantheism cannot conquer fetichism any more than 
 atheism can, while it does what atheism does not, 
 supplies a philosophic basis for such worship. There 
 is a complete logic running through the various 
 parts of the Hindu system, never indeed formally 
 expressed, in so far as I have known, but indefinitely 
 present to the minds of its votaries — welding it into 
 a consistent whole. 
 
 The position which these popular deities occupy 
 with regard to the Supreme may be understood by 
 recurrinfT to the imac^e of w^ater, which I used to 
 illustrate the theory of transmigration. A drop of 
 w^ater may be far aw'ay from the ocean, and it may 
 be impossible for it to return thither directly. 
 Nevertheless, if it fall into a stream, its own exist- 
 ence will, so to speak, be absorbed in that of the 
 stream till it reaches the ocean. So, too, are we 
 by our connection with ignorance and illusion hope- 
 lessly far away from the Supreme Spirit. By no 
 effort of our own can we hope to overcome this 
 separation, but these gods are, like the rivers, 
 brought nearer to us. They are themselves under 
 the power of Maya — the illusion of the universe — 
 
A Pantheistic Basis of Worship. 105 
 
 as we ourselves are. Hence they have desires and 
 passions similar to ours. They can be inlluenced 
 by motives and considerations as we are, can be 
 induced to grant temporal and spiritual blessings, 
 to aid our being introduced into a happy state when 
 we are again born, or, best of all, in certain cases, 
 can grant us mediate liberation by absorbing us 
 into themselves. We then lose existence except as 
 part of them, the burden of merit or demerit which 
 may attach to us is borne by the deity who may 
 absorb us, and so we shall continue till the final 
 cataclysm, when all shall be absorbed in the uni- 
 versal Brahrn. Tlie Hindus thus, quite consistently 
 with their own system, attach themselves to the 
 worship of their inferior deities, while, for the 
 most part, neglecting that of the Supreme. 
 
 AVe thus see how pantheism supplies a basis for 
 idolatrous worship. Buddhism taught that the gods 
 were subject to the same laws as men, and, having 
 no Supreme Spirit to which to refer them, forbade 
 their worship altogether, and thus afforded no outlet 
 for a craving of man's nature. Hinduism, admitting 
 the gods to be subject to the same laws as men, yet 
 referring them to the Supreme Spirit, made them 
 mediators leading to It. Their very w^eaknesses 
 and subjection to laws make worshipping them 
 more reasonable than worshipping It ; for they can 
 be influenced by motives while It cannot, and can 
 thus be brought under the power of their worshipper, 
 though he may be weaker than they. This apparent 
 contradiction again the Hindus explain by a simile. 
 One man may be much more powerful than another. 
 
106 Pantheism and Polytheism. 
 
 inasmuch as he may be richer; but the poor man 
 may go to him at night, and, putting a pistol to his 
 breast, force him to part with some of his riches. 
 So the gods are more powerful than we are ; but at 
 the same time we, by certain acts of worship, may 
 bring them under our control, and force them to 
 grant whatever we desire. 
 
 Such principles as these offered great facilities to 
 the Brahmans for adapting to their own system the 
 various gods and worships with which they came 
 into contact. When they met any idol that was 
 worshipped by any tribe, they had only to represent 
 it as one of the many streams leading into the ocean of 
 Liberation, needing only to be worshipped in the way 
 in which its devotees had been wont to worship it. 
 
 But there are two c^reat streams in which the 
 current of religious thought has flowed in India 
 since the era of Buddhism, the worship of Vishnu 
 and the worship of Siva, called also Hari and Har. 
 Those who attach themselves to the former are 
 called Vaishnavas ; those who attach themselves to 
 the latter are called Saivas, and these two great 
 parties include nearly all the modern Hindu sects. 
 The former are distinguished by a tilak, or frontal 
 mark, consisting of three perpendicular lines ; the 
 latter by a frontal mark of three horizontal lines. 
 There are also various differences in the time they 
 observe fasts, the shape of their temples, the form 
 of their worship, and so forth, with a mere enumera- 
 tion of which most who have written about Hindu 
 sects are satisfied. 
 
T'wo Great Divisions of Hinduism. 107 
 
 But such external and superficial distinctions 
 could not account for the bitter antagonism that 
 used to exist between the two sects, as is evident 
 from their old sacred books ; and which even now 
 breaks out occasionally between them, notwithstand- 
 ing the reconciliation that has been made, and the 
 essential quietism of modern Hinduism. One must 
 have seen the kindling eye and quickening breatli 
 of a Saiva teacher when encountered by a Yaishnava 
 teacher, the violent fury to which the preaching of 
 the former excited a Vaishnava audience, — exceed- 
 ing anything which Christian teaching produced, — 
 in order to understand the latent hostility that still 
 exists between the two sects. The cause of this 
 must be looked for in the ideas which they respect- 
 ively represent. They typify two opposite poles 
 of religious thought which have always been found, 
 and must always be found among men — the one, 
 the Vaishnava, looking to God as the Author of all 
 good ; the other, the Saiva, looking to man, as by 
 his own deeds attaining to the good he desires. 
 The discussion thus corresponds somewhat to that 
 between the upholders of Free Grace and of Works, 
 which, under the names of Augustinianism and 
 Pelagianism,^ or Calvinism and Arminianism, has 
 divided the Christian Church. We know what 
 
 1 ' Some of the Vaishnavas are semi-Pelagians. Those of Madras 
 are divided into two sects, the Vadakalai and the Tenkalai. The 
 adherents of the A^'adakalai strongly insist on the concomitanqj of 
 the human will for securing salvation, whereas those of the 
 Tenkalai maintain the irrcsistihilUy of divine grace in human 
 salvation. The arguments from analogy used by the two parties 
 are, however, peculiarly Indian in character. The former use 
 
\ 
 
 108 Pantheism and Polytheism. 
 
 violent animosities, resulting in war and persecu- 
 tion, have existed between these two parties in 
 Christendom, even when they had a common object 
 of worship ; and we need not be surprised that, 
 when in India they were symbolised by distinct 
 gods, a similar hostility should be found. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the distinction is 
 absolute between the two. On the contrary, the 
 worshippers of each god tried to exalt him and 
 extend his worship by appropriating some of the 
 forms more proper to the other, and thus we find 
 certain traits of Saivism shot through Vaishnavism, 
 and vice versa. The range of controversy is also 
 much narrower than in Europe. The extremest 
 upholder of the efhcacy of ' works ' in India is as 
 rigid a predestinarian as the extremest Calvinist, 
 inasmuch as he believes his works to have been 
 necessitated by Karma. The firmest Hindu believer 
 in the power of ' faith ' looks on it as meriting a 
 recompense from God. Yet these indicate the 
 main principles of the two sects, as will be better 
 understood by a short survey of their historical 
 development. 
 
 Tlie sacred books, in which we may trace the 
 progress of these two worships, are called the 
 PuRANAS, which may be translated ' Antiquities.' 
 
 what is called monkey logic (the marJcata nyaya) ; for the young 
 monkey holds on to or grasps its mother to be conveyed to safety, 
 and represents the hold of the soul on God. The latter use the 
 mt logic (the marjala nyaya), which is expressive of the hold of 
 God on the soul ; for the kitten is helpless till the mother cat 
 seizes it nolens volens and secures it from danger.' — Rev. C. E. 
 Kennet, in Indian Antiquary. May 1874. 
 
21ie Puranas. 109 
 
 Tliey constitute the real sacred literature of the 
 great body of Hindus ; they embody their actual 
 religious beliefs, and tell about the gods whom they 
 presently worship ; while tlie Vedas are repeated as 
 incomprehensible incantations in that worship, and 
 the deities they extol are forgotten. The Puranas 
 profess to give an account of the various gods, 
 especially Vishnu or Siva, as they belong to the 
 Vaishnava or Saiva sects. They give an account 
 of the creation of the w^orld, — as being produced 
 from Brahma, which they consider a name of 
 Vishnu or Siva, in the character of creator, and 
 they look forward to its being again absorbed into 
 him at the final cataclysm. They give an account 
 of the various ages of the world's history as they 
 conceive it. We find many old legends embodied 
 in them, and can trace the amalgamation of older 
 objects and modes of w^orsliip wdth Brahmanical 
 gods and Brahmanical worship. I will touch only 
 on the most prominent points contained in them, 
 beginning with the worship of Vishnu. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 VAISHNAVISM.i 
 
 IN Vislmu we find typified that form of religious 
 thought which starts from God, and considers 
 Him as the source of man's strenoth and salvation 
 — that type of pantheistic thought which starts with 
 the idea of God pervading all things. The pundits, 
 indeed, derive his name from a root signifying to 
 pervade, but it has with more probability been 
 traced to one meaning to go forth. It may origin- 
 ally have been a name of the sun, and he was at 
 all events first worshipped as the sun-god. We 
 have seen that he was an old Vedic god who 
 assumed some importance during the Brahmanical 
 jDeriod ; and in him we can trace the continuity of 
 the old Brahmanical religion preserved in modern 
 Hinduism. We find in his worship and legends the 
 influence of many cross currents of religious thought, 
 such as tree and serpent worship and arkite typology, 
 and many adaptations of the faith and worship of the 
 aboriginal races ; but these are blended into a more 
 harmonious whole than in the case of Siva worship. 
 
 ^ A worshipper of Vishnu is called a Vaishnava, and the system 
 which acknowledges Vishnu as its god is called Vaishnavism. So, 
 too, a worshipper of Siva is a Saiva, and his religious system 
 Saivism. 
 
 110 
 
Avatars of Vishnu. Ill 
 
 Avatars of Vishnu. — Yisliuu is represented as 
 resting in a state of blissful repose on the flood, 
 supported on the great mundane serpent, which 
 raises above him its graceful spreading hood ; some- 
 times it is supposed to be many-headed, and all the 
 heads combine to form one large canopy. Thus 
 reposing he is said to typify the Eternal Spirit, and 
 it is possible that as some such conception the 
 Brahmans originally adored him ; but it had too 
 little human sympathy to attract the common 
 people to his worship. He is therefore represented ^ 
 as being occasionally roused out of his slumbers by 
 the solicitations of gods and men, and moved to 
 take interest in the affairs of the world, when some- 
 thincr has cone wrono: in them. Then he becomes 
 incarnate, or rather, as the Hindu expression means, 
 he takes a descent or Avatar. These Avatars form 
 the main features of his history, and it is by means 
 of them that his worship is linked to Hinduism. 
 
 These Avatars extend to the Divine life on 
 earth the analogy of man's life. Thus w^e Christians, 
 believing that man is born but once, believe that 
 God has become incarnate once for man's salvation ; 
 the Hindus, believing that man is born many times, 
 believe that Vishnu has become incarnate many 
 times. As they believe that the spirit of man 
 may pass through animals also, so they believe 
 that Vishnu has become incarnate in the bodies of 
 animals. This gave the Brahmans great facilities 
 in dealing with the aboriginal tribes whom they 
 tried to gain over, or with the votaries of other 
 worships which they tried to amalgamate with their 
 
 I 
 
112 Vaishnavism. 
 
 own. They found one tribe that worsliipped the 
 f , Fish (Matsya), and they taught them that the wor- 
 sliip was quite right, but was so only if tli^y recog- 
 nised the fish as Vishnu, who had become incarnate 
 in it. They found another tribe or caste who wor- 
 ^>' shipped the Tortoise (Kurma) ; this they said was 
 also an incarnation of the same god ; another that 
 \ worshipped the Boar (Yaraha) ; this too was a form 
 in which Vishnu had taken birth. Each tribe was 
 in this way encouraged to exalt its own peculiar 
 deity, but to recognise in it also a manifestation of 
 the one Supreme Spirit ; to continue its own worship, 
 and at the same time to correlate it with that of 
 others. This is, I believe, the most probable ex- 
 planation of the origin of the accounts of the first 
 three incarnations which are attributed to Vishnu. 
 I have found among the Minas traces of fish and 
 boar w^orship still existing, and it is probable that, 
 before the influence of Brahmanism spread, such 
 worship w^as more pronounced. We may look on 
 the stories of these incarnations, then, as first of all 
 attempts to gain over some of the aboriginal tribes, 
 though elaborate myths afterwards grew round them. 
 The story of the fish Avatar has many points of resem- 
 bUmce with the story of the flood in Genesis, and 
 has by some been supposed to be a reminiscence of 
 the same event preserved by independent tradition. 
 But there is no trace of its having existed in Hindu 
 tradition earlier than could be accounted for by the 
 first preaching of Christianity in India. 
 
 The fourth descent of Vishnu was as a Man-lion 
 (Nara Sinha), and it had probably an origin similar 
 
 H 
 
Dwarf Avatar. 113 
 
 to the three previous ones, in an attempt to attach 
 the worshippers of an idol of tliis form. The fifth 5 
 descent, that of the Dwarf (Yamana), is more im- 
 portant than any of the preceding, for it links the 
 worship of Vishnu with the pre-Buddhistic worship 
 of the Brahmanas, with the worship of the sun, and 
 witli a worship in Southern India. The outline of 
 the myth is this : — A king called Bali had by his 
 austerities gained. power over the gods, and at last 
 performed a sacrifice so potent that even Indra lost 
 his sovereignty. The gods appealed to Vishnu to 
 help them. He appeared before the king in the 
 form of a dwarf, and asked as a boon as much land 
 as he could cover in three paces. The king granted 
 his request, whereupon the dwarf enlarged his form 
 so as to fill all space ; at one step he put his foot 
 on the earth, at the second on the firmament, and 
 at the third on heaven, so that there was no place 
 left for Bali but Patala or hell. This myth is a 
 later form of the story of Vishnu's becoming a sacri- 
 fice, which, we have seen,^ had its origin in early 
 times, and was probably the earliest conception of 
 his ' Descent.' In this form, indeed, he appears as 
 the destroyer of sacrifice rather than as a sacrifice 
 itself, but that shows the revolution that had taken 
 place in India with regard to the ideas of sacrifice. 
 In later Hindu literature it is the enemies of the 
 gods who are represented as thus gaining power and 
 threatening their sovereignty, and it was thought 
 more consistent with the divine character for Vishnu 
 to gain his end by deception than by sacrifice — to 
 
 1 See ante, pp. 30, 31. 
 H 
 
 / 
 
114 Vaishnavism. 
 
 make the former defeat the efficacy of the latter. 
 Tiie three steps have been variously explained, but 
 the most obvious and probably the original one is 
 the rise, the meridian, and the setting of the sun,^ 
 while the introduction of the dwarf probably came 
 from some form of worship in Southern India, where 
 it still survives.^ 
 L^ With the sixth incarnation we enter on clearly 
 historical ground. We see hero-worship being 
 woven into Hinduism, and the desire of the Brah- 
 mans to represent the great events of history as the 
 result of the interference of their god. This time 
 Vishnu is said to have come to the earth as Paeasu 
 Eama, to extirpate the power of the Kshatriyas and 
 to establish that of the Brahmans.^ This was not 
 a worship likely to be pleasing to any but the Brah- 
 mans, and it was probably not their interest to seek 
 to continue it. At all events few, if any, traces of 
 the worship of Vishnu under this form now exist. 
 
 The great Kshatriya or warrior hero was Eama 
 Chandra,* who, with his wife SIta and brother 
 Lachman, was represented as the seventh incarna- 
 tion of Vishnu. Eama was the type of manly 
 virtues, as Sita of feminine grace and fidelity, 
 
 1 Two explanations are given : — ' Yislmu strides over this, wliat- 
 ever exists. He plants his step in a threefold manner, i.e. "for 
 a threefold existence, on earth (as fire or Agni), in the atmosphere 
 (as lightning or as wind, Vayu), and in the sky (as the sun, Surya)," 
 according to Sakapuni ; or " on the hill where he rises, on the 
 meridian, and on the hill where he sets," according to Aurnavabha.' 
 — Nirukta, xii. 19 ; Sanskrit Texts, iv. 64. 
 
 2 Lassen, Incl. Alt. iv. 583. ^ See ante, p. 35. 
 
 * See p. 35. On this occasion one half of Vishnu is said to 
 have been embodied in Rama, one quarter in Sita, and one 
 quarter in Lachman. 
 
Krishna. 115 
 
 among the Hindus. His character, though not 
 altogether free from blemishes, is one of the best 
 and noblest in history ; and it is accordingly to the 
 worship of this incarnation of Vishnu that most 
 reformers among the Vaishnavas, such as Eamanuja 
 and Eamananda, have attached themselves. Under 
 this name he is still worshipped by many powerful 
 sects, such as the Sita Earns and Eamawats, or 
 disciples of Eamananda. 
 
 But more important than any of these — the 
 great feature, in fact, of the Brahmanical revival — 
 was the adopting of Krishna as the eighth incar- 
 nation of Vishnu. As it shows all the force and all 
 the vice of this movement, I will dwell on it more in 
 detail. I have already had occasion to refer to 
 Krishna, the ally of the Pandavs ^ in the great war 
 recorded in the ]Mahabharat. In the later additions 
 to that poem he is spoken of as a divinity. Tradi- 
 tions about him beyond what are recorded in it 
 were handed down, and were current among the 
 Vaisya and other castes ; these, with many exagger- 
 ations and accretions, had assumed a definite form, 
 and his worship had taken firm hold on the popular 
 mind, when the Brahmans began to manipulate it 
 for their own purposes. According to the general 
 story, he lived in his youth in Brindaban, a beautiful 
 forest on the banks of the Jumna. He was supposed 
 to be the son of Xanda, a cowherd of the district. 
 He was noted in his boyhood for roguery, theft, and 
 falsehood. As he grew up he performed several 
 feats, among others killing a bull by which he was 
 
 ^ See ante, p. 36. 
 
 v/ 
 
116 Va ishnavis m. 
 
 attacked, now the unpardonable sin of Hinduism. 
 He thereafter entered on a course of open, shameless 
 debauchery — the part of his history most often 
 celebrated in story and song. When he had grown 
 up he slew Kansa, king of Mathura, and ruled 
 there for some time ; but he was attacked by 
 Jarasandh, the king of !Magadh, a relation of 
 Kansa's, and, after a stout resistance, obliged to 
 flee. He led his tribe, the Yadavs, away to the far 
 west of India, and there founded the city and 
 kingdom of Dwarka, by the edge of the ocean. 
 From there he aided the Pandavs, and became one 
 of the most renowned warriors in India — his whole 
 life being characterised by the greatest licentiousness. 
 He was at last wounded by an arrow, which a Bhil 
 had shot at him by mistake, and died of the wound. 
 The whole story of Krishna is possibly as great a 
 myth as the story of William Tell is believed by 
 some to be. But, mythical or historical, it had laid 
 as firm a hold on the minds of the Hindus as the 
 story of Tell has on the minds of the Swiss, and 
 had been associated with a belief in the divinity of 
 y the hero. We may acquit the Brahmans of having 
 invented it, for it is in many points quite opposed 
 to their general teaching, but they found it too 
 deeply rooted in popular faith for them to tamper 
 with it. They therefore adopted it, supplemented 
 it, and directed their pantheistic philosophy to 
 justifying its most revolting extravagances. Krishna 
 was represented as the eighth incarnation of Vishnu. 
 The object of this incarnation was represented as 
 being the destruction of Kansa, the tyrannical king 
 
Brahmanical Glosses. 117 
 
 of Matliura, a worshipper of Siva. Hinduisiii has \J 
 never been able to conceive of one incarnation to 
 put away sin once and for ever. Something is con- 
 stantly going wrong in the course of mundane affairs, 
 and, to rectify that, a god becomes incarnate, without 
 seemingly having the power to affect future events. 
 To get over the difficulty of Krishna's being born 
 of low caste parents, he was represented as a 
 changeling. His real parents were said to be 
 Vasudeva and Devaki, the former being the rightful 
 owner of the throne of Mathura, but dethroned 
 by Kansa. Vasudeva is a name of Vishnu. The 
 writing of the Bhagavat Purana, the chief authority 
 now for the worship of Krishna, is said to have 
 been prompted by a desire on the part of the author, 
 Boppadeva, to establish the worship of A^asudeva. 
 We must look on these names, therefore, as being 
 entirely mythical, and as meaning simply that the 
 worship of Vishnu liad been suppressed by Siva, 
 and that Krishna was raised up to re-establish it. 
 It is now, however, accepted as a substantial fact 
 by the Hindus. Kansa is said to have been warned 
 by a voice from heaven that the child of Devaki 
 would destroy him. When the time of her deliver- 
 ance approached, she and her husband were by his 
 orders manacled and confined in a to\ver surrounded 
 with guards, but all in vain. When Krishna was 
 born, the manacles fell off, the guard fell asleep. 
 Vasudeva bore Krishna across the Jumna, whose 
 waters dried up at the touch of Krishna's foot, to 
 the house of Nanda, whose wife had just been 
 delivered of a daughter. He chancjed the two 
 
118 Va ish navism. 
 
 children, and returned with the female infant to his 
 prison. He and his wife were miraculously bound 
 as before ; the guards woke up, and informed Kansa 
 that the child was born. He rushed in to destroy 
 her, but she was carried up to heaven, and escaped. 
 This story may be taken as a purely Brahmanical 
 invention.^ In the subsequent parts of the story, 
 Brahmanical influence is seen rather in the mystic 
 explanation given of traditions which had taken 
 too deep a hold to be forgotten or ignored. Once, 
 when his mother had caught him stealinof some 
 cheese, and was about to whip him as he deserved, 
 he is said to have opened his mouth and show^n her 
 the illusion of the three worlds therein, whereby 
 she became convinced that everything belonged to 
 him, and that she could not question his right to 
 take the cheese if he liked. The bull he killed — 
 the hardest nut for the Brahmans to crack — is 
 represented as having been a demon sent in that 
 form to destroy him. The part of his life most 
 shocking to the moral sense is the story of his 
 adultery with the gopis, the waives of the herdsmen 
 of Brindaban. In the Bhagavat Purana — where 
 we have the latest philosophising on the subject — 
 the story is supposed to be related by a sage called 
 Sukhdeva to a kino; Parikshit ; and when he comes 
 to this passage the king objects that the story is 
 highly immoral. The sage replies : That these gopis 
 
 ^ In tliis story we may trace a distortion of the narrative in 
 Matthew of Herod's attempt to destroy the infant Jesus. This 
 story does not appear in Hindu literature till after the time of 
 the first eftorts of Christianity to penetrate India. See below, 
 chap. xi. 
 
Bralimanical Allegorising. 1 1 9 
 
 were heavenly nymphs, who had come to earth to 
 enjoy the society of God when He became incarnate ; 
 that ' he who moves within the g'Opis, their husbands, 
 and, indeed, all embodied beings, is their ruler, who 
 only in sport assumed a body upon earth.' In the 
 popular version of the story, too, the following verse 
 is quoted, which might almost find a place in a 
 Christian work : — 
 
 ' The rosary vain, and vain to call " Lord ! Lord I " by day 
 and night ; 
 If false the heart, then vain tlie show ; in truth doth God 
 delight.' 
 
 This seems a noble sentiment, but as applied in the 
 context it means that, if the heart be right, outward 
 conduct matters nothing, that consequently there 
 was nothincf wrons::^ in the conduct of Krishna and 
 the gopis, as he was god, and they looked to nothing 
 but his divinity. This to us sounds like disgusting 
 blasphemy, but it shows what pantheism has done 
 for Hinduism. The pundits allegorise, the common 
 people gloat over the plain narrative. Nothing is 
 more marked than the different ways in which the 
 best educated pundits and the common people meet 
 an attack as to the character of their god. The 
 former fence, explain away, spiritualise all the 
 indecent stories, till they say they derive edification 
 from them. The latter answer plainly : He had 
 power, why should he not use it to please himself 
 in any way he chose ? Why should we quarrel 
 with the play or pranks of the deity any more than 
 with those of a boy ? 
 
 This is by far the most popular incarnation of ^ 
 
120 VaisJinavism. 
 
 Vishnu, and, indeed, the most popular god of India. 
 Images of him are more frequent than of any other. 
 These are generally attempts to represent him per- 
 forming some of his feats, but there are also many 
 adaptations of other images that had become cele- 
 brated in certain districts. The best known of these 
 is that of Juggahnath in Orissa. It is a shapeless, 
 hideous idol — nothing but a black stump with a 
 head upon it. It was probably an old idol rever- 
 enced in that part of the country, and, when the 
 worship of Krishna spread, it was adopted as one of 
 his names (Lord of the World) and one of his 
 representations, the difference between it and the 
 others being accounted for by saying that his limbs 
 had dropped off on account of his immorality ! 
 
 Since Krishna, a ninth incarnation of Vishnu as 
 Buddha is said to have taken place. This was 
 introduced probably for the purpose of conciliating 
 the Buddhists, and also of ascribing to Vishnu all 
 the great movements that have taken place in India. 
 There is still a sect of Buddha -Vaishnavas who 
 worship Vishnu under the name of Pandurang, 
 but the worship of Krishna overshadows his ; it 
 has still more vitality, and is undergoing fresher 
 developments than any other form of Hinduism. 
 A tenth incarnation is looked for, but meanwhile 
 the sovereignty of Krishna is maintained by repeti- 
 tions of his incarnation. There is a god of the 
 name of Eam-Deva worshipped by some castes in 
 Eajputana. He seems to have been a Eajput who 
 set himself up for a teacher, and was after death 
 deified by his followers. The Vaishnavas secured 
 
Tlic Eiujlisli the Tenth Avatar. 121 
 
 his disciples by representing liim as an incarnation 
 of Krishna. How often this god has become incar- 
 nate it would be indeed difficult to say. 
 
 I have mentioned that a tenth incarnation is 
 looked for, called, in the Puranas, Kalkik Who 
 or what this is to be is not very clearly decided. 
 I would merely notice an idea that seems to have 
 some adherents in India, that the English are this 
 tenth incarnation of Vishnu.^ I once found this 
 expressed in a part of India where, I believe, no 
 missionary had gone before. When I was remon- 
 strating with some Hindus on their worshipping a 
 being who had been guilty of such acts as Krishna, 
 one man replied very warmly, ' AVhy, these were 
 but his sports. You English have your sports. 
 You have the railway and the steamboat and the 
 telegraph, and no one blames you. Why should 
 you blame Krishna for sporting in his way ? ' 
 
 That this idea is held not merely among the 
 illiterate, the following quotation from a work by 
 a Hindu, a native of Bombay, will show : — 
 
 ' There are traditions in this land which perhaps none has 
 yet attended to with due concern — that the East will be com- 
 pletely changed by a nation from the West ; and the tenth 
 Avatar of Vishnu, a man on a white horse, so current among 
 the ]3rophecies of the sacred Brahmanical writings, must be 
 looked on to typify the advent of the Enghsh in India. 
 Statesmen vainly look upon the Anglo-Indian empire as an 
 accident, something that will not last long ; and, though 
 
 1 But some consider, too, that the English are afraid of this 
 tenth Avatar. When vaccination was introduced into the Ajmere 
 district, the report spread that it was a device of the English 
 to discover a new incarnation of Vishnu, who was to have white 
 blood, and who, they feared, was to extirpate them from India, 
 
 i 
 
122 Vaishna v ism . 
 
 events like the Mutiny of 1857 frequently give to that expres- 
 sion a significance it can never otherwise bear, the prophecy 
 of the West, "Japheth shall dwell in the tents of Shem," 
 and the prophecy of the East relating to the tenth incarna- 
 tion of Vishnu, a man on a white horse coming from the 
 West, and destroying everything Brahmanical, render it im- 
 perative on us to accept, however reluctantly, that European 
 supremacy in Asia is one of the permanent conditions of the 
 world ! ' ^ 
 
 These are the principal incarnations of this god.^ 
 \/ It will be seen that he embodies the natural 
 tendency to hero-worship — that he presents the 
 Hindu conception of ' God in history.' It will be 
 seen that the conception is one of might, not 
 united with moral purity ; and that the pantheistic 
 philosophy has justified the wickedness and vio- 
 lence of the god on grounds quite consistent with 
 itself. 
 
 1 Lights and Shades of the East. By Framji Bomanji. Alliance 
 Press, Bombay. The 'man on a white horse coming from the 
 West' is the jiopular idea of the tenth incaruation. But it is not 
 so stated in the Puranas. The following is the prophecy as it 
 stands in the Vishnu Purana : — 'When the practices taught by 
 the Vedas and the institutes of law shall nearly have ceased, and 
 the close of the Kali age shall be nigh, a portion of that divine 
 being who exists of his own spiritual nature in the character of 
 Brahma, and who is the beginning and the end, and who com- 
 prehends all things, shall descend upon earth ; he will be born in 
 the family of Vishnuyasas — an eminent Brahman of Sambhalu 
 village — as Kalki, endowed with the eight superhuman faculties. 
 By his irresistible might he will destroy the Mhlechchhas and 
 thieves, and all whose minds are devoted to iniquity. He will 
 then re-establish righteousness upon earth ; and the minds of 
 those who live at the end of the Kali age shall be awakened, and 
 shall be as pellucid as crystal.' — Vish. Fur. iv. 24. 
 
 2 The Bhagavat enumerates twenty -two, including, besides 
 those mentioned here, sacrifice (see ante, p. 31), Kikhabha (p. 63), 
 Prithu (p. 100). 
 
Inxocation of Rdrna. 123 
 
 Hindu WorsJiip. — I now turn to speak of the 
 worship of this gocl, but will first say something of 
 Hindu worship in general. It is of two kinds, ' tlie W 
 way of Devqxiqn ' ^ and the ' way of Woeks/ ^ the 
 former being more specially Vishnu w^orsHip, and 
 the latter Siva worship, though both are now mingled 
 to a OTeafTTefi^ree. Those who have learned the 
 higher philosophy try to show that both resolve 
 themselves into the philosophic 'way of Know^ledge.'^ 
 
 Some forms of worship are common to all the ways. 
 Foremost among these is IisWOCATIOX of the Supreme . 
 Spirit as Eama. This, it is said, aids meditation. We 
 are apt to forget God, but, by repeating His name, 
 we are kept in mind of Him. Such may have been 
 the original meaning of this w^orship, but power is 
 generally supposed to exist in the mere sound ; and 
 its repetition is supposed to impose an obligation 
 on the god, in return for which he is bound to grant 
 favours, as much as the merchant is bound to give 
 goods in return for the money which he receives. 
 The oftener the name is repeated, the greater the 
 obligation on the part of the god becomes. Sin- 
 cerity, even purpose and intelligence, are not neces- 
 sary to give efficacy to the invocation. A story is 
 currently told of a Bhil, wdio, having unwittingly 
 killed a Brahman, was told constantly to repeat the 
 word Mara (dead) as an expiation. He did so for 
 years, and the transposition of the syllables 'Mara 
 mara ' formed the invocation ' Eama, Eama,' till at 
 last Vishnu, liearing himself invoked, appeared to 
 the man, granted him enlightenment, and promised 
 1 Bhakti Milrg. - Karma ^Ifirg. ^ Gyfui Mfirg. 
 
124 Vauhnavism. 
 
 him liberation on condition that he would write a 
 book to promote his worship. The man then 
 became a Brahman, and was known as Valmiki, 
 the author of the Eamayana. Even more absurd 
 stories are told to illustrate the same idea, and it 
 has come to be fixed in the minds of the Hindus 
 that the mere repetition of this name is sufficient. 
 Hence they use it on almost all occasions — the 
 Vaishnavas to invoke Vishnu and the Saivas to 
 invoke Siva.^ They use it as a salutation on meet- 
 ing, they use it as an exclamation of wonder. 
 When not otherwise employed, they mechanically 
 turn round their rosary and mutter the name at 
 each bead. 
 
 But it is more generally through their images 
 that the gods are worshipped. This brings up the 
 whole question of Image Worship, or the worship 
 of material objects. ' Stone worship ' is as common 
 a name in India as image worship, and many of 
 the objects of worship — more, however, among the 
 Saivas than the Vaishnavas — are mere stones or 
 rocks with a red daub upon them. This form of 
 idolatry does not seem to have belonged originally 
 to Brahmanical worship, but to have been engrafted 
 on it from the worship of the aboriginal tribes or 
 earlier settlers in India. To these same sources 
 may we attribute the worship of most of the 
 images popular in special localities and among 
 special castes. But it is also highly probable that 
 
 1 The distinctive Vishnu invocation is Ilari Ram, and the Siva, 
 Har Ram. 
 
Image Worship. 125 
 
 the Buddhistic practice of erecting images of Buddlia 
 and of Buddhist saints may have given an impetus 
 to such worship. However it may have originated, 
 it now flourislies in Hinduism with all the vicjour 
 of a strong life, and the Brahmans have come to be 
 as degraded stone and image worshippers as any. 
 
 There are three views with regard to this worship 
 in India. The first is the Philosophical, held by 
 the educated and thinking few, that the image is an 
 aid to meditation and devotion. We are apt, they 
 say, to forget God ; but when we see the stone it 
 reminds us of Him, we meditate on Him, and 
 invoke His name. But a much more general view 
 is the Mystical one : that, accordincj to the charm 
 originally pronounced at the consecration of an idol, 
 indicated by certain red marks on the stone or by 
 the form of the image, some particular deity is 
 present in it. This doctrine is somewhat analogous 
 to the Eoman Catholic doctrine of the real presence ; 
 but the Hindus do not believe in a corporeal, only 
 in a spiritual presence — that the spirit of the god 
 comes at the bidding of the priest into the idol, as 
 a man might go into a house to dwell, and that he 
 knows and accepts what is offered to the idol as 
 offered to himself. And, lastly, there is the Liteual 
 view, held by the most ignorant of the population, 
 that the idol, by the Brahman's charm, is itself 
 made a god, and by its own power and will can 
 accomplish for its worshippers what they desire. 
 Hence the Hindus, if their prayers are not fulfilled, 
 sometimes scourge their idols, or cast them out of 
 their temples. Sometimes the priests exhibit them 
 
126 VaisJinavism. 
 
 loaded with chains, and tell their devotees that their 
 god is in debt, and has been put in chains by his 
 creditors, and so must remain till liis debts are paid. 
 
 I have spoken of the Mantuas or charms which 
 the Brahmans use in consecrating idols. These are 
 mostly passages from the Vedas, repeated still in 
 their archaic language — a language quite unintel- 
 ligible to those who use them, as the source whence 
 they are derived is unknown.^ They are thus 
 nothing better than unmeaning formuhe, but they 
 are supposed to have power over the gods ; hence 
 the common saying, that the gods are subject to 
 the mantras, and the mantras are subject to the 
 Brahmans. These last are thus supposed to be able 
 to compel the presence of the god into the image 
 which they wish to consecrate. But many sects 
 hold that each worshipper is able at pleasure to 
 enjoy the presence of his deity, and for this purpose, 
 when he is initiated into the sect, its peculiar 
 mantra or formula is taught him. This generally 
 consists of a short Sanskrit form, meaning ' I salute 
 Krishna,' or ' I salute IN'arayana,' or some such 
 thing. By repeating this at the commencement of 
 any act of worship, they believe the presence of the 
 god they invoke is secured as really as in the idol. 
 The philosophical explanation of this ivS, that the 
 repetition of the formula helps to concentrate the 
 
 1 A pundit, well read in ordinary Sanskrit literature, calling on 
 me one day, happened to look over a volume wliicli I had of the 
 Rig Veda with commentary. He was quite startled to find in it 
 certain mantras which he had been using for years ; to learn that 
 they were in the Veda, and hacl a meaning. 
 
Sacrifices and Offerings. 12 
 
 mind on God, and to enable us to meditate better 
 on Him. 
 
 One of the most striking facts in modern Hinduism 
 is, that in acts of worship, whether of these idols or 
 of the deity conceived as spiritually present, sacrifice, 
 which formed the centre of early Vedic worship, is 
 conspicuous by its absence. Offerings are indeed 
 made to the idols, but they are not considered 
 expiations for sin. They are looked on as food for 
 the gods-; they are allowed to remain before the 
 idol long enough for it to be supposed to have 
 consumed their essence ; and then their apparent 
 remnant is taken by the priests. Bloody offerings, 
 sacrifices of goats and buffaloes, are common in 
 many parts of India, as were also sacrifices of 
 children till the British rule was firmly established. 
 But these are acts of fetich worship more akin to 
 the worship of the African tribes than of the early 
 Aryas — different alike in name and in purpose — 
 bloody food offered to propitiate a bloodthirsty deity, 
 instead of symbols of the sins of the sacrificer being 
 borne by another. They are found chiefly among 
 the aboriginal tribes ; the tendency of Hinduism is 
 to put them down,^ and where they have been 
 
 ^ Near Todgiirh in IMairwara is a temple to Piplaj or Devi, 
 where the Mairs, an aboriginal tribe, used to sacrifice children, 
 till the district was subdued by the English aboiit the year 1S20, 
 and where, till within a few years, thirty or forty buffaloes were 
 annually sacrificed with the most savage cruelty. A Vaishnava 
 Brahman was appointed Tahsihlar of the place for a few years, and 
 forbade the sacrifice, but under his successor they were renewed. 
 The attention of Government being called to the subject, the 
 sacrifice was allowed, but the cruelties attending it forbidden. 
 
128 Va ish na vism . 
 
 incorporated into it they form one of its greatest 
 stains. Brahmanical sacrifice has disappeared from 
 Hinduism as completely as Levitical sacrifice has 
 disappeared from Judaism. In the latter it has 
 been fulfilled, in the former it has been superseded. 
 It was impossible that it should continue after the 
 revolution in Indian thought which Buddhism had 
 accomplished. Primitive sacrifice could not consist 
 with the idea of transmisfration. Vicarious atone- 
 ment by sacrifice could have no meaning for persons 
 who looked for vicarious atonement through another 
 consciousness of their own selves. When the 
 human soul is considered part of the divine spirit, 
 there is no one to whom atonement can be made. 
 
 Vishnu WorsJii}^. — These general remarks on 
 Hindu worship and ceremony wdll enable us better 
 to understand the peculiarities of Vishnu worship. 
 It suits the character of the god. He is the 
 sovereign source of power, and his worshippers need 
 only to make a formal acknowledgment of this. 
 Their worship is therefore the ' way of devotion.' 
 They go to his temples, and make a presentation of 
 ' wealth, body, and soul,'^ but this with the majority 
 is a mere form ; it does not mean renouncing any 
 gain, pleasure, or sin. A god who so pampered his 
 own body wdiile on earth cannot ask anything very 
 severe of his followers — a god who committed such 
 sins as he did, will not require any very strict 
 renouncement of sin from his worshippers. Their 
 main idea seems to be just paying to the idol the 
 
 1 Dhan, Tan, Man. 
 
Images of Vislimt. 129 
 
 same respect as they would pay to the god if he were 
 still incarnate as a prince on earth. The idol takes 
 tlie place of the king ; the temple is his palace. 
 
 When George I. became King of England, his 
 Court was still kept up in Hanover. His usual 
 levees were held, but in his place a portrait of him 
 was set on the throne, and the courtiers bowed to 
 it as they would to the king. In the same way 
 the Hindus bow to the images of Vishnu, as they 
 would to Eama or Krishna were they still on earth; 
 and thev have a better reason for it than these 
 Hanoverians had, for they believe that their god 
 IKrvadcs the image, and is conscious of service done 
 to it as of service done to himself. They therefore 
 go every morning to his temple to pay their respects 
 to him as they do to their Eajahs or Thakurs.^ In 
 fact, the popular name for an image of Vishnu is 
 Thakurji. They believe that, just as a prince is 
 satisfied with the appearance of his subjects at his 
 court, and as he will grant their petitions, so is the 
 idol satisfied with the presence of his worshippers 
 in his temple, and ready to grant their prayers. And 
 as a sul)ject, when he wants any great boon from 
 his rajali, must make him and his ministers large 
 presents ; so, too, must they occasionally be ready to 
 make large gifts to the idol and to his priests — 
 even to the extent of wealth, body, and soul — 
 especially if they are seeking liberation. Some 
 idols are more specially worshipped on certain 
 days — as kings have greater levees on their birth- 
 days. Then pilgrims throng from all parts of India 
 
 ^ A noble or landed proprietor next in order to a rajah. 
 
 I 
 
 \ 
 
130 Vaishn a v ism . 
 
 ill crowds ; the god is carried out in procession, and 
 exhibited to the attendant multitudes, who are told 
 that a glimpse of it removes all sin. The most 
 famed of these festivals is that of Ju^oahnath in 
 Orissa, whose identification with Krishna I have 
 already noticed. At it the Hindus make a sacrifice 
 of something dearer to them than w^ealth, viz. caste, 
 for then all castes mingle promiscuouslj^, and tlie 
 w^orship of the god is supposed to sanctify the 
 breaking of caste rules. Formerly devotees used to 
 throw themselves before the wheels of the huge car 
 on which the idol was mounted, to be crushed to 
 death, assured that thereby they would attain union 
 with him. 
 
 This consecration of wealth, body, and soul, as 
 worship, produces in some sects still more pernicious 
 results. Some, sucli as the Vallabhachaeyas of 
 Bombay, teach that the god is not present in the 
 idol, but incarnate in the priest or Maharajah,^ and 
 that it is to him that the consecration must be 
 made. As the worshippers throng into the temples, 
 where the Maharajahs sit enthroned to receive their 
 homage, guards are stationed at the • gates with 
 whips to scourge all who enter, so that they may 
 experience the effects of the anger of the god, and 
 this is considered part of the consecration of the 
 body. In more esoteric worship they emulate the 
 example of their prototype Krishna, and justify 
 their doing so on the same principles as those on 
 which the Puranas justify his conduct. But ' it is 
 a shame even to speak of those things wjiich are 
 
 1 King. 
 
Practical Outcome of Hinduism. lol 
 
 done of tliein ' — in worsliip. Wlien tlie books of a 
 similar sect — the Babm Mriri>is — were first dis- 
 covered by Professor Wilson, be declared tbat be 
 believed tbere must be some alle[>'orical meaninGj 
 attached to them, because no human beings could 
 be found so debased as to practise what was tliereiii 
 inculcated as the worship of God. But a trial on 
 an action for slander brought by one of these 
 Maharajahs against a native editor, who had exposed 
 him, revealed the practices of the sect in an English 
 court before English judges. It showed that these 
 sacred books were no allegories, that, on the con- 
 trary, they did not sufSciently depict the vile 
 licentiousness of the orgies which they sanctified 
 with the name of worship. 
 
 And this is only a legitimate deduction from 
 the higher principles of Hinduism. When once 
 pantheism has shown that virtue and vice are 
 alike indifferent for salvation, and thereby cleared 
 the way for the acceptance of such a character as 
 Krishna as an embodiment of Deity, the way is 
 further cleared for his worshippers seeking to be 
 like him. Happily the power of conscience within 
 even them is not altogether effaced, and the worst 
 of them is better than their deity, while it is only 
 a small section, I would fain trust, that belong to 
 these more degraded sects. ]\Iany Vaishnavas walk 
 according to the light of nature, and are exemplary 
 in all the relations of life ; but the strange thing is, 
 that when they feel their sin, their need of forgive- 
 ness and of the aid of divine power, they should 
 resort to a god capable of appearing in such forms 
 
132 Vaishnavism. 
 
 and doing such deeds ; and that they should be 
 satisfied with the slight ceremonies imposed by his 
 / worship. The Vishnu religion is well termed by 
 the other sects in India the self-indulQ;ent wav of 
 salvation.^ 
 
 Vaislinava Beforiiurs. — The Yaishnavas have pro- 
 duced many reformers both philosophic and popular. 
 Foremost among these was Eamanuja, who lived 
 early in the twelfth century, to whose influence 
 subsequent reformers owe most of their impulse. 
 He held the theistic doctrine of the personality of 
 God and of His distinction from the universe and 
 from the human soul. He attacked the pantheism 
 of the Vedanta with a dialectic power and high 
 moral tone such as few controversialists have reached. 
 He denounced as blasphemous the doctrine of God's 
 being active only when conditioned by ^faya, or 
 IfTiiorance, and maintained that all the conditions of 
 sovereignty and activity were eternally God's. But 
 he did not get quite clear of all pantheistic ideas. 
 He maintained that at the final liberation souls 
 were absorbed in God, but not unified with Him. 
 He looked on the union as a mechanical mixture, 
 while the Vedantists would consider it rather a 
 chemical mixture. As milk though mingled with 
 water does not become water, so neither do human 
 souls, though absorbed in the Supreme by virtue of 
 meditation, obtain identity with Him. 
 
 One of his successors, Eamananda, modified this, 
 and maintained that the Supreme Spirit might be 
 
 1 Tuslit Marg. 
 
Failure of Efforts at Reform. 133 
 
 both unconditioned and conditioned, becoming the 
 latter out of love to his worshippers. The concrete 
 form which this speculation assumed was that God, 
 out of love to man, became incarnate ; and the most 
 popular writer of his school, Tulsidas, author of a 
 version of the Eamayana in the vulgar dialect, 
 expresses this in language that a Christian might 
 almost use. The followers of Ramananda, called 
 Eamanandis or Eamawats, worship Vishnu in the 
 incarnation of Eama Chandra. Their philosophical 
 reform was accompanied by a practical reform, 
 which souo'ht, anions^ other thinsfs, loosenincj the 
 distinctions of caste and spreading sacred know- 
 ledge in the vernacular instead of the obsolete 
 Sanskrit. 
 
 As they fell from their first zeal other reforming 
 sects sprang from them, some of them emulating in 
 their self-denial the severest of the Saiva sects. 
 But the Nemesis of their origin seems to have 
 followed them all. Starting from the worship of a 
 sensual god, they all sank to his level. After a 
 protest against religious corruption, which endured 
 for little more than the life of their founder, their 
 worship sank to a grossness emulating that against 
 which they first protested. The latest, and in some 
 respects the most earnest Vaishnava attempt at 
 reform — the Ram Sneh sect, which adniits other 
 castes as well as Brahmans to be ministers of 
 religion, and discards all idol-worship — has sunk as 
 low as the lowest, and confounds the practice of 
 uncleanness with the service of God. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 SAIVISM. 
 
 TUKNING to the worship of Siva, tlie other 
 great god of the Hindus, we find tlie opposite 
 pole of pantheistic thought at w^ork. Yisbnu wor- 
 ship starts from the idea of God condescending to 
 man, Siva worship from the idea of man raising 
 himself to be God. Vaishnavism, considering that 
 God pervades everything, has recognised Him espe- 
 cially in the heroes of the nation ; Saivism, con- 
 sidering our souls to be part of God, teacbes ns to 
 seek to realise that union by subduing the body 
 and mortifying the flesh. We have seen that the 
 idea of the power of austerity entered early into 
 Indian religion, and was by some considered the 
 source of the power of the gods ^ even before the 
 rise of Buddhism ; but it w^as after the rise of that 
 system that this stream of thought gained power in 
 India, and it was possibly in seeking to combat 
 Buddhism with its own weapons that the Brahmans 
 were led to exalt the worship of Siva. 
 
 It is difficult to say how he came to take the 
 place he has done in the Hindu pantheon. The" ' 
 meaning of his name is ' Gracious.' The word does 
 
 ^ See ante, p. 34. 
 134 
 
Original Conception of Siva. 135 
 
 not occur in the Vedas as the name of a god, but 
 it occurs as an epithet of Eudra, with whom Siva 
 was afterwards identified. This was the name of 
 the god of the storm, and it expLains a number of 
 the attributes of Siva. Tlie storm, rusliing down 
 from the mountains, led to the mountain being 
 considered his abode ; the constant muttering of 
 the thunder, which the echoes appear to make 
 incessant for hours, might suggest his constant 
 invocations on the mountain top ; the irresistible 
 power with which the lightning strikes those on 
 whom it falls mio^ht orisjinate the olance from his 
 eye that consumed those who excited his wrath ; 
 the destructive fury of the storm, overthrowing 
 houses, tearing np trees, raising the torrents to 
 sweep away their banks, explain his attributes as 
 the god of destruction ; the aspect of the plain 
 after the storm has swept over it — the plough 
 turning up the soft earth, formerly a hardened cake 
 — a tinge of verdure clothing what was formerly 
 a barren waste — is sufficient to account for his 
 being called also the god of fertility and reproduc- 
 tion ; whilst the effect of the storm in purifying 
 and clearing the atmosphere, and bracing up the 
 frame, may account for the medical power attri- 
 buted to him. 
 
 Such is the Yedic Gfod with whom Siva is now 
 
 o 
 
 identified ; and so we may account for some of the 
 attributes now attached to the latter. But this is 
 • a more recent identification, and it is probal)le that, 
 as he is now generally conceived of in India, he 
 was originally the god of some of the races who 
 
136 Saivism. 
 
 settled in India before the Aryas. It is probably 
 from them, too, that the Li2s^GA has been introduced. 
 This is a stone symbol of tlie power of generation, 
 and symbolises the reproductive power attributed 
 to the god. It is in a prominent position in all his 
 temples, and he is sometimes worshipped by flowers 
 beino- strewed on it. 
 
 The myths about Siva's first forcing Brahma and 
 Vishnu to acknowledge his power — too coarse to be 
 repeated here — point to the reluctant acknowledg- 
 ment of his claims by older sects. There is little 
 human interest in the legends regarding him — 
 nothing, as in the case of Vishnu, to intertwine 
 him with the history of India. The popular idea 
 with regard to him is that he was a mendicant who 
 gained and maintains his power by austerities, 
 meditation, and invocation. In his statues he is 
 represented with his hand open, as if begging for 
 alms ; he is said to have gone about begging, riding 
 on a bull, which is consequently now considered 
 his sacred animal. Stories of drunkenness, licen- 
 tiousness, and ferocious cruelty are attributed to 
 him ; but his vice differs from that of Krishna's 
 very much as a half-idiotic boor's might differ from 
 that of a prince. The conception of a man becom- 
 ing god through godlike, because most perfectly 
 human, conduct, has no place in Saivism. The 
 mendicant becomes a terrible god by becoming as 
 unhuman as possible, and all the representations 
 of Siva carry out this idea. He is represented as 
 having a third eye in his forehead, wdth a glance 
 
Saiva Legends. 137 
 
 from which he strikes dead those who offend him ; 
 his rosary is composed of human skulls, in which 
 he is said to delight, and his necklace is of the 
 same ; while serpents n^ngle with his hair and 
 wreathe round his neck. He is said thus to be 
 sitting on Kailas, an unseen mountain of the 
 Himalayas, still turning his rosary and engaged in 
 invocation, thereby continually increasing his power. 
 This power is not connected with any moral or 
 intellectual greatness, or any power of will. It 
 seems to be very little under his own control. One 
 unfortunate god is said once to have disturbed him 
 at his invocations ; his anger was aroused, and a 
 glance from his eye reduced him to ashes. When 
 reproached for what he had done, he granted him 
 to be born again as Krishna. So, too, in a drunken 
 fit he is said once to have struck off the head of 
 his son Ganesha, and when reproached by his wife 
 for so doing, he replaced it with an elephant's head. 
 One name by which he is known among the com- 
 mon people is the simple or half-witted lord.^ 
 Their idea seems to be that this simplicity makes 
 it easier to cajole, and at the same time more 
 dangerous to disturb him. 
 
 But the main feature in his reliction is, that he 
 symbolises the results that may be attained by 
 austerities and invocation. The very absence of 
 inherent greatness or power in the character of the 
 god tends to exalt the principle which he represents. 
 In conformity with this, the worship paid to him 
 starts from the idea of getting power over him by 
 
 1 Bhola Nath. 
 
138 Set iv ism. 
 
 t 
 
 similar austerities and meditation. It is therefore 
 called the way of works,^ or the way of hardships.^ 
 Accordingly it is the JoGis or ascetics who form 
 the main strength of the Saiva sects. Some of 
 these include men of real learning and power, who 
 discard all the gjross traditions with reii^ard to their 
 god, look on him as the representative of the 
 Supreme Spirit, and endeavour by study and learn- 
 ing to acquire such knowledge as shall enable them 
 to realise their unity with him. Sa.nkarachari, per- 
 haps the greatest master of the Vedanta philosophy, 
 belonged to the Saivas ; its most strenuous and able 
 supporters at present are to be found among them, 
 especially in the sect called the Dandis, among 
 whom alone, as far as I have observed, are icono- 
 clasts and zealous reformers on a purely Hindu 
 basis to be found. These adopt in its highest sense 
 the Saiva principle of man raising himself to unity 
 with the divine. 
 
 But in sjeneral it is a mere mortification of the 
 flesh, a mere unhumanising of the man, that is 
 looked to as the means of attaining power. A 
 story is told of one who for a thousand years 
 continued standing on the tip of his left toe, during 
 the first hundred years of which period he lived on 
 fruits, the second hundred on withered leaves, the 
 third hundred on water, and the remaining seven 
 hundred on air. At the end of this period 
 Mahadeva,^ or Siva, appeared to him, and granted 
 him what boons he desired. 
 
 There is a local tradition at Pushkar, near Ajmer, 
 
 1 Karma Marga. - Kasht Marga. ^ Lit. the Great God. 
 
Practices of Modern Ascetics. 139 
 
 to the effect, that on the occasion of a great 
 gathering of gods and Brahmans at the place, some 
 of the latter went to pay their respects to a cele- 
 brated recluse of tlie name of Mankan. One of 
 them had some coarse grass in his hand, with 
 which he accidentally cut tlie recluse's finger, when 
 instead of blood a green fluid came out. Seeing 
 the effect which his devotions had had, he began to 
 dance with joy and pride, till Siva, to humble him, 
 went and opened his own finger before him, when 
 a stream of white ashes came out. Mankan, seeing 
 proof of a devotion so much more powerful than his 
 own, became silent, and worshipped him. Then, 
 after asking and obtaining the promise of certain 
 blessinsfs for those who should visit his hermitaoje 
 on certain days, * Mankan became absorbed in 
 Siva.' 
 
 This story points to an idea held by others as \ 
 well as Hindu recluses, that the source of corrup- 
 tion is especially in the blood, and that if it can be 
 dried up the passions will be subdued. Among the \ 
 present ascetics, however, we find little more than 
 a mere symbolism of ancient ideas. Tliey do 
 generally succeed in making themselves appear very 
 unhuman, as imlike men as men can be, though 
 whetlier it be a sublimation or desfradation of their 
 nature depends on the point of view from which 
 they are looked at. The body is covered with 
 ashes, to signify the drying up of the blood, the 
 scorching up of the passions. It is sometimes 
 further mortified by self-inflicted tortures. One 
 arm is held out straight till it is stiffened, and 
 
140 Saivism. 
 
 cannot again be bent. The band is clenched and 
 the nails allowed to grow through the flesh. 
 Occasionally a vow of silence for a period of twelve 
 years is taken. Some live alone in the woods or in 
 caves, but more frequently they wander about from 
 one shrine of Siva's to another. Some classes of 
 these recluses — and there are as many kinds as 
 there are of monks and friars — are more exclusive as 
 to the castes which they admit into their fraternity. 
 But in general men of any caste may join one or 
 other of the various kinds of mendicants, and a 
 short conversation with any of them will reveal the 
 utterly sordid, selhsh soul that exists beneath these 
 outer disguises and self-inflicted tortures, symbol- 
 isino- the mortification of the flesh and its lusts. 
 Many proverbs and rhymes are current among the 
 common people satirising these jogis for their sordid 
 or cowardly motives in becoming recluses, and for 
 their gluttony and rapacity since they assumed their 
 profession. But, with all that, they fear tliem, 
 dread their curse, supply them with what they 
 want, and even worship them. They often ask 
 them to obtain favours for them from Siva, believing 
 that in some way their austerities have brought him 
 under obligation to them. 
 
 These constitute the mainstay of the Saiva sect. 
 They are the principal worshippers of the god, but 
 they have also a large lay following among various 
 tribes and castes, whose objects of worship they 
 have identified or connected with Siva. The 
 Vaishnavas, we have seen, represented the deified 
 
] 
 
 Suhordinatc Deities. 141 
 
 heroes of India as successive incarnations of their 
 god, thus utilising the doctrine of transmigration. 
 The Saivas, on the other hand, rather took up the 
 primitive objects of worship of tlie various tribes, 
 and represented them as being either manifestations 
 or servants of Siva. Their system consequently 
 does not present the same unity as that of their 
 rivals ; there are no broad lines by which to mark 
 their working, and we have to pick up and put 
 together numbers of disjointed legends in every 
 district of India, to learn how they propagated their 
 faith. In some cases, indeed, their course of action 
 is plain enough. Siva is said to be married to a 
 qoddess named Parvati, which means ' dauQ,hter of 
 the mountain.' But a goddess may have more than 
 one name. So Devi, who was worshipped by the 
 Eajputs, MIta, a goddess of some of the hill tribes, 
 DuKGA and Kali, Bengal divinities, were all identi- 
 fied with Parvati, the wife of Siva. These were all 
 more or less sanguinary deities, and had thus an 
 affinity with the savage, unhuman nature of Siva. 
 
 One of the most popular gods in India is Ganesh / 
 or Ganpati, which means ' lord of hosts.' It is 
 generally supposed that this means evil hosts ; and 
 his worship is a sort of blackmail to keep them from 
 doino' harm. He is also the f^od of learniuGj. His 
 image is, at all events, in all native schools, and at 
 the beginning of most Hindi books — whether, as 
 sometimes explained, to propitiate him not to 
 annoy the learners, or to ask his aid as ' lord of the 
 host of letters,' is not settled. At all events, he is 
 universally invoked over India, and the Saivas have 
 
142 Saivism. 
 
 secured his worship, as subordinate to that of Siva's, 
 by representing him as a son of that god. Again, 
 the favourite deities of many agricultural castes 
 were Bhairox and Khetrpal. These were allowed 
 to remain and be worshipped as of old, but they 
 were represented as attendants on Siva. The 
 Hindus often say, that if any one wishes to get a 
 hearing of the magistrate, he must tip his servants ; 
 and so the farmers think that the best way to 
 secure Siva's protection for their fields is by paying 
 attention to his subordinates. Another point to be 
 noticed is, that the priests in many of the temples 
 of these deities are not Brahmans, but members of 
 other castes, the former not seeming to have cared 
 to disturb the usual arrangements for worship 
 among those whom they sought to proselytise, if 
 they only acknowledged their supremacy. 
 
 But it is only when we begin to examine into 
 the history of each old shrine that we find with 
 what marvellous ingenuity the Brahmans have 
 made themselves ' all thino-s to all men.' Of this I 
 will give one or two examples that have come 
 under my own observation in India. 
 
 About six miles distant from Ajmer is a lake of 
 the name of Pushkar, with a town of the same 
 name on its banks, considered one of the most holy 
 places in India. As a god may be present in a 
 stone or image, so he may be present in any 
 locality — in a grove, a stream, or lake. There are 
 some streams, such as the Ganges, and some lakes, 
 such as Pushkar, which are supposed to be the 
 
Pushkar. 143 
 
 abodes of powerful deities, who are bound to grant 
 forgiveness of sins to all who may worship them 
 l)y bathing in their waters. These localities are 
 called by the people Tirtiis, or places of pilgrimage, 
 but by the initiated this name is applied only to 
 the deity wlio gives sanctity to the place. The lake 
 and town of Pushkar are there throughout the year, 
 but the tirth is there for only five days at the 
 beginning of winter. The explanation of this given 
 in the sacred books is : that such multitudes were 
 obtaining salvation by his means, that the gods 
 complained that heaven was becoming too cro"svded, 
 and remonstrated w^ith Brahma, who thereupon 
 removed Pushkar to the sky except for these five 
 days. On other occasions he can be drawn into 
 the waters by the use of certain charms. The 
 probable explanation seems to be, that from time 
 immemorial a fair has been held at that time, as 
 being the most convenient time of the year, and 
 the Brahmans afterwards tried to o'ive it a reli^ijious 
 sanction. 
 
 In the traditions and rites connected with this 
 lake, w^e can see different stacres of religious thoudit 
 and worship fossilised, as in the successive strata 
 of a fissure of the earth we find traces of successive 
 developments of life. We see first of all the 
 aboriginal inhabitants with their tree and serpent 
 worship. Then came the Gujars, a pastoral tribe, 
 who worshipped a goddess, Gaitri, and who seem to 
 have been the first, as they are still the most 
 devout, believers in the efficacy of Pushkar. Then 
 came the Brahmans, at a time when Brahma was 
 
144 Saivism. 
 
 still their god, and they had not yet found it 
 politic to adopt either Vishnu or Siva. They 
 performed a great sacrifice at the time of the fair, 
 which they represented as being a sacrifice per- 
 formed by Bralnna. To symbolise the adherence 
 of the Gnjars to their faith, they invented a legend 
 to the effect that Brahma, in the absence of his 
 wife, Savitri, had been obliged to espouse Gaitri, 
 in order to accomplish the sacrifice. They likewise 
 accounted for the serpent worship by representing 
 a Brahman as having been, by the curse of another, 
 changed into a serpent, and having been solaced by 
 , Brahma with the assurance that divine honours 
 would be paid him. Pushkar is now the only 
 place in India where the worship of Brahma 
 occupies a conspicuous place. 
 
 Lastly came the Saivas. They found the legends 
 of Brahma too strongly rooted to be ignored or 
 displaced, so they recast the story, representing 
 Brahma as asking permission of their god to per- 
 form the sacrifice, and frequently admitting his 
 supremacy during its course. They also identified 
 Siva with some of the most popular objects of 
 worship in Pushkar and the neighbourhood. One 
 tradition has been already referred to.^ Tiie cell 
 of a holy man called Atmat, or the wanderer, had 
 been an object of superstitious reverence. He was 
 introduced into the legend as a servant of Siva, 
 absorbed into him during the sacrifice. The name 
 of Atamteshwar, or Lord of Atmat, was given • to 
 Siva, and a handsome Saiva temple erected over 
 
 1 See page 139. 
 
PnsJikar Legends. 145 
 
 the hermit's cell. Again, at a place not far from 
 Pushkar, there is a rock called Ajogand,^ with a 
 mark on it, said to be that of a goat which, on a 
 certain day of the fair, tlie people liad been 
 accustomed to visit and worship. The Saivas laid 
 hold of this, and represented the goat, whose print 
 was on the rock, as a form into which Siva had 
 transformed himself in order to kill a demon. 
 They also represented him as promising to leave 
 his Himalayan home for one day in the year, and 
 to be present then in that rock — the day of course 
 being that consecrated by popular usage.^ 
 
 It will be seen that the whole object of the 
 Brahmans was to assimilate, not in any way to 
 eradicate, ancient religious usages. They seem to 
 have been as compliant with regard to the moral 
 })ractices of those whom they thus proselytised. 
 In the ' Lay of Pushkar,' the Gujars are represented 
 as being most loose-living men, but their admission 
 as such seems to be looked on rather as an evidence 
 of the catholicity of the Brahmanical religion. As 
 they were then so they are now, after centuries of 
 Brahmanical supremacy. 
 
 To the south-east of Ajmer is a district inhabited 
 by a tribe called the Parihar Minas. An incident 
 in the history of one of their progenitors, according 
 to their present tradition, has led them to look on 
 the boar as a sacred animal, though this may be 
 
 ^^The leaping goat, 
 
 ^ There are Vaishnava traditions also connected with Pushkar, 
 but these are evidently more modern. 
 
 K 
 
146 Saivism. 
 
 a relic of boar worsliip. When the Mohammedans 
 came to India, the Minas seem to have confounded 
 their looking on the boar as an unclean animal 
 with tlieir own regard for it as a sacred animal, 
 and to have been induced in some degree to con- 
 form to their faith. Their old idol, however, they 
 still worshipped, but gave it the Mohammedan 
 name of Father Adam.^ Subsequently the Saiva 
 Brahman s got hold of them. They did not try 
 to persuade them to give up the worship of Father 
 Adam or of the boar, but simply to allow that 
 Father Adam was a name of Siva, and to worship 
 the cow as well as the boar. Temples were erected 
 in their principal villages, and stones placed in 
 them bearing representations of Siva as Father 
 Adam, of a cow and a boar, and inscriptions to the 
 effect : that the Mohammedans respected the boar 
 and the Hindus the cow, but the true followers of 
 Father Adam respected both ; and if they should 
 neglect the worship of any one of the three, the 
 worship of the other two would not benefit them. 
 There are several Saiva temples in the district in 
 which I heard the Brahmans invoke Mahadeva,^ 
 and the Minas, Father Adam. 
 
 Here, too, the Brahmanical influence has been 
 pernicious to the customs of the people. It was 
 an old custom of the Parihars to kill their female 
 infants, the object being, as they said, to avoid the 
 expense of their marriage. But some, who had 
 been more deeply instructed in priestly lore, assured 
 me that when Father Adam's worship was intro- 
 
 ^ Adam baba. ^ _^ name of Siva. 
 
Proselytising of Tribes. 147 
 
 duced, one of the Miiias, who had been most zealous 
 in promoting it, obtained from the god a promise 
 that his sons should be as numerous as the hairs 
 on his body ; and, as the divine blessing is generally 
 bestowed through means, he further obtained divine 
 permission for the Parihars to kill their daughters, 
 that so the mothers, being relieved from their 
 nursing, might be sooner able to bear sons. Thus, 
 instead of trying to eradicate a cruel and bad 
 custom, the Brahmans gave it a divine sanction. 
 When English officers, some sixty years ago, visited 
 this district, and tried to put down female infant- 
 icide, the strongest objection they met with was the 
 command of Father Adam. 
 
 These are specimens of how the Saivas have gone 
 to w^ork ; and if the traditions throughout India 
 about Siva and his subordinates were examined, they 
 would probably be found to be skilful adaptations 
 of older objects of worship.^ 
 
 In nearly all these cases the old form of worship 
 
 ^ ' The missionary operations of the Brahmans are indeed worthy 
 of special study. They have been carried on from time imme- 
 morial ; and the process is still going on amongst hill tribes and 
 other remote populations. A Brahman makes his appearance in a 
 so-called aboriginal village, and establishes his intluence by an 
 affectation of superior sanctity, aided by the fame of his spells, 
 incantations, mystic rites, and astrological predictions. He 
 declares the village idol to be a form of one or other of the great 
 gods or goddesses of the Brahmanical pantheon ; and he professes 
 to teach the true forms of worship. He divides the villagers into 
 castes, and introduces caste laws. In this manner the populations 
 of India have been brought under the spiritual domination of the 
 Brahmans, and the caste system has been introduced into secluded 
 regions in which it was previously unknown.' — AVheeler's Hist, of 
 India ^ vol. iii. pp. 401, 402. 
 
148 Sail' ism. 
 
 was still maintained. It is almost exclusively 
 amoni? the Saiva sects that the sacrifices of blood, 
 to which I have referred, are offered. But this is 
 accounted for by saying the god delights in drinking 
 blood and wearing skulls ; thus his worship was 
 accommodated to the demon worship of many of 
 the aboriginal tribes. It is more generally, however, 
 his spouse, under her different names, who is thus 
 honoured. As Mata or Devi she is still worshipped 
 by the sacrifice of goats and buffaloes ; as Kali she 
 was formerly worshipped by children being offered 
 to her. As worshippers of her the Thugs were 
 included in the Hindu system ; her command and 
 example were cited to make Sati a religious act. 
 It is chiefly through the worship of these goddesses, 
 and such subordinate gods as Bhairon and Khetrpal, 
 that Siva worship maintains its hold of the popu- 
 lace. His own temples are deserted throughout the 
 year, except on the occasion of festivals, and then 
 they are thronged chiefly by wandering devotees. 
 
 One of the worst developments of Saivism is the 
 rise of the Bahm Margis, 'left-handed' or secret 
 sects. These are sects that meet in private, when 
 all rules of caste are for the time set aside, and all 
 eat and drink together ; when they meet again in 
 public, caste rules resume their sway. There is 
 reason to believe that in some cases this is only a 
 way of getting relief from the tyranny of caste ; but 
 in many, if not in the majority, of these sects rules 
 of morality share the same fate as the rules of 
 caste. This is especially the case with those called 
 
Secret Sects. 1.49 
 
 the Saktas, or the worshippers of Sakti, the female 
 principle. Some of their holy books, called the 
 Tanteas, true to the principle of Saiva worship, teach 
 a religion of works, but the works they inculcate 
 are violating the laws of sobriety, decency, and truth. 
 The religion of works and hardship leads to as low 
 an abyss as the religion of devotion and ease. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 RECONCILIATION OF THE SECTS EEVIEW OF 
 
 HINDUISM. 
 
 THE worship of Vislinu and the worship of Siva, 
 then, symbolise originally two opposite, almost 
 antagonistic tendencies of religious thought, — the 
 former regarding Deity as becoming man, with all 
 his imperfections, and requiring to be served as we 
 serve the mighty of our race, — the latter regarding 
 man as by his own exertions freeing himself from 
 all human weaknesses and feelinQS, and raisins: 
 himself to the power of the Deity. This antagonism 
 of principles produced a frequent hostility between 
 the rival sects, such as can hardly be explained 
 by the external accidents of their systems. There 
 seems little doubt that Vishnu worship was the 
 older among the Aryan castes at all events. We 
 find in it the continuity of old Brahmanism better 
 preserved, and it has altogether a milder character. 
 This mildness is apparent even in its opposition to 
 Buddhism, and, as shown in the story of the ninth 
 incarnation, it was more ready to amalgamate than 
 to oppose. Saivism, on the other hand, attacked 
 Buddhism with the vigour of a newer faith and 
 of a nearer relationship. It animated the kings 
 
 150 
 
Sectarian Controversies. 151 
 
 who fou2flit aiTjainst Buddhism ; it was the faith of 
 the fire races of the Eajputs, whose arms finally 
 made Brahmanism triumphant. But the Saivas 
 seem originally to have been opposed to the Vaish- 
 navas as much as to the Buddhists. In the older 
 books of the two sects we find the rival gods 
 denounced, Vishnu banning Siva, and Siva banning 
 Vishnu, each excluding his rival's worshippers from 
 salvation, and consigning them to hell. 
 
 The more popular arguments as to the superiority 
 of the two gods did not turn so much on the deeper 
 questions of their faith as on some traditional 
 incidents. Thus Krishna may have paid his devo- 
 tions at some shrine of Siva's, or some shrine after- 
 wards identified w^ith his worship. At all events, 
 the Saivas preserve the tradition of Krishna's 
 worshipping Siva, and argue that the latter must 
 therefore be the greater god. The Vaishnavas 
 retort, by telling how Siva was unable to protect 
 a certain worshipper of liis from Krishna's anger, 
 and how Siva, on the evening after his marriage 
 with Parvati, entertained his bride with an account 
 of Vishnu's incarnation as Eama, and worshipped 
 him as the greatest of gods. These and similar 
 legends are bandied about in this theological 
 warfare. 
 
 But by degrees this controversy toned down, 
 though what the causes were we can only surmise. 
 It may have been the necessity of union for triumph 
 over their common enemies the Buddhists ; or it 
 may have been the influence of the Vedanta philo- 
 sophy. At all events, we find the principles of this 
 
152 Reconciliation of the Sects. 
 
 I philosophy used to effect a reconciliation : Siva and 
 I Vishnu are both one, works are acts of devotion, 
 and acts of devotion are works. Both gods were 
 the same, adapted under different forms to receive 
 different kinds of worship according to different 
 temperaments of men. For popular purposes the 
 union was symbolised by the heads of both gods, 
 with that of Brahma added, being carved out of the 
 same stone. This constitutes the Trimueti — three- 
 fold image — the popular trinity of the Hindus. 
 For the pundits this symbolises the rivals united in 
 the universal Brahm, — the way of devotion and the 
 way of works united in the way of knowledge. 
 More popularly Brahma is called the creator, Vishnu 
 the preserver, Siva ^ the destroyer ; they are also 
 spoken of as past, present, and future. Brahma is 
 thus in both cases made a thing of the past, and his 
 worship has almost entirely disappeared from India. 
 As a matter of fact the worshippers of Vishnu look 
 on him as creator, and destroyer as well as pre- 
 server, and so do the worshippers of Siva look on 
 him. The main fact typified was a reconciliation 
 of these two sects. 
 
 There has often been an analogy drawn between 
 this Hindu and the Christian trinity, but all that 
 can be said of the former is, that it may have been 
 suggested by the latter. There is a chapter in the 
 history of Hinduism that requires yet to be investi- 
 
 1 In this form they receive also the names of Hara, Hari, Har. 
 Each of these gods has his consort. Brahma's wife is Saraswati, 
 the goddess of poetry and eloquence ; Vishnu's is Lakshmi, the 
 goddess of wealth ; Siva's, Parvati, Durga, or Kali, whose worship 
 represents that of Siva intensified. 
 
Date of the Reconciliation. 153 
 
 gated, and that is the influence of early Christianity 
 upon it. We know that in the first ages of the 
 Church the gospel was preached in India, and that 
 it was not without results the existence of the 
 Malabar Christians sufficiently proves. This tells 
 of a movement, of a struggle of some kind, of which 
 all other traces have passed away, but of which the 
 trace may yet be discovered in the effect it pro- 
 duced on Hindu thought. I doubt, however, 
 whether to this Christian teachinc' we can trace the 
 Hindu conception of the trimurti, not because it is 
 unlikely, but because it comes too late for us to 
 suppose the connection probable. Tiie first in- 
 dication we find of any attempt to set up the 
 trimurti was in Bijaynagar in the beginning of the 
 fifteenth century ^ — before the Portuguese had ex- 
 plored the East, and long after the influence of 
 earlier Christianity must have ceased to affect 
 India. 
 
 The trimurti was possibly an attempt to give 
 greater popular unity to the Hindu faith under the 
 pressure of Mohammedan attack, but the meta- 
 physical basis, on which the union of the sects was 
 attempted, shaped itself under the pressure of the 
 struggle with Buddhism, and received its final form 
 in the early part of the thirteenth century, just 
 when the strussle with Moliammedanism was be- 
 
 'OO' 
 
 ginning. It was then that Bopadeva wrote the 
 
 Bhagavat Purana, which has had more influence on 
 
 'modern Hinduism than any other book. It was 
 
 written in Sanskrit, but parts of it, especially those 
 
 ^ Lassen, Ind, Alt. vol. iv. 
 
154 • Review of Hinduism. 
 
 relating to the history of Krishna, are translated 
 into most of the modern dialects of India. In it 
 we find the pantheistic doctrine fully developed. 
 Krishna, its hero, is even represented as worshipping 
 Siva, and acknowledging that they w^ere both the 
 same, while Siva acknowledges the power of Krishna 
 as superior to his own. It is in it that the various 
 legends of A^ishnu have received their final form, 
 and been explained and justified on those panthe- 
 istic bases which are now accepted generally 
 throughout India. 
 
 o 
 
 Such is a brief outline of Hinduism and of the 
 various currents of thought and of superstition 
 which seem to have contributed to its formation. 
 I have not given anything like a full account of it, 
 nor have I even hinted at the existence of many of 
 the gods that enjoy a fair degree of popularity. I 
 have merely described the main features of the 
 system. The reader may fill up the sketch with 
 almost anything he pleases, from monotheism to 
 snail worship, from self - denying beneficence to. 
 rapine and murder, and if he only acknowledge 
 the sanctity of the cow and the superiority of the 
 Brahmans, it will be strancre if Hinduism cannot 
 I find a niche for it. Vishna and Siva are the two 
 great rivers leading into the ocean of liberation — 
 the GanGjes and Indus of religion — and their sub- 
 ordinate deities may be looked on as their tribu- 
 taries ; but there may be as many smaller streams 
 and rills leading to the same end as men choose to 
 imao^ine. 
 
r; K 
 
 Holiness non-essential. lof 
 
 We may now review the work tliat Hinduism 
 lias done for India. The Brahmanical revival 
 attacked and conquered Buddhism by laying hold 
 on man's felt need of a superior power, and of all 
 the means of access to it which he had imagined, 
 and adapting them to its own end. We have seen 
 that it took the gods as they were, with all their 
 imperfections and sins, and sought to establish their 
 identity with that universal Spirit, or with parts of 
 that universal Spirit, which it conceives of as the 
 one existence. Pantheism logically requires that 
 good should be correlated with evil, and Indian 
 pantheism avowedly does so. Human passion 
 naturally leads man to imagine a superior being 
 tainted with the same vices as himself. When the 
 two meet they confirm one another. Pantheism 
 justifies the sinful idol, and the latter nails panthe- 
 ism down to the practical application of its own 
 principles. Hence in all the Hindu conceptions of 
 the Deity holiness is not an essential ; evil may 
 also proceed from Him, and in the popular idols 
 all that is needful is power of a certain kind and 
 to a certain extent. ' That granted, they may be 
 either angels or devils, patterns of virtue or monsters 
 of vice — the Deity can include both. This is a taint 
 from which Hinduism has never been able to free 
 itself. It has escaped in some instances, as we 
 have seen in the case of Eamanuja and Eamananda, 
 from absolute pantheism. ]>ut even Tulsidas, the 
 most popular disciple of the latter, and exponent of 
 his system, says, ' I salute everything good, and I 
 salute everything evil.' 
 
156 Review of Hinduism, 
 
 The Hindus often complain of the bigotry and 
 intolerance of Christianity, and contrast with it the 
 charity and tolerance of Hinduism. And truly it 
 would be difficult to get a wider charity, a broader 
 tolerance, than is expressed in the above line. But 
 this very breadth deprives it of all power for good, 
 — makes the good po\Yerless to prevent or repress 
 the evil. This is the fatal defect of Hinduism. It 
 does not exclude good, but it refuses to acknowledge 
 its exclusive claim. There are in Hindu books 
 passages of unsurpassed beauty and purity even, 
 and which one might almost think expressive of the 
 loftiest theistic w^orship. Yet these passages can 
 influence but little those who read them when they 
 exist alongside of others as vile as these are noble. 
 Nay, more, they positively hinder the spread of a 
 pure religion. When the teaching of Christ, for 
 instance, is presented to the Hindus, they acknow- 
 ledge its purity, and they recognise many of His 
 moral precepts as very like what they have been 
 accustomed to be taught. But they have also been 
 accustomed to hear them along with other teaching 
 as different from them as night from day, or in con- 
 nection with the worship of beings whose whole 
 lives contradicted them. Thus, for what hold 
 morality may have on their minds they are indebted 
 to the conscience which God has given them — not 
 in any way to their religion. In it morality is 
 non-essential ; and as Buddhism — looked on as a 
 popular system — may be described as ' morality 
 without God,' so Hinduism may be described as 
 ' God without morality.' 
 
Blind Faith. 157 
 
 Corresponding with this is the principle of the 
 human mind to which Hinduism appeals. We 
 have seen that Hindu philosophy imitates Buddhism 
 in making knowledge the great instrument of 
 salvation. But in the popular religion blind faith 
 takes the place of knowledge, and the only function 
 ascribed to the latter is to discover how the object 
 of worship, whatever that may be, is one with the 
 Supreme. With the majority, however, even this 
 is not necessary. ' Paith is the great thing ' is an 
 axiom that comes naturally to the mouth of a 
 Hindu whenever matters of religion are discussed. 
 Faith in the object of your faith, whatever that may 
 be, is considered the sure way of salvation. No 
 matter how morally bad, no matter how utterly 
 contemptible that in which you believe, have faith 
 in it, and you will gain your end. Trust your idol, 
 trust your penances, trust your w^orks, and all will 
 be well. This is a doctrine taught by others besides 
 Hindus, but in the mouth of these latter it has 
 some reason, for it is consistent with their view of 
 the relation of man to God. They do not ignore 
 knowledge altogether, but they giv^e it quite a 
 subsidiary place. From this point of view, as 
 Buddhism may be described as a system of ' know- 
 ledge without faith,' so Hinduism may be described 
 as a system of ' faith without knowledge.' 
 
 Thus has Hinduism spread throughout India, 
 not as a reformation, but as a conservation. It has 
 taken advantage of all existing superstitions, how- 
 ever gross, immoral, and criminal, and, supplying 
 
158 Review of Hinduism. 
 
 all with a philosophical basis, has crystallised each 
 into a hardness, and given to the whole a solidarity 
 which makes it now doubly difficult to attack any 
 one of them. It has recoo'nised and vindicated the 
 distinctions of class and tribe, freezing all together 
 instead of fusing all together, making different classes 
 of the same village live together with fewer common 
 sympathies and interests than the French and 
 Germans, making patriotism as we understand it 
 an unknown thing, nationality an impossibility for 
 
 /the Hindus till Hinduism be swept from India. 
 
 ■ The only thing to be said for it is, that it has 
 conserved good as well as evil. The law of caste 
 
 i is more binding than the law of conscience, and 
 where the original custom of a caste has been good, 
 it has been preserved. Many who would not 
 refuse to commit an evil because it is forbidden by 
 God, would refuse because it was forbidden by their 
 caste.^ Thus the restraints of caste have checked 
 the spread of many vices through some classes of 
 society, have enabled them to look on a vice 
 indulged in by others and excuse them for it as 
 being tolerated by their caste, without feeling 
 tempted to indulge in it themselves. It has also, 
 when applied to trade, begotten a thoroughness and 
 independence of mere money-making which is not 
 to be found in other lands. This has given a 
 certain stamina to the Hindus which we do not 
 find in other idolaters. But the same thing that 
 thus checks change for evil forbids also change for 
 
 1 Professor Max Miiller wrote some time ago on the question, 
 ' Are the Hindus truthful ? ' That depends on the caste. 
 
Intolerance of Hinduism. 159 
 
 good. Change is the one point on which Hinduism 
 is intolerant. Let any one ask a Hindu who has 
 been dilating on the intolerance of Christianity 
 and the tolerance of Hinduism, to tolerate one of 
 his caste-fellows practically carrying out his change 
 of belief by change of conduct — acknowledging the 
 one true God by giving up the worship of his caste 
 gods, acknowledging the brotherhood of man by 
 mino-linfj and eatincj with those of other castes, and 
 he will find that he has roused an intolerance as 
 fierce and unbending as that of the Spanish Inquisi- 
 tion. Hinduism is essentially a quiescent religion, 
 but it was not to be left undisturbed in its hold in 
 India, and we now proceed to its struggles with 
 other faiths. 
 
PART III. 
 HINDUISM AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 rriHE first hostile faith with which Hinduism had 
 -^ to contend, after its triumph over Buddhism, 
 was Mohammedanism, and the story of this contest is 
 one of the most remarkable and instructive chapters 
 in the history of religion. The struggle was long 
 and arduous, but the main features may be easily 
 apprehended, and as the chief object of our study 
 is rather the relations of Hinduism to Christianity, 
 I will be brief. 
 
 Mohammedanism took its rise with the preaching 
 of Mohammed in Arabia in the beginning of the 
 sixth centur}^ It was a strong monotheism, and 
 its brief creed was, ' There is no God but God, and 
 Mohammed is the prophet of God.' Its founder 
 was acquainted with the Jewish and Christian 
 Scriptures, and acknowledged them as inspired, but 
 he maintained the superior authority of the Koran, 
 which he was commissioned to impart to the world. 
 He allowed that Moses and the prophets and Jesus 
 were all prophets sent by God, but he was the last 
 and greatest, and superseded them all. He had in 
 his travels while a young man had occasion to 
 observe the various sects of Christians and the 
 
 160 
 
Mohammedan Creed. 161 
 
 offensive prominence and almost material interpreta- 
 tion that was given to the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 and he denounced that doctrine as an abomination. 
 He likewise denounced not only all image worship, 
 but the making of images for any purpose, as a sin, 
 thougli he was obliged to give way to the old Arab 
 superstition of w^orshipping the Kiblah at Mecca.^ 
 Salvation, he taught, was to be obtained by works, 
 by holding the true faith, by repeating the above 
 creed, by praying five times daily, by performing 
 daily ablutions, by fasting in the month Eamzan 
 from sunrise to sunset daily, by giving a fortieth 
 of one's goods in charity, by making the pilgrimage 
 to Mecca, and, above all, by dying in war for the 
 propagation of the faith. The morality he incul- 
 cated was loose, but it was an improvement on that 
 of the Arabs among whom he lived. He forbade 
 the use of wine ; and, if he sanctioned polygamy and 
 concubinage, he yet in his legislation restrained the 
 licence in which the Arabs had been wont to live. 
 He, how^ever, did not apply the legislation in his 
 own case ; and the licence which he allowed himself, 
 on the plea of his being the prophet of Allah, is 
 the blackest stain on his personal character, and 
 the strongest refutation of his claim to be a prophet. 
 The sinfulness of sin is indeed no part of his 
 
 1 This is simply a black stone — possibly an aerolite — that is in 
 the Kabah or great ]\Iosque at Mecca. A learned Maulvi seriously 
 maintained to me that its worship was not a breach of the second 
 Commandment, on the ground that it was not the likeness of any- 
 thing in the heaven above, on the earth beneath, or in the water 
 under the earth. The same might be said of nearly all the Hindu 
 idols. 
 
 L 
 
162 Hinduism and Mohammedanism, 
 
 system ; repentance, as explained by him, does not 
 imply hatred or renouncement of sin, and this defect 
 becomes more glaring in the teaching of his followers. 
 In Mohammedan theology knowledge takes pre- 
 cedence of holiness, and what we call the fall of 
 man rather raised him in the scale of being, by 
 giving him knowledge.^ God is thus ultimately 
 made the author of sin in man, and this vice taints 
 and weakens the whole system. Its great merit 
 and its great power is its strong assertion of the 
 Unity of God. 
 
 At first its progress was slow, and it was not till 
 Mohammed adopted the sword as a means of con- 
 version, not till the charms of military enthusiasm 
 and political ascendency were added to those of 
 poetry and eloquence, that his religion became a 
 power. Then it spread with lightning speed. The 
 Arabs, brought by their religion for the first time 
 into the community of nations, and stirred up by 
 their religious enthusiasm to be invincible soldiers, 
 were everywhere victorious. After victory their 
 propaganda was simple enough — to the ' people of 
 the book,' the Christians and Jews, they gave the 
 choice — become Mohammedans or pay tribute ; to 
 idolaters — become Mohammedans or die. A 
 political ascendency thus accompanied Moham- 
 medanism wherever it spread, which proved an 
 irresistible argument for all those whose faith was 
 otherwise weak ; and when they had once joined 
 the profession of ' the faithful,' the charms of war 
 
 1 See Appendix D. 
 
First Contact ivltli India, 163 
 
 and conquest transformed them into zealous pro- 
 pagandists of the new faith. Mohammedanism is 
 a religion of the sword, and only by the sword did 
 it spread and hold its place among civilised nations. 
 But this must not blind us to the fact that it was 
 its monotheistic creed which nerved it to wield the 
 sword, which conquered some of its own conquerors, 
 and which is now winning to its standard many of 
 the savage tribes of Africa, and low castes of India. 
 Shortly after the death of Mohammed the Arabs 
 made some incursions into India, but it was not till the 
 beginning of the eighth century that they made any 
 serious attempt on it. In the year 705 A.D., Walid 
 conquered Sind, and in subsequent years his armies 
 advanced as far as the Ganges. His general, Kasim, 
 conquered Gujerat, and attacked Chitor, the capital 
 of Mewar. But here the progress of the victorious 
 Moslem was stayed. They were defeated and 
 driven out of India by Bappa, the founder of the 
 race of kings who to this day sit on the Mewar 
 throne. It was not for a hundred years thereafter 
 that they again attempted its subjugation, and then 
 again they were encountered by the rajah of the 
 same kingdom, at the head of the chivalry of India, 
 who flocked to his banner, and, after being defeated 
 twenty-four times, were once more fairly driven out 
 of the land. For a hundred and fifty years again 
 the Mohammedans desisted from serious attempts, 
 but, in the beginning of the eleventh century, the 
 celebrated Mahmud of Ghazni invaded India twelve 
 times, and was everywhere victorious, compelling 
 the native princes to submit, or driving them from 
 
164 Hinduism and Moliammedanism. 
 
 their thrones. He left traces of his victorious ! 
 
 progress in the idols he broke and the temples ; 
 
 he plundered. But his career was like that of i 
 
 the hurricane, passing through the land but not , 
 
 remaining^ in it ; he left no mark in India but ' 
 the terror of a great name. Within fifteen years 
 after his death the Hindus had driven his successors 
 
 beyond the Sutlej ; and for a hundred and fifty i 
 years longer India remained the Arya vartta, the 
 
 land of the pure Aryas. It was not till the end of , 
 
 the twelfth century that the victories of Mohani- i 
 
 med Ghori established Mohammedan supremacy in | 
 India. 
 
 Thus, while the Mohammedan power had spread i 
 
 with unmatched rapidity over Syria and Persia, ' 
 
 along the north of Africa, and into Spain, it for six i 
 
 hundred years failed to overcome the compact i 
 
 resistance offered by India. But the cause of this j 
 
 is not far to seek. In the lands where it first j 
 spread, Christianity had sapped the old faiths, and 
 
 had in its turn been so much contaminated by | 
 
 them that its pristine vigour had decayed. It ■ 
 
 inspired its followers neither with the tenacity of j 
 
 an ancient faith nor with the enthusiasm of a new \ 
 
 one, so that they succumbed easily to the fresh i 
 
 vigour of Islam. In India, on the other hand, ' 
 
 Hinduism had just triumphed under the great ! 
 
 Brahmanical revival. After having, as we have | 
 seen, been nearly quenched by Buddhism, it had in 
 its turn risen up and extirpated it from the Pen- 
 insula. The Hindus were thus attached to their 
 
Ultimate Success of the Mohammedans. 165 
 
 faith ^vitli all the strengtli which pride in its 
 antiquity and enthusiasm on account of its fresh 
 triumphs could inspire ; and when a head arose to 
 combine the various states, to give unity to their 
 strength and direction to their valour, they proved 
 too strono- even for the fanaticism of Islam. 
 
 What, then, were the causes that led to the 
 triumph of Mohammedanism and the political 
 overthrow of Hinduism ? On the one hand, 
 Mohammedanism had won those warlike tribes in 
 Central Asia whence all successful invasions of 
 India have started. The invasions of Mahmud of 
 Ghazni showed what they could accomplish, and it 
 only required political genius to be combined with 
 military genius to effect a permanent conquest of 
 the land. On the other hand, India was not only 
 divided among different states, which at times 
 waged internecine war with one another, and left 
 them weak in presence of the foreign invader ; but 
 the same causes were at work then which still 
 make it possible for a handful of British to hold 
 the Continent. Society was broken up into castes, 
 which prevented in any of the states anything like 
 national solidarity. The warrior caste ruled and 
 fought, and the Brahmans prayed and meditated ; 
 but the peasants tilled their fields and tended their 
 flocks, the merchants traded and lent money, and 
 the various craftsmen followed their various occu- 
 pations, without feeling themselves called on to 
 strike a blow for the defence of their country. 
 They might prefer one government to another, but 
 so long as their caste was not seriously injured 
 
166 Hinduism and Mohammedanism. 
 
 by change of rulers, they had no need to bestir 
 themselves. 
 
 It was towards the end of the twelfth century 
 when these various causes combined to give Moham- 
 medanism a permanent settlement in India. The 
 two greatest of the states of North India, Delhi 
 and Kanauj, had engaged in a war for supremacy 
 which left them both a prey to Mohammed Ghori, 
 the real founder of Mohammedan power in India. 
 By the close of the century he had conquered all 
 l!Torth India, and established the military supremacy 
 of his faith throughout that part of the continent. 
 
 But though the Mohammedans had triumphed, 
 Mohammedanism had not. Two buildincfs raised 
 by Ghori are typical of the work he did, — the 
 mosque in the Lai Koti at Delhi, and that of the 
 Arhai din ka Jhompra ^ at Ajmer. Both of these 
 mosques are built of the ruins of Hindu temples. 
 In each there is a splendid screen of red sandstone 
 in front, with five arches adorned with nothing but 
 verses of the Koran, carved in a way to produce 
 the most effective architectural ornamentation to be 
 seen in India. Behind it the roof of the mosque 
 is supported on pillars taken from Hindu temples, 
 with all the carvings of the Hindu legends and 
 Hindu gods upon them still. These mosques are 
 evidently the work of a man of a strong religious 
 faith, who wished to raise in stone a monument of 
 the triumph of his creed over the idolatrous faith 
 which it had conquered. But they are symbols of 
 
 1 ' Two-and-a-half-day house ; ' said to have been built in that 
 time. 
 
AJchars Comjjromise. 1G7 
 
 what the Mohammedan empire in India became, — 
 a splendid, imposing front of Mohammedan power, 
 which the outer world saw, but behind which 
 remained all the gods, the castes, the superstitions 
 of Hinduism, untouched. 
 
 The first zeal of the Mohammedans had so far 
 abated that they admitted idolaters too to the 
 payment of tribute, and this the Hindus were 
 content to pay where they could not throw off the 
 yoke of the oppressor. Many Hindu kings main- 
 tained their independence, and made war against 
 the invaders with varying success, till at last the 
 genius of Akbar established the Mohammedan 
 dominion on a secure basis about 1560 A.D. 
 
 This basis, however, consisted in depriving 
 Mohammedanism of its political privileges. He 
 abolished the tax on infidels, which Hindus who 
 would not profess Mohammedanism had to pay ; 
 and thus made all his subjects equal in the eye of 
 the law, no difference being allowed on account of 
 their religious creed. He also united himself by 
 marriage with some of the noblest royal houses of 
 India, and thus attached them to his throne. He 
 had no very firm religious creed himself, and set 
 himself, with the indifference of a philosopher and 
 the zeal of a politician, to assimilate the religious 
 beliefs of his subjects. He made one of those 
 futile attempts which have been made from time 
 to time to form an eclectic religion, which is to 
 combine the excellences of all, and ends by finding 
 acceptance with none. Akbar was not more 
 
168 Hinduisiii and Mohammedanism. 
 
 successful than others who have made similar 
 attempts, but he was more successful in mitigating 
 the religious antagonisms of his subjects. While 
 indifferent to the special claims of Mohammed, he 
 fostered the lower forms of his religion, and especi- 
 ally the worship of saints, — a corruption that had 
 lon^r been c^aining^ OTound in Islam. The tombs of 
 saints all over the country were sought out, mosques 
 erected over them, and legends with regard to them 
 invented or garnished up. This policy was so far 
 successful that the Hindus did beghi to worship 
 many of their saints, and unite with the Moham- 
 medans in paying them reverence on their great 
 festivals. The political result, too, was obtained in so 
 far as the stability of his own throne was concerned, 
 both creeds uniting to support it ; but the effect on 
 Mohammedanism itself was disastrous. Moham- 
 medanism, as a quiescent, non-proselytising religion, 
 could only become corrupt and rotten. The effect 
 of all this policy on the mass of Mohammedans 
 was to deprive their religious sentiment of that 
 intolerance which constituted its strength. Its 
 moral power was gone when it ceased to be in- 
 tolerant. 
 
 Yet this policy preserved the Mogul empire in 
 its integrity for upwards of a hundred years, till 
 the principle and policy of intolerance revived in 
 Aurangzeb. He reimposed the poll-tax on infidels, 
 and thereby again branded all his Hindu sub- 
 jects with inferiority on account of their religious 
 beliefs. This alienated them, and ultimately drove 
 them into rebellion. He decreed the destruction 
 
AiirangzeVs Intolerance. 1G9 
 
 of idols ; and the prince of Mewar offered ' the 
 heads of one hundred thousand Eajputs ' for the 
 defence of one of the most popular of these idols, 
 thus making it the symbol of Hindu nationality. 
 The rebellion often seemed crushed, but it maintained 
 itself with the vitality which only a struggle for reli- 
 gion could inspire, and imparted in turn a vitality 
 to that religion which only exertion, sacrifice, and 
 sufferincj could bcGjet. Tlie Hindus were driven to 
 emulate the intolerance of their opponents — shaving 
 the Kazis, destroying the mosques, throwing the 
 Korans into wells, and forbidding the call to prayer, 
 wherever they had power. This gave room for the 
 Mahratta power to rise in the south — a Hindu 
 power, though based on plunder ; and when Aurang- 
 zeb, the ablest of the Moguls, died in 1707, he saw 
 the empire breaking up on every side. About thirty 
 years later it received its death-blow from another 
 Mohammedan powder, the Persians, under Nadir Shah. 
 Thereafter the Hindu states either assumed their 
 old independence or established new dominions ; 
 while the Mohammedan emperor, still their nominal 
 head, became more and more a mere pu]3pet in their 
 hands. The conquest of the Mahratta and Pindari 
 powers in the beginning of this century by the 
 English, rescued the empire of Delhi from utter de- 
 struction, and gave the emperors a further lease of 
 existence as vassals of Great Britain. But the part 
 he took in the Mutiny of 1857 led to the last of them 
 being deposed and sent to end his days as a convict 
 in a penal settlement. Of the native princes now 
 in alliance with the British Government, only one 
 
170 Hinduism and Mohammedanism. 
 
 or two of any importance are Mohammedans : of 
 the 287 millions who inhabit India, about 57 
 millions belong to that religion. Of these, about 
 20 millions in Bencjal are the descendants of the 
 lowest class of Hindus, who adopted this faith 
 to gain a higher social standing, and the rest are 
 descendants of the old Patthan and Mogul con- 
 querors. But they are nearly all now in a low 
 social position as compared with the Hindus, and, 
 until lately, were much more backward in takini:? 
 advantage of the educational benefits which the 
 British offer, though in this there has latterly 
 been, as we shall see, some improvement. That 
 is the external history of Mohammedanism in 
 India. 
 
 Turning to the internal history, the first inquiry 
 is as to the effect which it has had on Hinduism 
 itself, what modification it has produced on the 
 faith of the Hindus ; and the answer is. Almost 
 none. It seems a strange conclusion to come to 
 that a powerful religion like Mohammedanism 
 should have been for six centuries in India, and 
 produced no effect on the belief of the majority of 
 its population. Yet such is undoubtedly the fact. 
 The chief instrument of Mohammedan conversion 
 is the sword : this may produce an outer acquies- 
 cence, it may even ultimately force multitudes to 
 adopt alike the profession and faith of Mohammed- 
 anism, but it cannot produce any modification in 
 a hostile faith, least of all could it do so in 
 India. While war and conquest and violence were 
 
Effect on Hinduism, 171 
 
 raging about it, Hinduism was steadily developing 
 
 itself. 
 
 * The East bow'd low before the blast, 
 In patient deep disdain ; 
 She let the legions thunder past, 
 And plunged in thought again.' 
 
 The only difference we can now trace is that the 
 theory and system of Bopa Deva,^ which before the 
 Mohammedan conquest was accepted only by the 
 Brahmans, has now pervaded nearly every caste of 
 Hindus. Take any of the points of difference 
 between Mohammedanism and Hinduism, and it 
 will be found that in these Hinduism is stronger 
 and more intolerant than it w^as before its rival 
 appeared in India. Image worship is as general 
 and as devoutly believed in, and caste as tyrannical 
 as before the Mussulman conquerors set their foot 
 in India, while the pantheistic principles on which 
 they are justified are much more extensively dif- 
 fused. The doctrine of a Supreme God above and 
 beyond Vishnu, Siva, and the other deities, which 
 some have looked upon as the effect of Moham- 
 medan influence, is a result rather of Hindu philo- 
 sophy. It was developed before the Mohammedans 
 entered India, and even the theistic protest against 
 pantheism was anterior to their conquest.^ 
 
 1 See ante, p. 153. 
 
 - Ramaniija lived certainly not later than the beginning of the 
 twelfth century, while the Mohammedan conquest took place at 
 the end of it. If we place Bopa Deva in the thirteenth contury, 
 as Lassen does, we have the remarkable fact of pantheistic idolatry 
 developing and strengthening itself in the face of victorious mouo- 
 theists. 
 
172 Hi7iduism and Mohammedanism. 
 
 In some of the sects which have been developed 
 from the last-named movement we no doubt do see 
 the influence of the foreign faith ; but the general 
 effect of Mohammedanism on Hinduism has been 
 rather of a deteriorating character. The greater 
 licentiousness of its followers has led to the greater 
 degradation of women among the Hindus. They 
 have not now the same freedom and respect given 
 to them which the older books of India show they 
 once had, and this change the Hindus attribute to 
 the licence of their Mohammedan conquerors. An 
 indirect effect of this has been the increase of those 
 secret sects which are the greatest stain on modern 
 Hinduism. 
 
 The bad influence of Mohammedanism on Hin- 
 duism is, however, even less than the bad influence 
 which Hinduism has exercised on Mohammedanism. 
 It has now degenerated, in most of its adherents in 
 India, to be little more than a caste outside the pale 
 of Hinduism. They have their caste rules, as strong 
 and as binding as their Hindu brethren. Their 
 priests repeat the verses of the Koran, as the Brah- 
 mans repeat the hymns of the Vedas, with just as 
 little idea of their meaning. Their worship of 
 Allah — the one God — is a mere form ; their real 
 worship is paid to the saints : offerings are brought 
 to their tombs, or gifts given to the priests who 
 officiate in the mosques erected in their honour. 
 Their religion is known in India as saint wor- 
 ship,^ while that of the Hindus is image worship,'^ 
 and this for the majority of both creeds is the 
 ^ rir paras ti. ^ g^t parasti. 
 
Relative Position of the two Religions. 173 
 
 practical difference. Even in tliis, however, they 
 are not exclusive ; the Hindus join cordially in 
 the festivals in honour of some of the greater 
 Mohammedan saints, and in some places the Mo- 
 hammedans join in those in honour of Hindu idols. 
 These two religions have thus settled down beside 
 one another on terms of mutual charity and tolera- 
 tion. This does not imply any great change or 
 deterioration in Hinduism, for its principles admit 
 every belief as truth, every religion as a way of 
 salvation. All that it requires is acknowledgment 
 of the same principle from other religions, and this 
 is the position which it has practically forced 
 Mohammedanism to assume in India. But such a 
 position is utterly opposed to the principles and 
 claims of the latter religion ; and in forcing Moham- 
 medanism to accept it, Hinduism has undoubtedly 
 gained the triumph. 
 
 It must not be supposed that Mohammedanism 
 has accepted this position without a struggle. On 
 the contrary, it has had its outbreak of Mahdism, 
 which for nearly a generation it required all the 
 power, first of the Sikh and then of the English 
 Government, to deal with. The Mahdi^ himself was 
 not in this case a man of great force of character 
 
 1 The Mahdi is, according to Moliammedan theology, the 
 twelfth Imfim, or Great Leader, who is still living, but invisible, 
 and who will appear shortly before the day of judgment. When 
 any one assumes a prophetic character, and ti'ies to rouse a popu- 
 lation with any success, he claims to be the Mahdi, or the claim 
 is put forward for him, and if it is accepted by the Mohammedans, 
 it rouses their enthusiasm tenfold. 
 
174 Hinduism and Mohammedanism. 
 
 or power of leadership. But some strong men took 
 advantage of liis claims, as his ministers while he 
 was alive, and as his caliphs after his death, to 
 rouse the faithful followers of Islam to fight with 
 and conquer the Katirs or infidels. Their usual 
 plan of action was to proclaim a jihad or holy war ; 
 they summoned all who could fight to repair to the 
 Himalayan frontier, there to unite with the Moham- 
 medan tribes who preserved their independence, 
 and to invade the territory ruled by the infidel. 
 They began this system against the kingdom of the 
 Sikhs, under Eunjeet Singh, and after its conquest 
 by the English they continued it against the English 
 Government. The Mohammedans throughout India, 
 especially in Bengal, were compelled, under the 
 threat of religious penalties, — under the fear of 
 being boycotted, — to pay a tax to these caliphs ; and 
 for some time it came in with as much regularity 
 as the taxes paid to the English Government. At 
 the same time, as many as could go were requisi- 
 tioned for the holy war ; and to that war nearly 
 every Mohammedan village sent its quota of shahlds 
 or martyrs. 
 
 Their action was spasmodic. It was impossible 
 to maintain a constant struggle on these terms, 
 and during the mutiny in 1857-58 they seem 
 to have been entirely quiescent, otherwise it is 
 difficult to say what might have taken place at 
 that crisis. Subsequently to it, at least two frontier 
 wars were the fruit of this great conspiracy — those 
 of 1863 and 1868. The former especially taxed all 
 the powers of the Government of the North- West 
 
Cessation of Mohammedan Intrigues. 175 
 
 Provinces, and was not brought to a successful 
 conclusion till dissensions among the tribes had 
 come to aid the British arms. 
 
 The English Government at last became aware 
 of the great conspiracy that had spread through its 
 dominions. A series of state trials followed the 
 wars that the conspiracy had stirred up, and the 
 leading conspirators paid for their loyalty to their 
 faith, or their disloyalty to the Government, on the 
 scaffold. At last the Mohammedans, or those of 
 them who were not fanatical, became wearied of 
 the struggle. There seemed to be no end to the 
 demands made on tliem for subsidies, and the result 
 of the contest seemed as hopeless as ever. Besides 
 this, the state trials caused fresh alarm, that those 
 who maintained the war by help sent from home 
 might do so at the cost of their lives, as well as those 
 who W'Cnt to the frontier to engage in war. They 
 therefore sent to three of the chief Mohammedan 
 colleges, asking for an opinion as to whether the 
 principles of their faith required them to rebel 
 against the Government — the Government not being 
 Mussulman, but Mussulmans having freedom to carry 
 out their religion in everything except some details, 
 such as not having liberty to put to death any 
 Mohammedan who changed his religion. The three 
 colleges all pronounced against rebellion, and 
 counselled submission. Since then the English 
 Government has had no trouble with Mohammedan 
 intrisues. 
 
 Meanwhile a counter movement has been gaining 
 
176 Hindu-Mohammedan Sects. 
 
 strength. The leader in this has been Sir Sayad 
 Ahmad Khan of Aligarh. He first distinguished 
 himself by a commentary on the Bible, written 
 in English and Urdu. It was about the time 
 when Bishop Colenso was startling the orthodox 
 world by his criticism of the Pentateuch. The 
 Mohammedan commentator replied to some of the 
 criticisms ; but a pretty broad dogmatic rationalism 
 pervaded the commentary, which was not continued 
 beyond the first few chapters of Genesis. The 
 tendency of the book was to minimise the differ- 
 ences between the Mohammedan and Christian 
 religions. The same tendency is visible in the 
 influence of the Aligarh Institute, which he sub- 
 sequently founded, which seeks to promote European 
 culture among the Mohammedans, and to lead them 
 to seek power by serving the English Government 
 rather than by opposing it. They are fast becoming 
 the most loyal of our fellow-subjects in India, and 
 are living at peace with the Hindus, unmolested 
 and unmolestinsj. What the future of Mohammed- 
 anism may be under these new conditions it would 
 be hazardous to predict. It has shown signs of 
 progress during the past decade, but it is clear 
 that the opportunity of its becoming the religion 
 of India has passed. Hinduism has vanquished it 
 by the sheer force of inertia. 
 
 Hindtt-Moliamniedan Sects. 
 
 I have intimated that while Hinduism generally 
 has not been much modified by Mohammedanism, 
 
The Kahir Panth. 177 
 
 several reforming movements have markedly ex- 
 perienced its influence. These are generally termed 
 l*ANTiis, which means literally paths, and when 
 applied to religion means sects, or more exactly 
 orders. The rise of these panths is the most marked 
 result of the contact of Hinduism with Moham- 
 medanism. 
 
 The first of these is the KabIr Paxtii, or order 
 of Kablr, who lived about the beginning of the 
 sixteenth century. He was a weaver, and the pre- 
 ponderance of evidence is in favour of liis having 
 been originally a Mussulman ; but he early became 
 a disciple of Eamananda, and as such would be 
 considered a Vaishnava. He was a man of no 
 education ; he does not seem to have written an}-- 
 thing ; but his teaching, communicated mostly in 
 verse, was written down by his disciples. He did 
 not study the theology either of Mohammedanism 
 or of Hinduism, but he learned the main principles 
 of these religions by discussion with their teachers. 
 He fused them in a system of his own, in which 
 book revelation was set at nought, and the inner 
 light taken as the supreme arbiter. His system, in 
 its leading features regarding God, the human soul, 
 transmigration, and liberation, it is impossible to 
 distinguish from Hindu pantheism, though he has 
 been called a Unitarian Theist. But he denounced 
 caste, denounced the idea of a mediator ; used 
 Mohammedan as well as Hindu names for God, and 
 assimilated Mohammedan and even Christian ideas 
 as well as Hindu ones. His chief power seems to 
 have been his popular gifts. 'He was emphatically 
 
 M 
 
178 II indii- Mohammedan Sects. 
 
 a man of the people ; and one of the first to bring 
 down a form of mystical theism to the level of 
 popular comprehension, from the lofty platform of 
 the schools.' ^ After his death both Mussulmans and 
 Hindus claimed his body ; and the tradition goes, 
 that as they were disputing, a voice bade them look 
 for the bod}^ and it was found that it had dis- 
 appeared, and a number of white flowers were in 
 its place. Now, however, his followers are gener- 
 ally looked on as a sect of Hindus. Any whom I 
 have met avowed themselves as such, and observed 
 caste as much as any others. 
 
 Kabir is said to have had twelve disciples, who 
 founded twelve separate panths. Two of the most 
 important of these are the Sat-namis and the Dadu 
 Panthis, founded by Dadu, a cotton cleaner of 
 Ahmedabad, about the beoiinninGf of the seventeenth 
 century. These and the other sects have now the 
 position of orders rather than castes of Hinduism. 
 A different position has been taken by that of 
 Nanak, another of his disciples, who became the 
 founder of the Sikh religion. 
 
 The word Sikh means simply disciple. ISTanak 
 was the Guru or teacher, his followers were Sik?is or 
 disciples. He flourished, like Kabir, about the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century. His teaching 
 is moulded on his master's, but is even more pan- 
 theistic, and except in the denunciation of idolatry, 
 not very different from ordinary Vaishnavism. He 
 too tried to unite the Hindus and Mohammedans in 
 
 ^ Earn Chandra Rose, M.A., in Indian Evangelical Review. 
 
The Sikhs. 179 
 
 one faith, though the sect he founded was destined 
 to become the most bitter foe of the Litter. His 
 writings were gathered together in a book called the 
 Grantii, which is more a collection of sayings — 
 largely those of Kabir — than anything original. 
 
 He died in 15 38, and nine other Gurus in 
 succession followed him, under whom the Sikhs be- 
 came more organised, and began to aspire to political 
 power. The tenth, Govind Sixgh, sought to found 
 an independent dominion. He abolished all distinc- 
 tions of caste among his followers, required them to 
 obey him implicitly as their great Guru, and under 
 him the subordinate Gurus ; to be a nation of 
 warriors, to wage perpetual warfare with the 
 Mussulmans, and never to turn their back on the 
 foe. The result was a series of internecine wars 
 between the Mohammedans and the Sikhs. After 
 the break-up of the Mohammedan empire, the Sikhs, 
 under Eunjit Singh, became masters of the Panjab, 
 and after his death they engaged in a war with the 
 British power, which resulted in the annexation of the 
 Panjab and the suppression of the Sikh nationality. 
 Under wise government they have become loyal sub- 
 jects, and the regiments raised from them are among 
 the bravest and most trustworthy in the native army. 
 
 Govind Singh at his death did not appoint any 
 Guru to succeed him, but told them to look to the 
 Granth — to which he had added a supplement — as 
 their Guru. This has led to what is the most 
 marked feature of the Sikh religion — Bibliolatry. 
 The Honourable Book is the object of worship in all 
 Sikh temples. It is dressed in expensive cloth, laid 
 
ISO Hindu- Mohammedan Sects. 
 
 aside carefully in its bed at night like one of the 
 Hindu idols, and when brouglit out, receives divine 
 honours before it is read. Next to the book, the 
 Guru or master is honoured, and has great power 
 over his disciples. In doctrine they are very little 
 different from the Vaishnavas. In morality, except 
 in soldierly virtues, they are said to be even below 
 the average of Hindus. They are divided into 
 twelve sects, some of which are already relapsing 
 into image worship, and in process of time it is not 
 unlikely that they will all take their place in the 
 ranks of all-absorbing Hinduism. 
 
 Meanwhile, Sikhism may fairly claim to be a 
 distinct religion ; and it is remarkable as bein^f the 
 only eclectic creed which has ever become the 
 religion of a large body of disciples, and welded them 
 into a nation. Even it proves the rule. It is not 
 its eclectic creed which gives Sikhism its vital 
 power over its followers, but the sectarian and 
 patriotic dogmas inculcated by ISTanak and Govind. 
 These gave it power so long as the power of fighting 
 and conquest remained, but now that that is lost, 
 and it has only its eclecticism and its bibliolatry to 
 fall back on, it seems to have lost its vitality. The 
 last census shows its numbers to be 1,907,836, an 
 increase during the decade of 54,410, or less than 
 three per cent. 
 
 This may be noticed in conclusion, that all 
 attempts at compromise between Hinduism and 
 Mohammedanism have ended by their followers 
 becoming practically Hindus. 
 
PART IV. 
 HINDUISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THEIR AFFINITIES AND ANTAGONISMS. 
 
 HINDUISM has thus triumphed over two of the 
 great missionar3a^eligioiis of tlie world — tliat of 
 Buddha and that of Mohammed ; the contest has now 
 beo'un with the third — that of Christ. It is not 
 the present century, however, that has witnessed the 
 first . struijj^les of that contest: two of these have 
 ah'eady taken place. Primitive Christianity and 
 Ptoman Catholic Christianity have both assayed the 
 conquest of India. Only in the present century 
 h[is Protestant Christianity fairly girded itself for 
 the task. 
 
 There are various traditions of the gospel having 
 been preached in India in the first centuries of the 
 Christian era. There is one thoroughly authenti- 
 cated, of Pantt^nus being sent thither from Alex- 
 andria during the period of missionary fervour in 
 the Church there, towards the close of the second 
 century. All direct fruits of these labours, if there 
 I were any, have entirely disappeared. But there are 
 passages in later Sanskrit and in popular Hindi 
 literature which show traces of contact with Chris- 
 tian tradition and Christian doctrine. These have 
 
 181 
 
182 Hinduism and Christianitij. 
 
 now been so assimilated by Hinduism as to make it 
 doubly difficult to impress them afresh on the minds 
 of the Hindus. 
 
 A later movement has had more permanent 
 results. Some Nestorian Christians from Persia seem 
 to have settled, chiefly as traders, in the southern 
 part of India, both on the eastern and western coasts. 
 Those on the eastern coast do not seem at any time 
 to have been active, and dwindled and disappeared, 
 surviving just long enough for the Portuguese to 
 serve themselves heirs of their traditions. Those 
 on the Malabar coast made efforts to evanc^elise the 
 natives, and soon gathered a large number of 
 converts. But they seem to have entered into 
 alliance with native states, to have come into contact 
 with the Brahmans, and to have been brought to 
 accept the quiescent position which these latter are 
 always fain to assign to any other faith. They have 
 for centuries settled down alongside of the Hindus on 
 principles of mutual toleration, with the consequent 
 loss of all expansive power. 
 
 With the Portuguese settlements in India came 
 the missionaries of the Church of Eome, chief among 
 whom was the devoted Xavier. They baptized 
 numbers of the natives, but they did not accompany 
 the baptism with efficient instruction in religion : 
 indeed, in most cases, there seems to have been none 
 at all. The descendants of these converts are now 
 mingled with the descendants of the first Portucjuese 
 settlers, and occupy very much tlie position of 
 one of the castes of India — Christian, but not Hindu. 
 The Hindus attend their saints' festivals, as they 
 
Protestant ]\ Fissions. 18 
 
 o 
 
 are often present at the festivals in honour of the 
 Hindu gods. They have not a high character in 
 India, and are called by the Hindus Kristan — a name 
 which has come to have such a bad reputation, tliat 
 Protestant missionaries are fain to call themselves 
 and their converts Isai, or Maslhl. 
 
 Thus we see, that in both these cases Christianity 
 lias been reduced to the same position of passive- 
 ness and paralysis alongside of Hinduism as has 
 Mohammedanism. It too has been conquered by^ 
 the inertia of the native faith. 1 
 
 The work of Protestant missions in India is now 
 being prosecuted with growing vigour. They began 
 early in last century with the Danish mission- 
 aries Ziegenbalg and Plutscho. England took up 
 the work towards the close of the century, when 
 (Jarey, Marshman, and Ward began the work at 
 Serampore. Since then, each decade has seen a fresh 
 development of missionary activity, till now we may 
 say that Protestant Christendom has set itself to the 
 conversion of India to Christ with an intensitv and 
 a purpose beyond what it has shown in any previous 
 enterprise. 
 
 Is this a work to be undertaken with hope or 
 with doubt — one which it would be wise to persevere 
 in, or to abandon ? The command of our Lord, — 
 His marching orders, as the Duke of Wellington 
 said to a somewhat sceptical chaplain, — ' Go ye 
 into all the world, and preach the gospel to every 
 creature,' is a sufficient warrant for the Church to 
 continue her work, a sufficient guarantee that the 
 
184 Hinduism and Christianity. 
 
 truth which He embodied, and which lie bade His 
 disciples spread, is the best suited for the Hindu as 
 for all nations. 
 
 But it is well also carefully to examine the 
 conditions of tlie contest : whether Christianity 
 really has a message to teach India ; why former 
 efforts to teach it - have failed ; by what means w^e 
 may best commend it ; and what reasons we have, 
 from the past history and present state of Hinduism, 
 to hope for success. In conducting this examination 
 we will first compare the principles of the Christian 
 and of the Hindu faiths, their points of approach 
 and their points of antagonism ; then look at the 
 attempts that are being made to reform Hinduism 
 independently of Christianity ; and lastly, consider 
 the attitude which the Church must preserve to 
 secure final triumph. 
 
 Here, first, we must notice tliat there are elements 
 
 of relief ion com mon to hotJi IlindvAsm and CJirutianity. 
 
 (_ir)The sentiment of dependence on a higher Power and 
 
 / the teaching of conscience exist more or less strongly 
 
 in all men, leading them to learn the lessons of 
 
 nature, and prompting a worship recognised as true 
 
 by true religion. ' He left not Himself without 
 
 witness, in that He did good, and gave ns rain from 
 
 heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with 
 
 food and gladness.' ^ ' The Gentiles, having not the 
 
 law, are a law unto themselves: who show the 
 
 works of the law written in their hearts.' ^ In the 
 
 literature of every nation that has produced a 
 
 ^Actsxiv. 17. 2 Rom. ii. 14, 15. 
 
Common Edijious Elements. 185 
 
 literature we find tliese sentiments expressed — man 
 giving utterance to those feelings of reverence, trust, 
 and truth, which show that the image of God 
 within him, though defaced, is not destroyed. In 
 the literature of no heathen nation, probably, is 
 tliis found more abundantly than in that of the 
 Hindus. It contains multitudes not only of stray 
 verses, but even whole hymns, in which a Christian 
 might express many of his feelings of devotion.^ 
 All these Christianity gladly welcomes as proofs of 
 its congruity with natural religion, but they are not 
 Christianity. Hinduism also uses them, but they 
 are not Hinduism. 
 
 They are cries of the human conscience, expres- 
 sions of the religious wants which all men feel. 
 But the distinctive character of any religion, its 
 practical value, is seen in the response which it gives 
 to these cries, in the satisfaction which it offers to 
 these wants, in the help which it gives man to lead 
 a godly life. 
 
 In speaking of the religion of the Vedas, I took 
 occasion to contrast it with that of Abraham, and 
 pointed out that, while in the former we have an 
 expression of the religious wants of the human 
 heart — a yearning after God and His favour, in 
 the latter we have the consciousness of the reply to 
 these wants — a conscious communion with God and 
 enjoyment of His favour. We liave seen how the 
 Hindus, following the lead of the Vedas, have 
 sought to find a response that would satisfy their 
 
 1 See Appendix E, Natural Religion in Indian Literature. 
 
186 Hinclidsm and Christianity. 
 
 craving, and how complete the failure has been. 
 Among the children of Abraham, on the other hand, 
 the great truth committed to Abraham received 
 fuller development, till at last it was embodied in 
 Jesus Christ ; and it is the message He has brought, 
 which His Church through its missions is now offer- 
 ing to India, as a full satisfaction for those needs 
 which Hinduism, like other religions, has expressed, 
 but failed to satisfy. 
 
 What, then, is the message which Christianity 
 brings to India ? ' That repentance and remission 
 of sins should be preached in His name among all 
 nations,' ^ was the commission Christ gave to His 
 disciples after He rose from the dead. These words 
 show how He had measured the religious needs of 
 the world. Whatever other religions may teach, 
 they do not teach these truths — even independent 
 of the name in which they are to be preached. 
 When we find them taught, we may compare the 
 names in which they are taught. But Hinduism 
 denies both. The great truth which Christianity 
 has to teach India is the Foegiveness of sins ; the 
 great duty which it has to teach is Eepentance 
 from sin. 
 
 This antagonism in the two faiths is a con- 
 sequence of the higher principles of their teaching, 
 which I have already pointed out. Christianity 
 teaches the personality ; Hinduism, the imperson- 
 ality, of God. Christianity makes holiness an 
 essential of true religion, Hinduism makes it an 
 accident. These distinctions, carried along the 
 
 1 Liike xxiv. 47. 
 
Ideas of Salvation. 
 
 187 
 
 whole line of their teaching, make their points of 
 approach points of antagonism, with tlie practical 
 outcome that the one afiirms and the other denies 
 alike the need and the fact of the formveness of 
 sins. Under these antagonisms are ranged, in each 
 creed, doctrines which seem almost counterparts one 
 of the other. 
 
 Both religions teach that Salvation is the chief 
 end of man. The word ^ which the Hindus use is 
 that used by the translators of the Bible to express 
 the Cliristian idea. Salvation may also be said, in 
 both systems, to include the idea of liberation or 
 deliverance ; but in Hinduism the liberation sought 
 is deliverance from personal existence ; in Chris- 
 tianity, deliverance from sin. 
 
 The Hindu idea of salvation is that of a man 
 crossing a broad stream. He occasionally steps on 
 rocks, fords shallows, swims through currents ; he 
 may sometimes be swept back from the shore 
 towards which he is struggling, sometimes borne 
 nearer to it ; but the stream is something entirely 
 distinct from him : he looks merely to getting 
 through it and out of it ; he does not look to 
 any change in himself The Christian idea is 
 rather that of a man who is smitten with a deadly 
 disease, from which he seeks to be quit. The 
 disease affects his whole frame, prevents him acting 
 vigorously, menaces him with death. His object is 
 to get the disease out of him — to be restored to a 
 healthy natural state. Christianity teaches that 
 
 ^ Mukti — Liberation. 
 
188 Hinduism and Christianity. 
 
 man is sinful; for it teaches that there is a per- 
 sonal God, whose holy law man has failed to obey. 
 Deliverance from this failure, from this sin, and a 
 consequent eternal life of holy service, it teaches 
 to be salvation. Hinduism, as we have seen, is 
 debarred from this conception, for it denies a 
 personal God ; denying Him, it can have no place 
 for His holy law, and consequently sin as such is 
 excluded also. Hinduism accordingly teaches that 
 salvation is not deliverance from sin any more than 
 deliverance from holiness. Sin, as we conceive it, 
 is not sin any more than tlie current that sweeps 
 the swimmer into danger is sin. It, in fact, ought 
 to have no place in the Hindu religion at all. But 
 it has a place. !N"either the word nor the idea of 
 sin is strange to the Hindu. It does not need any 
 long argument to show him that it must be pun- 
 ished. Why is this ? Simply because the higher 
 principles of Hinduism will not square with human 
 conscience and consciousness. They are at enmity 
 with the natural law written on the hearts of all 
 men, as much as with Christianity. Hinduism has 
 tried to escape from this antagonism by allowing 
 sin as an inferior calamity, and deliverance from it 
 as an inferior stage of salvation, but the fact that it 
 admits sin at all is fatal to its conception of the 
 hio'her salvation. 
 
 But it is when we come to the Way of Salva- 
 tion that the resemblances and contrasts of the two 
 reliojions become most strikins^. In both we find 
 tlie idea of vicarious atonement, of the incarnation, 
 
Vicarious Atonement. 
 
 189 
 
 and of a holy life now, leading to a life beyond 
 death. In the Christian faith these are all united 
 in Christ, whose person gives to them a liarmony, and 
 a fulness of grace and truth, which man lias, since 
 His appearance, been ever studying, but never able 
 fully to measure. In Hinduism these truths, 
 severed one from the other as well as from their 
 true principle, have become corrupted and power- 
 less, as limbs severed from the living body. 
 
 It has been said that the most distinctive doc- 
 trine of Christianity is that of Vicarious Atonement 
 for sin ; but this is also a doctrine of Hinduism. 
 In Christianitv it is the vicarious atonement which 
 springs from forgiveness ; in Hinduism, that which 
 springs from non-forgiveness. 
 
 It has been objected to the Christian doctrine, 
 by others as well as by Hindu apologists, that it 
 is inconsistent with justice and inconsistent with 
 free forgiveness ; but it is the necessary outcome of 
 free forgiveness, and therefore the necessary fulfil- 
 ment of justice. The prayer which Christ taught 
 His disciples, ' Forgive us our debts as we forgive 
 our debtors,' is one which expresses fully man's 
 sense of need, and the plea on which it may be 
 satisfied. We are conscious that we can, without 
 any violation of justice, forgive our debtors ; we 
 ask our Father who is in heaven to forgive us our 
 debts, with the conviction that He can do so for 
 us with as little violation of justice. But what 
 do we do when we forgive our debtors ? AVe 
 do not forgive them by making them pay their 
 debts, but by cancelling them and bearing the 
 
190 Hinduism and Christianity. 
 
 wliole burden of the loss ourselves. We put our- 
 selves in their place in so far as the debt is con- 
 cerned. Forgiveness is self- substitution. And when 
 we ask God to forgive us our debts as we forgive 
 our debtors, we ask Him to bear the burden of our 
 sins, as we bear the loss of the debt we forgive ; 
 to substitute Himself for us, as we substitute our- 
 selves for the debtors we forgive. Only those who 
 deny that God is our Father in heaven can con- 
 sistently deny that He can forgive our sins ; only 
 those who cleuy that He can forgive us as we for- 
 give our debtors can consistently deny vicarious 
 atonement for sin. 
 
 It is when we come to realise what sin and its 
 forgiveness cost God, that we are apt to shrink from 
 the consequences of our prayer for forgiveness. The 
 teaching of Christ Himself is, that ' God so loved 
 the w^orld that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
 whoso believeth in Him should not perish, but 
 have eternal life ; ' ^ tliat He came ' to give His 
 life a ransom for many.'^ The logic of our prayer 
 for forgiveness is that God Himself must bear our 
 sins ; the teachiug of the gospel is that Christ has 
 borne them. In this there would be contradiction 
 if it were not that Christ is God. Our sins are 
 sins against Him as trul}^ as against the Father, 
 and their consequences to Him are a revelation of 
 their consequences to the Father. Tlie sacrifice of 
 the Father in giving up the Son is not less than 
 that of the Son in giving Himself. We might not 
 have imagined such a result when we asked God to 
 1 John iii. 16. 2 jyi^tt. xx. 28. 
 
Hindu Vicarious Ato7iement. 191 
 
 forgive our sins, but that was because we did not 
 realise what sin was. Jesus Christ is the revela- 
 tion alike of what man's sin means, and how entirely 
 God has fulfilled man's prayer, ' Forgive us our 
 debts.' 
 
 In Hinduism, ever since Buddha's time, the 
 atonement for sin has been souqht for in the 
 doctrine of transmigration. But this is practically 
 vicarious atonement, for the element of conscious- 
 ness separates the person who sins from the person 
 who suffers.^ He is said to be the same, but he 
 does not know who or what he was before, or what 
 the sins were whose penalty he is now suffering. 
 There is thus a real substitution, but it is quite 
 involuntary on both sides. The Hindu is both the 
 atoner and the atoned for. What he suffers now 
 he suffers on account of sins committed by himself 
 in a previous birth, that is, by another ; and these 
 sufferings he has no choice but to endure. Nay, 
 further, the Hindus are thoroughly consistent in 
 recognising that continuing in sin is the punishment 
 of sin, for they say that the very sins a man now 
 commits are punishments of previous, that is, of 
 another's sins ; and he cannot but commit them. 
 Their punishment, again, he cannot bear in his 
 present birth if he would ; they must be borne by 
 him in another birth, when the loss of all conscious- 
 ness of the present has made him, in fact, another 
 
 1 Madame Blavatzky has drawn a distinction for wliicli Hindu 
 philosophy should be eternally grateful to her. She says that 
 it is the same individual who suffers, but not the aajne person. 
 
192 Hinduism and Christianity. 
 
 person. But not only does he thus involuntarily 
 atone for another's sin, he also involuntarily atones 
 for another's virtue. His present liappiness is the 
 reward of a previous person's good deeds, his pre- 
 sent ^ood deeds will be rewarded to some future 
 person. In all this there is an absence of that 
 amount of justice and moral stimulus, which the 
 offer of remission on the one side and the call to 
 repentance on the other, the action of the will and 
 the sense of responsibility, secure in the Christian 
 system ; sin is not made exceeding sinful, but merely 
 a misfortune, differing accidentally from virtue ; the 
 sense of responsibility is destroyed, the power of 
 the will annihilated, the discipline of suffering lost ; 
 the work is never completed or approaching com- 
 pletion, but goes on through an unending series of 
 atonements. Thus the Hindu doctrine, trying to 
 escape vicarious atonement, has only imposed one 
 of iron necessity, instead of one of free offer and 
 free acceptance ; one which, instead of being a 
 stimulus to man to struo^He acjainst sin and for 
 holiness, is rather a dead weight, tending to make 
 him look on all such struggle as hopeless. 
 
 ( In the two religions we have also the doctrine of 
 iJ[N CARNATION, and in both it is in keeping with 
 that of the atonement for sin. The teaching of the 
 Bible is that ' the Word was God ; ' ' was made flesh, 
 and dwelt anion gj us;' that He who was born as 
 Jesus of Nazareth was God, the Son of God ; that 
 He lived the life of a perfect man, and in His 
 death, by the sacrifice of Himself, He once for all 
 
The Incarnation. 193 
 
 put away sin. There is in tliis a realisation of the 
 truth, to a dim perception of which we have seen 
 tliat Brahmanism attained in its early stages, that 
 if there is to be atonement for sin, the Substitute 
 must be God Himself; or, in simpler words, that if 
 tliere is to be forgiveness, the Forgiver must bear 
 the cost. 
 
 Without the revelation of Christ, mankind could 
 never have realised this or trusted it. The declara- 
 tion of God to men, that He forgave their sins, 
 could never have brought peace to them, unless He 
 had made manifest to them in a way that they 
 could realise — if they could not fully understand — 
 that His forgiveness was a fact, and that all the 
 consequences of that forgiveness He had Himself 
 undertaken. No doubt, we could conceive of all this 
 beinsj done without God coming in the likeness of 
 man ; but without that we could not conceive of man 
 knowinf]r it, realisinsj it, and trusting^ it. 
 
 There are other considerations, such as the fitness 
 that the atonement should be made also in the 
 person of one of the race for whom the atonement 
 is made, which show that the gospel plan is the 
 best suited to the wants of man. It has satisfied 
 various views which man has taken of God — such 
 as the legal view, which looks on God as a right- 
 eous Laws^iver, who could not forgive a transgression 
 of His law without first satisfying the requirements 
 of His own law. This is a hard way of saying that 
 no one can truly forgive, without bearing all the 
 consequences of the transgression he forgives in so 
 far as they affect himself. And too much promin- 
 
 N 
 
1 
 
 194 Hinduism and C%ristianiiy. 
 
 ence given to this aspect of the atonement has had 
 the effect of repelling many earnest minds, who 
 have recoiled from this forensic presentation of 
 God's dealings with man. The great truth which 
 gives any reality to such presentations is that God 
 forgives. But, on the other hand, forgiveness which 
 shuns all the consequences of forgiveness, is no for- 
 giveness at all. In Jesus Christ, God has shown 
 the world that His forgiveness is a reality of which 
 not one consequence has been shunned. This is 
 why to the command, ' Believe in God,' the gospel 
 adds the command, ' Believe in Christ.' The former 
 is the duty of man as man ; the latter is the duty 
 of man as a sinner. Trust is the fit relation of 
 the creature to the Creator ; the gospel says. Carry 
 that same trust into the very position in which you 
 have been placed by sin. 
 
 In Hinduism, on the other hand, as we have seen 
 that the doctrine of vicarious atonement, separated 
 from that of the Incarnation, is contradictory and 
 powerless ; so, too, in that system, the doctrine of 
 the Incarnation, disconnected with that of vicarious 
 atonement, is meaningless and contemptible. 
 
 No such connection could exist when man had to 
 atone for his own sin in a reproduction of his own 
 self. The Hindu conception of the Incarnation is, 
 therefore, only an evidence of the aspiration of the 
 human soul after God, and of its inability to supply 
 I that want by any fiction of its own. It could not 
 realise a work done once and done perfectly. The 
 same deity, as we have seen, is said to have become 
 
Hindu Incarnations. 195 
 
 incarnate many times, and in animals as well as in 
 man. On each occasion it is to put right something 
 that has gone wrong in the ordinary history of the 
 world : to destroy a dangerous tribe, to kill a 
 tyrannical king, to do deeds that might have been 
 as well done by men, and less wonderful tlian many 
 that have been done by men. There is no con- 
 ception of the god in any of them bearing for man 
 what man could not bear himself. His very in- 
 carnations are spoken of as the consequences of 
 deeds he had himself performed ; one was the fruit 
 of sins he had committed, another of a curse that 
 had been pronounced on him. Yet even to such a 
 being human instinct has led his worshippers to 
 turn for deliverance. Hopeless themselves of being 
 able to reach the end of their long chain of births, 
 they look to him to deliver them from it, but not 
 by delivering them from sin, only by so absorbing 
 them in himself, that they may perform sin and 
 holiness, and reap joy or sorrow in him, till all such 
 things shall have ceased. Even for the attainment 
 of this boon they have no security. It is not even 
 pretended that any one of their Avatars, by triumph- 
 ing over death, has given evidence of his abiding 
 power to save his worshippers. 
 
 It is on these two points, vicarious atonement 
 and the Divine Incarnation, that Hinduism comes 
 into sharpest antagonism to Christianity. In Christ- 
 ianity they are both linked together by the great 
 purpose of forgiveness of sins, which they bring 
 before the mind with all the assurance of reality. 
 
196 Hinduism and Christianitij. 
 
 In Hinduism, which denies the forgiveness of sins, 
 there is no pledge of accomplishment of the one, or 
 of any purpose in the other. But as, after all, the 
 influence of these principles in practical life is the 
 most important thing, let us further contrast the two 
 systems in their bearing on the Present Life and 
 on the hopes they give for a Life to come. 
 
 In regard to the present life, we must look at the 
 teaching of each reliG;ion with regard to ourselves 
 and with regard to others. With regard to our- 
 selves, Hinduism and Christianity alike teach that 
 we must seek to live A Godly Life. Here we find 
 repentance in Christianity ; we find it absent in 
 Hinduism. In Christianity, too, we find it associated 
 with the doctrine of the Incarnation — the keystone 
 of the arch which gives stability to the whole. 
 
 As one side of the Incarnation looks towards the 
 atonement of man's sin, the other looks to the 
 renewal of his character in the likeness of God.. 
 The former it effects by revealing God's forgive- 
 ness ; the latter, by revealing God's character and 
 will. The teaching of Christ is the most perfect 
 expression of God's will for man's life that is to be 
 found in human language ; it is the most perfect 
 expression of the law written on the hearts of all 
 men. So we find fragments of it in the teachinsj 
 of other masters. But what £fives Christ's teaching 
 its transcendent power is that He was more than 
 His teaching. The word He lived was above the 
 word He taught. In His combined teaching and 
 example He is the perfect rule of life. To obey 
 
i^^ ^ 
 
 Livpotencc of Hindu Models. 197 
 
 Christ and to be like Christ are one and the same 
 thing, and express all that Christianity aims at 
 making its followers. When Jesus Christ on earth 
 called His disciples to follow Him, it was just 
 calling on them to learn to be like Him. And 
 when, after His ascension, He bade His disciples 
 preach repentance, it was practically the same 
 thing ; it was calling men to turn from sins to 
 a life of holy obedience, with the assurance that 
 in doing so they need not let anxiety for conse- 
 quences of former sins hinder them, as these were 
 met by the remission of sins. This life it is beyond 
 man's power to attain. But with the call Christ 
 has given the pow^er to obey it. He has promised 
 the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. The Christ- 
 ian life is thus not a life regulated by a series of 
 rules, but a life inspired by a principle, and sustained 
 by a power, which teaches and enables him who 
 seeks to lead it to be in all things like Jesus Christ. 
 We find a counterpart to all this in Hinduism ; 
 but it is the arch without the keystone, and con- 
 sequently in fragments and ruins. God-like life 
 could scarcely start from the examples of its incar- 
 nations, for none of their lives is superhuman in 
 holiness. Even Eama, the most blameless character 
 in Hindu literature, is by no means perfect; while the 
 most popularly worshipped incarnation, as we have 
 seen, committed deeds so vile that even the narrator 
 warns his hearers not to take him for their example.^ 
 
 1 See ante, p. 119. The sage follows up the pantheistic vindi- 
 cation there given with the advice : ' Listen to the story of Hari, 
 but do not think of doing his deeds.' 
 
198 Hinchdsm and Christianity. 
 
 The idea of striving to attain likeness with the 
 Deity has, accordingly, no place among those sects 
 of Hindus who believe in incarnations of the Deity. 
 The Saivas, who deny the incarnations, are the 
 sectaries who seek to work out a likeness to God 
 and a union with Him by their own lives. This 
 is their whole religion. But, without the Divine 
 example of One who has come from above, they 
 seek to attain divinity by destroying instead of 
 perfecting humanity, by mortifying all human de- 
 sires and inclinations as well as all sinful desires 
 and inclinations. They cannot conceive anything 
 god-like in the faithful discharge of ' the daily 
 round, the common task ' ; their conception of being 
 god-like is to be quit of these altogether. The 
 result of this process is rather to destroy wdiat 
 remaining goodness there is in man. It is needful 
 ^ to see some of those whom the Hindus look on as 
 their most holy men, approaching in their perfection 
 most nearly to God, in order to realise how loath- 
 some this conception may become. 
 
 Failing such an example of holy life, without 
 
 any moral power in itself, Hinduism has sought 
 
 to regulate the lives of its votaries by a series of 
 
 ceremonies and rules, which begin before birth and 
 
 stretch to after death. A Hindu has argued that 
 
 Hinduism is superior to Christianity because it thus 
 
 regulates the whole of life, so that ' a Hindu sleeps 
 
 land rises, eats, drinks, bathes, dresses, and performs 
 
 jail the actions of life religiously.' He might have 
 
 f added that he steals and gets drunk, commits 
 
 uncleanness, and even murder, religiously. 
 
Brotherhood and Caste. 199 
 
 But it is when we come to its teaching with 
 regard to Man that we find Hinduism in most 
 direct antagonism to Christianity. Christianity, 
 teaching the Fatherhood of God, teaches also the 
 Brotherhood of man. Hinduism, starting with 
 absolute unity — the identity of the divine and 
 human spirits, ends with denying the unity of the 
 human race and affirmin<]j the bindin^]; obli<iation 
 of caste. It is here that the great strength of 
 Hinduism lies. At this we need not be surprised. 
 Hinduism developed itself in opposition to Buddhism, 
 which, as well as the Christian religion, was a reli- 
 gion of humanity ; and it is natural that Hinduism 
 should be strongest on those points in which it had 
 to struggle most decisively against it. 
 
 Caste is therefore, in reality, the greatest strength 
 of Hinduism, the most active foe with which 
 Christianity has to contend. Practical social in- 
 terests here come in to give vitality to religious 
 dosrma. The brotherhood of mankind is as hateful 
 
 o 
 
 a doctrine to the Hindus as was the idea of the 
 brotherhood of the Negro and European race to the 
 planters of America ; and as in India it is the 
 distinctive social doctrine of a hostile creed, it 
 makes them look with suspicion and dislike on 
 all its other teaching. Even when they have been 
 induced to study the Christian religion, and have 
 become convinced of its truth and of the divinity 
 of its Founder, they have not been able to accept 
 the idea of all men being brethren, of the sweeper 
 being naturally the same as the Brahman, and able 
 throuc^h education and traininGj to rise to the same 
 
200 Hinduism and Christianity. 
 
 social position. If they do overcome their repug- 
 nance to this thought, the terrible social persecution 
 which they would have to endure in practically 
 carrying it out, most frequently proves too strong 
 for their convictions, and holds them bound to 
 follow customs which they condemn, to worship 
 gods in whom they disbelieve. If they take the 
 final step of renouncing caste, then caste takes its 
 final step of renouncing them. They are cut off 
 from Hindu society, they are forbidden to live with 
 their families or mingle with their relatives. The 
 funeral rites are sometimes performed for them, and 
 their wives assume widows' weeds. Native Christ- 
 ians are thus nearly as much isolated from the 
 mass of their countrymen as Europeans are, and as 
 little able to influence them, except from the greater 
 sympathy with their ways of thinking which pre- 
 vious acquaintance gives. Christianity, accordingly, 
 cannot come before the Hindus in those aspects 
 which would help most to commend it ; it can 
 spread only from individual to individual, without 
 gaining in any of them a centre of power ; it draws 
 many out of Hindu society, but cannot be professed 
 by any within it. Thus has caste fortified Hinduism 
 against Christianity with the triple wall of anti- 
 pathy, terrorism, and isolation, and but for it the 
 converts to Christianity would have been ten times 
 as numerous as they are. 
 
 Lastly, we may contrast the teaching of the two 
 with regard to a Futuke Life. Christianity teaches 
 that the future life is a continuation and develop- 
 
Future Life. 
 
 201 
 
 ment of the present life, that eternal life is just 
 the life in Christ whicli the believer now has, 
 perfectly developed by deliverance from all the sin 
 and limitations of the present life. To the dying 
 believer it gives the hope of a blessed resurrection, 
 a spiritual body, a home in heaven prepared for 
 us by Christ Jesus. To the bereaved it gives the 
 hope of a union with those who have gone before, 
 and being in their society for ever with the Lord. 
 Hinduism offers to its votaries nothing better than 
 the prospect of being born in some new birth, in 
 which all the associations of the present life will 
 be utterly forgotten. To the bereaved it offers no 
 hope of ever meeting again with those who have 
 passed, except perhaps unconsciously they may cross 
 one another's path in some of their future births 
 as friends or as foes. I have spoken to a Hindu 
 father bowed in the bitterness of the loss of an 
 only son, and what was all the consolation whicli 
 his religion cjave him ? That the soul of his son 
 had passed to animate some other animal, it might 
 be a god or a devil, a man or a beast ; but passed 
 away from him for ever, never to be known again. 
 
 Such are the main points of affinity and an- 
 tagonism between Hinduism and Christianity, and 
 the statement of them leaves little doubt as to 
 whether there is a message which Christianity has 
 to teach India. The Fatherhood of God and the 
 brotherhood of man, the forgiveness of sins and 
 the need of a holy life, the service of G^od through 
 the service of man now, and the hope of eternal 
 
202 Hinduism and Christianity. 
 
 life — are the messasje which it brinies, and which 
 Hinduism denies. A religion can cjive nothinor 
 more than it pretends to give, and all the salvation 
 which Hinduism offers, either for this world or the 
 world to come, is a blank negation of all that man 
 was created for, and all that in his best moments 
 he aspires to. 
 
 There are, however, certain facts which seem to 
 militate against this view of the moral character 
 of the two systems, and to show that practically 
 the difference is not so great. These are the 
 degraded character of many in Christian lands, and 
 the excellent character of many of the Hindus, 
 But a close examination of these facts will show 
 that they have not a direct bearing on the question 
 in hand. 
 
 It may be granted that there are multitudes in 
 Great Britain just as bad as any in India ; but, 
 in comparing the one with the other, it must be 
 remembered that the defect in the former is their 
 irreligion, in the latter it is their religion. With 
 the former the religious faculty is either dormant 
 or deadened, with the latter it is in full exercise. 
 No Englishman, of whatever social status, thinks of 
 justifying vice or crime on the grounds of religion. 
 Those who are guilty of them are either ignorant of 
 religion, or it has lost its power over them, and 
 they know they are acting in opposition to it. But 
 let the religious faculty be awakened and enlight- 
 ened by Christian teaching, let it assert its power 
 over them, and they will turn from such evil. Now, 
 
Hindu and Christian Virtues. 203 
 
 a Hindu may commit any crime, believing that in 
 committing it he is not only not offending against 
 religion, but even performing a religious act. It 
 was as a religious act that the Thug murdered his 
 victims, that the father killed his new-born infant 
 daughter, that the son applied the torch to the pile 
 of wood on to which his widowed mother had 
 mounted. Uncleanness is as much a part of Hindu 
 worship as it was of the heathen worship in Corinth 
 and Ephesus in the days of the Apostle Paul. The 
 lapsed masses in Great Britain are low and de- 
 graded because they are not Christians. The masses 
 of India are low and degraded because they are 
 Hindus. The former are held down in spite of, 
 the latter in consequence of, their religion. The 
 same may be said in comparing the lives of many 
 professed Christians with the lives of many pro- 
 fessed Hindus. The inconsistencies of the former 
 are the consistencies of the latter. This may be 
 a strong argument for seeking to give Christianity 
 a stronf];er hold on Great Britain, but it is no 
 arc^ument for withholdim^ it from India. 
 
 But, it is further contended, there are good men 
 amone the Hindus as well as amonc^ Christians, 
 persons who teach a pure morality and who practise 
 it, and we nnist judge of a religion by the best 
 examples it produces, not by the worst. Again, it 
 must here be decided whether what is good in 
 these examples is the fruit of their religion — 
 whether it is a special result of Hinduism or of 
 naturally good principles, and whether what is good 
 in them can influence their countrymen — whether 
 
204 Moral Failure of Hinduism. 
 
 I 
 
 Hinduism is a jpowcr for good. That it includes ; 
 
 much that is good, and that it recognises good, I j 
 
 have souHit to show. There are some who dwell \ 
 
 more especially on this side of it, and those who do i 
 
 so may find in its literature much to encourage , 
 them and stimulate them. But that it also recocf- 
 nises the bad, and that those who wish to follow 
 evil may also find in its sacred books much to 
 
 encourag^e them, is also true. Hinduism does not ' 
 
 discourage good, except in so far as it does not \ 
 
 discourage evil ; but that is quite sufficient to i 
 
 prevent it being a power for good. , 
 
CHArxEJi xir. 
 
 BEFOEM MOVEMENTS IN HINDUISM. 
 
 HINDUISM as it is cannot be a moral power. 
 But may not its defects be remedied ? may not 
 the evil be eliminated and the good remain ? Are 
 not English education, European civilisation, and 
 contact with Christianity so influencing it that it 
 will ultimately change and become a power for 
 good ? This question demands consideration, for it 
 is the point to which the question has practically 
 come. These influences have already produced 
 marked changes in Hindu society, and no one can 
 compare the India of to-day with the India of even 
 twenty years ago without feeling that the old order 
 is passing away. The movement is as yet only 
 superficial. It has reached little further than those 
 centres and those classes that are affected by English 
 education. The great mass of the people, the 
 agricultural population, and the labouring popula- 
 tion, are not yet stirred by the breath that is 
 blowing^ on the surface. There is still enouoh inert 
 Hinduism in at least nine-tenths of the Hindu 
 community to dominate all the rest, if the disturb- 
 ing influences were withdrawn. If by any political 
 cataclysm the English rule were overthrown, and 
 
 205 
 
206 Bcform Movements. 
 
 the rule of no other Christian power substituted ; if 
 Indian society were left to settle itself on its own 
 basis, there can be little doubt that, after a period 
 of ferment, things would settle down very much as 
 they were before the English Government began its 
 innovations. The Brahmans would rule the other 
 castes with a sway more despotic then ever ; widows 
 would soon be burning themselves on the pyre 
 along with the bodies of their dead husbands ; 
 parents would have no scruple in destroying their 
 female children ; self-immolation before the cars of 
 the idols and self-torture at religious festivals would 
 again be common scenes in India. The attitude of 
 the native community on the Age of Consent Bill 
 shows that the spirit of Hinduism is still unbroken 
 in the hearts of even educated Hindus, and is ready 
 to assert itself if the controlling power should be 
 removed. Even the Christian community that has 
 been established has not yet cohesion or aggressive- 
 ness enough to affect the general population much 
 more than the Malabar Christians have done 
 through the past centuries. 
 
 But there is little likelihood of the English rule 
 being overthrown, or any of those influences being 
 withdrawn that are steadily telling on Hinduism. 
 We see the process going on in India that went on in 
 Europe in the early ages of Christianity, when the 
 power of the old faiths was overthrown first of all in 
 the cities, and their votaries were to be found only 
 in the country, whence they were called pagans or 
 heathen, villagers or country-men. There is com- 
 paratively little change in village life in India, but 
 
Injldicnces luorldng for Change. 207 
 
 in the cities there is a very obvious mental and 
 religious ferment going on. The influence of 
 Government education, based as it is, and must be, 
 on religious neutrality, has been negative rather 
 than positive. It has had the effect of destroying 
 faith in Hinduism in all who have passed through 
 its course, but it has substituted nothing in its 
 stead. Hindu rites are still performed by those 
 whom it has trained, not from any faith in them, 
 but only as observances required by society. The 
 educated youth, if not atheists at heart, are 
 mostly living without any religious sanctions for 
 the morality they are taught. Government seems 
 to be slirinking from its own handiwork. It is 
 introducing a more religious tone into the books 
 used in its schools, as far as the principles of 
 religious neutrality will allow ; and is seeking, where 
 possible, to withdraw in favour of mission schools. 
 The education in these latter is, of course, distinctly 
 positive ; but though it has had the effect of making 
 Christian truth known to all who have received it, 
 it has not as yet led many to break with their old 
 relififion. It has rather had the effect of convincino^ 
 them that the principles of Christianity are true, 
 and of making them try to find these principles 
 within their own faith. 
 
 There is thus a great deal of unrest among the 
 educated classes in India. They are utterly dis- 
 satisfied with Hinduism as it is. They are repelled 
 by the foreign aspect which Christianity at first 
 presents, and do not wish to break altogether with 
 the religion of their fathers. Many, too, profess 
 
 \ 
 
208 lie form Movements. 
 
 not to find Christianity intellectually adequate, and 
 to be unable to accept it fully ; and so they are 
 seeking for something that may satisfy them better. 
 This has led to two principal movements among the 
 educated Hindus — the Bkaiima Samaj ^ and the 
 APiYA Samaj. The former is the result of the 
 impact of European culture and Christian thought 
 on Hinduism; the latter is the result of a strong 
 theistic movement from the midst of Hinduism 
 itself. The former is already very much a thing of 
 the past ; the latter is in the full vigour of its first 
 impulse. 
 
 The Brdlima Samaj. 
 
 The Brahma Samaj is, or was, well known in 
 Enoland. Its leaders were able men — men of 
 European culture, with strong sympathy with certain 
 forms of Christian truth. They tlierefore enlisted 
 the sympathy of all in this country who were 
 interested in India, and gave the movement with 
 which they were associated an importance out of 
 proportion to any hold which it ever took on Hindu 
 societ}^ 
 
 It owes its origin to the well - known Eam 
 MoHUN EoY, who began teaching and writing 
 about the beginning of this century. By his 
 publication of the Precepts of Jesus, he showed at 
 least one source whence he derived his inspiration ; 
 but he selected also from what is good in the Hindu 
 
 1 Samaj means a society or cliurcli. Like the word cliurch, it 
 may mean either the society that meets in one town or building 
 or the larger society composed of the other societies collectively. 
 
The Brahma Samaj. 209 
 
 Scriptures, especially the Vedas. The ground he 
 took was that of opposition, not to Brahmanisni, but 
 to the perversions of it that had become common in 
 India ; and he claimed to be leading his countrymen 
 back to their primitive faith. He came to England 
 on a visit towards the close of 1830, and died at 
 Bristol in the year 1833. 
 
 The Brahma Samaj was founded in 1830 by him 
 and others who had imbibed his opinions, as an 
 attempt to supply theistic worship without being 
 dependent on foreign teaching or influence. About 
 ten years later, Babu Debendra Nath Tagore 
 became one of its leaders ; and under him it made 
 considerable progress tow^ards separation from 
 orthodox Hinduism, but he could not break off 
 from it altogether. This step was taken by Babu 
 Kesiiub Chunder Sen, who joined the Samaj in 
 1858, when only twenty years of age, and soon 
 became a leader. He was much more progressive 
 than his colleagues, and in 1865 brought matters 
 to a crisis by demanding, among other things, that 
 the external signs of caste distinction should no 
 longer be used. When this was refused by the 
 majority, he and some of the younger Brahmists 
 left, and in 1866 organised the Brahma Samaj 
 of India, called also the Progressive Samaj, 
 while the others remained as the Adi, or original 
 Samaj. 
 
 We may first look at the course of the latter, 
 who tried to reform Hinduism by remaining within 
 its pale ! Their avowed object w^as to make the 
 
 
 
210 The Brahma Samaj. 
 
 new religion a fulfilment of tlie old, instead of an 
 abrogation of it ; and they recognised no texts but 
 those of the Hindu Shastras. They, in fact, 
 attempted to found a system of Deism on a system 
 of pantheistic idolatry — a task more hopeless than 
 to exterminate the latter. They taught one per- 
 sonal god, but denominated him by the formula of 
 Vedantic pantheism — one only without a second. 
 They denounced idolatry, but allowed it in certain 
 circumstances. The natural result followed : the 
 system, exposed to the assaults of Progressive 
 Brahmism and of Christianity, was obliged to fall 
 back on its original source, and soon came to be 
 scarcely distinguishable from orthodox Hinduism. 
 One of its leaders, Narayan Bose, defended Hinduism 
 as superior to Christianity and other religions, 
 not although it maintained, but because it main- 
 tained, inferior stages of religious belief in its own 
 bosom — these inferior stages including the worship 
 of Krishna and of the linga, the sensuality of the 
 Maharajas and the self-torture of the Jogis. 
 When challenged for admitting the Tantras as 
 sacred books, he defended himself on the ground 
 that, though they contained many indecent passages, 
 yet they contained some of the sublimest precepts 
 of morality and religion ; though some enjoined 
 excessive drinking and unlawful intercourse, others 
 deprecated them in the strongest terms. Thus 
 they fell back into the old slough of Hinduism, 
 utterly impotent for good. The Tantras were 
 sacred books, because they contained some sublime 
 precepts, and these the Adi Brahmists sought to 
 
The Progressive Samaj. 211 
 
 follow ; but they also enjoined excessive drinking 
 and unlawful intercourse, and these the Saktas 
 carried into practice. Both were founded on the 
 Shastras, both were included within the pale of 
 Hinduism, and this showed its superiority to Christ- 
 ianity ! It is not surprising that the original 
 leader of the Adi Saniaj, the earnest Debendra 
 Xath Tagore, should have sought refuge from this 
 position in asceticism. Adi Brahmism has accom- 
 plished its design of fulfilling the old religion, but 
 it has proved that no fulfilment of the old religion 
 can be a reformation. 
 
 Chunder Sen and the Proofressive Brahmists broke 
 entirely with Hinduism. He summed up his creed 
 in the words, the Fatherhood of God and the 
 Brotherhood of man. He looked for its enforcement 
 to the revelation contained in the volume of Nature 
 and the volume of the human mind, and he selected 
 from the scriptures of all creeds what seemed best 
 in them for instruction and for w^orship. His high 
 character* the strong moral tone of his teaching, 
 and his zealous labours for the diffusion of know- 
 ledge, pointed him out as one of the likeliest of 
 Indian reformers. His tributes to Christ are anions: 
 the most earnest and eloquent that have been paid 
 to Him, and scarcely less striking is his acknow- 
 ledgment of the debt wdiich India owes to Christian 
 missionaries. His religious position had much 
 affinity with that of Martineau and the most 
 spiritual Unitarians in this country. He was 
 looked to by them as the coming man, who was to 
 
212 The BraJima Samaj. 
 
 win India to a true spiritual religion ; and his elo- 
 quence and high moral purpose won recognition from 
 all classes in this country, and secured for the 
 Brahma Samaj an interest that has not been felt in 
 any other reform movement in India. 
 
 The causes of its failure I will look at presently, 
 but will first follow the external history of tlie 
 movement. A division took place in the Pro- 
 gressive Brahmists in 1878. The occasion of this 
 was the marriage of Chunder Sen's daughter with 
 the Eajah of Cutch Behar. One of the greatest 
 curses of Hindu society, one of those most strenu- 
 ously denounced by the Brahma Samaj, is the 
 custom of infant marriages ; and they have fixed 
 fourteen, and got it recognised by law, as the lowest 
 age at which a Brahma girl may be married. 
 Chunder Sen's daughter was not yet that age when 
 her marriage took place. It was pleaded in justi- 
 fication that the marriage was little more than a 
 formal betrothal, the actual marriaGje not takin^j 
 place for two years after, and that the Brahma 
 leader did not break the spirit, if he did break the 
 letter of the rules he had laid down. There would 
 probably have been no schism had there not been 
 other causes at work. But Chunder Sen had come 
 to be so despotic in his management of the Samaj 
 that many of its members resented his conduct, 
 and he met their remonstrances on his daucjhter's 
 marriage in the same spirit. Instead of reasoning 
 or yielding, he pleaded what could only be a divine 
 revelation. Had this been directiug him to per- 
 form an act of self-denial, it might have been 
 
Divisions in the Samaj. 213 
 
 accepted ; but seeing that, like those of ^lohammed, 
 it was directing liim to do what he had forbidden 
 to others, and what was for his own advantage, it is 
 not surprising that it should have provoked the 
 resentment of many of his followers. They with- 
 drew, and formed in May 1878 a separate society, 
 under the name of the General (Sadharana) 
 Brahma Samaj. They have a separate place of 
 worship, and aim at being more democratic ; but 
 their spirit, teaching, and form of worship are the 
 same. Chunder Sen after the schism tried to gal- 
 vanise his section into new life by a fresh infusion 
 of Christian ideas and phrases. He sjjoke of his 
 movement as the New Dispensation, the fulfil- 
 ment of the old ; spoke of the influence of the 
 Holy Spirit ; instituted a sacrament of rice and 
 water, reading some scripture, such as Luke xxii. 
 He died in 1885, but the schism has not been 
 healed. 
 
 There are thus three sections of the Brahma 
 Samaj. This would not hinder, but rather foster its 
 development, if it had an adequate religious basis on 
 which to work. But this it has not. It is in its 
 ultimate principles bare Deism — much the same as 
 the Deism of last century. ' There is something 
 in Pantheism so deep that naught in bare Deism 
 can meet it. Deism is not so deep. And Pan- 
 theism may well keep the house till a stronger 
 than Deism comes to take possession of it. In 
 Jesus Christ I find the only true solution of the 
 mystery.' These words of one of our deepest 
 
214 The Brahma Samaj. 
 
 thinkers ^ have found practical illustration in the 
 history of the Brahma Saniaj. It won many 
 converts from the educated classes, but it failed to 
 retain them. 
 
 There is another defect closely connected with 
 the above. It is an eclectic religion : it seeks to 
 select what is good from all religions, and it has 
 become the latest evidence that no eclectic religion 
 can ever influence large numbers of men. Such 
 systems must always fail in the authority, and also 
 in the logic of religion, which are needful to secure 
 such an end. In the Brahma Samaj the ultimate 
 authority is each man's own experience and con- 
 viction. Their system, such as it is, is contradictory. 
 Its basis is the Fatherhood of God and the Brother- 
 hood of man. These are Christian dogmas, and 
 Christianity logically carries out the dogma of the 
 Fatherhood of God in that of the forgiveness of 
 sins. This Brahmism denies, teaching that ' every 
 sinner must suffer the consequences of his own sins 
 sooner or later, in this world or the next.' Thus it \ 
 teaches that God is a Father, but denies Him the 
 fatherly power of forgiving His children. The 
 Brahmists seem to expect that they will find 
 strength in the newly-developed science of religion, 
 according to whose light they fancy they are formu- 
 latin<? their reliqion.^ But relisfion is not the 
 
 ^ Duncan, Horcv Peripateticce. 
 
 2 The Rev. Mr. Hector, Principal of the Duff College, Calcutta, 
 has kindly supplied me with the following extracts from publica- 
 tions of the Brahma Samaj, chiefly of the New Dispensation, which 
 show its eclectic character : — ' All philosophy and theology, Hindu, 
 Buddhistic, Socratic, Judaic, ^Mohammedan, Sikh, Parsi, are 
 
Its Decay. 2 1 5 
 
 product of science, and any attempt to construct it 
 by science must be a failure. 
 
 The total number of Bralimas, according to tlie 
 recent census, in all India, was 3401. Their influ- 
 ence does not seem to extend beyond certain circles 
 in Calcutta. In my recent visit to the North-West 
 of India, I found no trace of Brahmas where they 
 used to make themselves well heard of. I could 
 not help feeling that in considering the religious 
 position in India the Brahma Samaj might be treated 
 as a negligable quantity.^ But the movement which 
 gave it importance is finding expression in 
 
 The Arija Samaj. 
 
 This movement originated with Dayanand Sara- 
 SWATI, a Guzerati Brahman, born about the year 
 1825. This was not his first name. He never in 
 after life told what that was, or who were his 
 
 fragments of tlie Eternal Word. The Christ who brings again 
 together the separate fragments, and makes them one, is indeed 
 the living Christ of the New Dispensation.' ' The New Dispensa- 
 tion is Christian to the Christians, and Hindu to the Hindus.' 
 It is ' historically the result of England's rule in the East, 
 religiously the etiect of Western thought on the Indian mind.' 
 An article on the ' Harmony of the Scriptures,' in the figure of a 
 dance, mixes up Jesus, Moses, David, Nanak, John, Paul, 
 ]\Iohanmied. ' The Bible and the Vedas dance together Avith the 
 Bhagavat ; the Purana and the Koran dance, joined in love.' 
 ' Our first war was with grim idolatry ; our victory we proclaimed 
 by trumpeting fortli the praise of the Ekamevadwitiyam. The 
 New Dispensation worships the Father, honours the Son, and lives 
 on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.' 
 
 ^ The Prarthna Samaj, a movement in Bombay corresponding 
 witli the Brahma Samaj in Calcutta, is not showing any greater 
 expansive power. 
 
216 The Arya Samaj. 
 
 parents, as that might have necessitated his going 
 back to them and his giving up the work to which 
 he had devoted his life. He was early taught 
 Sanskrit, and, w^hen fourteen years of age, had 
 learned the Sanhita of the Yajur Veda by heart. 
 
 At the age of fourteen, doubts first entered his 
 mind. His father was a Saiva, and he was initiated 
 by him into the worshijD of Siva. As part of that 
 initiation he had to keep fast and vigil for a whole 
 night in one of the temples of that god. By the 
 third watch his father and attendants had fallen 
 asleep, and he, thus left alone, began to meditate. 
 He asked himself whether the hideous idol which 
 he saw before him, which allowed mice to run over 
 his body, could be the Infinite Deity. He roused 
 his father and asked him to solve his difficulty, 
 and received the ordinary vindication of idol wor- 
 ship, but without being satisfied. His faith in the 
 idol was gone; he felt no interest in continuing his 
 vigil, but took some food he had brought with him, 
 and fell asleep. On returning home, all he could 
 do was to conceal from his parents his lack of faith, 
 and devote his time to study. 
 
 Some time after this, the death first of a beloved 
 sister and then of a revered uncle, awoke in his 
 mind the old problem that Buddha had tried to 
 solve — how to alleviate human misery and to attain 
 final liberation. He resolved to attempt the solu- 
 tion, but kept his purpose to himself. When he 
 was twenty-one years of age, he found that his 
 parents were making preparations for his marriage. 
 This would have been fatal to the plan of life lie 
 
Its Founder. 217 
 
 liad resolved on, so he left his fatlier's home ; and 
 though he was traced, and attempts were made to 
 bring him back, — on one occasion with nearly suc- 
 cessful results, — yet he eluded them all. The 
 various guilds of religious recluses and colleges of 
 pundits in India afford a refuge for such a spirit. 
 Through them he became acquainted with the 
 schools of Vedic philosophy. From one of the 
 teachers he met with, Brahmananda, ' I learned 
 clearly,' he says, ' that I am God, the soul and 
 God being one.' ^ Shortly after, he was admitted 
 to the order of Sanyasis or Dandis,^ and took the 
 name of Dayanand Saraswati. The only account 
 of his life ^ which I have been able to see, gives his 
 autobiography up to the year 1856, when he was 
 thirty-one years of age. It contains vivid accounts 
 of his wanderings to trace the great rivers of India 
 to their source, but does not say much as to the 
 growth of his beliefs, and his biographer says 
 nothing wdiatever on the subject. 
 
 I saw him when he visited Ajmer in the begin- 
 ning of 1866.* He was a tall, well-made, fine- 
 
 ^ See supra, p. 83. The word Brahm may perhaps be trans- 
 lated Divine Essence rather than God. 
 
 ^ See sujjra, p. 138. 
 
 ^ A Triumph of Truth, by Durga Parsad, Lahore. 
 
 ^ I wrote an account of some interviews we had ■with this 
 reformer, which appeared in the United Presbyterian Record, 
 September 1866. The following extracts may be interesting, as 
 showing the change between his position then and when his 
 system took its final form : ' The discussion finally came to the 
 capital question as to the identity of the divine and human 
 spirits, which he maintained, and we, of course, denied. . . . His 
 argument was based chiefly on the omnipresence of the Divine 
 Spirit. This I answered by an analysis of the Sanskrit word, 
 
218 The Arya Samaj. 
 
 looking man, with no covering but a saffron cloth 
 tied about his loins and another thrown loosely 
 over his body. He impressed me as a man of keen 
 intellect and commanding personality ; and I could 
 quite understand the fascination he exercised over 
 his followers. At that time he had not broken with 
 orthodox Hinduism, nor did he seem to doubt his 
 pantheistic creed, though theistic instincts seemed 
 to trouble him and embarrass him in discussion. 
 He declared that he was in search of truth, and 
 would follow it wherever he found it ; but he 
 pointed out to me that the word he used was sat, 
 
 which means "all-pervading," arguing that if he ijervaded all, he 
 could not he the all. He could not answer this at all clearly, but 
 tried to support his position by the analogy of the air, etc." 
 Compare this with his final summary of doctrine : '5. God and 
 soul are both incorporeal and unchangeable, and are related to 
 each other as Pervader and pervaded' {Beliefs of ^Dayanand 
 Sarasiuati. Lahore, 1887). Again: ' Though he had affirmed 
 very confidently that there were no errors in the Rig Veda, I 
 felt pretty sure that he had never read it ; and, to test him, 
 I made the pundit copy out some objectionable passages without 
 the commentary. The language of the Rig Veda is very old 
 Sanskrit, and without this aid no pundit can make it out for the 
 first time. ... I handed to him before all the people the list 
 of texts I had chosen. He took them, read them over, tried to 
 make them out, and at last confessed that he could not, saying 
 that I should have brought the commentary also. I replied that 
 as he had so strenuously denied all errors in the Rig Veda, I had 
 taken for gi-anted that he had read it, and would recognise the 
 passages I had quoted. He very candidly acknowledged that he 
 had not read the Rig Veda, and that he had no right to speak 
 so confidently of a book which he had not read' {United Presby- 
 terian Record, 1866). Compare this with his seventh condition 
 of a divine revelation : ' It must be inspired in the language 
 which is not spoken in any country on the surface of the earth.' 
 When, in my recent visit to India, I asked any of the Aryas for 
 the justification of such a condition, they ahvays referred to tlie 
 fact that the language of the Veda was ditierent from ordinary 
 Sanskrit. 
 
Iiditjio2is Development. 219 
 
 not sack. The former may be translated reality, 
 the latter, veracity. To the latter he did not seem 
 to attach much importance, for the former he seemed 
 to be always searching. He still believed in caste 
 as laid down in the laws of Mann, and when con- 
 fronted with some of these laws he maintained they 
 were divine, but with the impatience of a man who 
 felt himself in a false position. In the same way 
 he acknowledged some of the legends in the Saiva 
 Puranas to be immoral, and when pressed changed 
 the subject as quickly as possible. He was an 
 uncompromising iconoclast, and was quite willing 
 to unite with the Christians to move Government 
 to destroy all the idols in India. He had an 
 unwavering faith in the Vedas, though he knew 
 only the Yajur Veda, and believed he would find 
 in them the authority for those principles which 
 he seemed instinctively to have grasped. He said : 
 ' I do not believe that there is a single error in 
 any of the Vedas, and if you show me one I will 
 maintain that it is the interpolation of a clever 
 scoundrel.' As a consistent pantheist, he denied 
 that he ever committed sin, and was greatly 
 astonished that I should allow I had done so. 
 
 Two circumstances helped forward his religious 
 and philosophical development at this time — he 
 first became acquainted with the Christian Scrip- 
 tures, and he first became acquainted with the 
 original Hindu Scriptures. The first copy of the 
 Eig Veda which he saw was one in my possession, 
 that edited by Max Milller. Both of these he 
 procured for himself, getting the Bible in Hindi. 
 
220 The Arija Samaj. 
 
 Coming to the study of the latter with the Lent his 
 mind had received, it is not surprising that he 
 rejected it. He assailed it both by word and pen 
 in a truculent, unscrupulous manner. His attacks 
 on the character of Jesus show a moral inability 
 to understand Him ; and indeed, between the proud, 
 self-sufficient, supercilious Brahman and the lowly 
 Jesus of Nazaretli there is about as vast a contrast 
 as could be.^ He constantly expresses the wish 
 that Christians would turn to the Vedas and learn 
 to know the god of the Yedas, and they would at 
 once see his vast superiority. Yet it is evident 
 
 ^ For example, in reference to Christ calling the sons of 
 Zebedee to follow Him, he says : ' Jesus failed Himself to render 
 to His parents the service required in the Ten Commandments, 
 and He called away others from waiting on their parents, and it 
 was because of this offence that He was so short-lived,' — this 
 from one who had run off from his parents ! Regarding the 
 promise that every one that hath left houses or brethren or 
 sisters or father or mother or children or lands for Christ's sake 
 shall receive a hundredfold, he tells us that no one can ever 
 have a hundred fathers or mothers, but each individual has just 
 one father and one mother. On the text, ' Blessed are the poor 
 in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,' he says, * If 
 heaven is one, there ought to be in it only one king, but if all 
 the poor or humble go there, to whom will the kingdom belong ? ' 
 Jesus, he says, was a plain, honest man, though ignorant and 
 without supernatural powers. Some good things came from His 
 mouth, and a gi'eat many evil. He was a carpenter, who lived in 
 a jungly country, and when He began to teach as a prophet He 
 was accepted. If Europe had been enlightened then as it is now, 
 He would have had no success. He applies the proverb, ' In a 
 treeless country even the castor-oil plant is a tree,' to Jesus as a 
 religious teacher. He applies it also to Max Mliller as a Sanskrit 
 scholar. He does not seem to suspect that it may apply to him- 
 self as both. He is very indignant with the Brahma Samaj and 
 the Prartlma Samaj for the respect with which they speak of 
 Christ and of European learning. See * Dayanand Saraswati's 
 Strictures on the Bible,' by Rev. J. Gray, Ajmer. Indian 
 Evangelical Jicviciv, October 1886. 
 
Glosses on the Veda. 221 
 
 that, in the conception which he ultimately formed 
 and expressed of God, he was influenced much more 
 by the Bible than by the Veda. 
 
 His treatment of the Veda, though, of course, 
 quite different, is no less characteristic. He assumes 
 it to be the source of all truth; but, instead of 
 examining it to learn what truth it teaches, he 
 reads into it his own beliefs, and claims power to 
 determine what in it is inspired and what is not. 
 He even finds in it, as the source of all science, the 
 elements of railway engineering and electric science. 
 His interpretations are generally thoroughly rational- 
 istic. Thus he explains the devas (gods) to be the 
 learned, and the asuras (devils) to be the unlearned. 
 The worship of God * consists in the respect and 
 service of learned and virtuous men, parents, sages, 
 philosophers, preachers, and kings ; in fidelity to 
 the marriage contract, and in the devotion of women 
 to their husbands.' ' The Yajna (sacrifice, or sacri- 
 ficial cult) is the entertainment of the learned in 
 proportion to their worth, the business of manufac- 
 ture, the experiment and application of chemistry, 
 physics, and the like arts of peace, the instruction 
 of people, the purification of the air, the nourish- 
 ment of vegetables by the employment of the 
 principles of meteorology, called Agni-hotra in San- 
 skrit, which showers blessings on all around. It 
 is the most important duty of man.' ^ A wide 
 enough definition of sacrifice, certainly ! 
 
 In the final summary of his beliefs he maintained 
 
 ^ Beliefs of Maharshi Swaini Dayanand Saraswati, Lahore, 
 p. 10. 
 
222 The Arya Samaj. 
 
 the eternally distinct existence of the Supreme 
 Spirit, of human souls, and of matter, taking thus 
 the same position as Eamanuja, the Vaishnava 
 reformer of the twelfth century. He maintained 
 the doctrine of metempsychosis, with its consequent 
 denial of the forgiveness of sins, and he attacked 
 very vehemently the doctrine of forgiveness in the 
 Bible. He denied caste as having no warrant from 
 the Vedas,^ but he tried to retain the four castes 
 as orders of learning, and wished the caste of each 
 individual to be determined by something like com- 
 petitive examination. 
 
 He tried to get Brahmans and pundits to adopt 
 his views ; but, failing in this, he turned to the 
 common people, and at Bombay, in 1875, founded 
 the Arya Samnj. He adopted the word Arya, 
 rather than Hindu, considering the former to be 
 the original designation of the people, and the 
 latter a term of reproach given them by their 
 enemies. Arya Vartta (Aryaland) he considered 
 the land between the Himalayas and the Vindhya 
 mountains, where he said the Aryas had dwelt 
 since the foundation of the world ; but he did not 
 limit the Samaj to that district. He moved about, 
 establishing Samajes in various places, attracting 
 numbers of the younger Hindus especially, by his 
 
 1 The Arya Catechism says : ' There is no distinction between 
 men when they are born. The qualifications they acquire, and 
 the actions they do, are tests for their classification as Brahmans, 
 Kshatrya, Vaishya, and Shudra. If a man born of Brahman 
 parents is illiterate and does unrighteous acts, he is a Shudra. 
 If one born of Shudra parents is well- versed in all the sciences 
 and does good and meritorious actions, he is a Brahman.' See 
 also Appendix F. 
 
Its Constitution. 22 o 
 
 eloquence and enthusiasm, and disputing both with 
 missionaries and witli pundits. He died in 1883 
 at Ajmer. His hist written words are : ' I accept 
 such universal maxims as the speaking of truth 
 and the condemnation of falsehood. But I detest 
 the religious warfare of sects ; . . . the purpose of 
 my life is the extirpation of evils ; the introduction 
 of truth in thought, speech, and deeds ; the pre- 
 servation of unity in religion ; the expulsion of 
 mutual enmity ; the extension of friendly inter- 
 course ; and the advancement of public happiness 
 by reciprocal subservience of the human family. 
 May the grace of the Almighty God, and the con- 
 sent and co-operation of the learned, soon spread 
 these doctrines all over the world, to facilitate every 
 one's endeavour in the advancement of virtue, 
 wealth, godly pleasures, and salvation, so that 
 peace, prosperity, and happiness may ever reign in 
 the world. Amen.' 
 
 Such was the founder of the Arya Samaj, and 
 his influence is still felt powerfully in its organisa- 
 tion and working. It is organised somewhat on the 
 model of a European guild, the different Samajes 
 uniting in one great Samaj. All may become 
 members of it who are over the a<^e of eiditeen, 
 and who accept its principles. Members are 
 required to subscribe not less than one per cent, 
 of their income to its funds, and those whose 
 monthly contributions amount to more than ten 
 rupees, or who show special interest, are considered 
 active members. The Samaj undertakes to supply 
 
224 Tlie An/a SamaJ. 
 
 a great variety of wants in the life of its members. 
 It regulates their creed, and makes provision for 
 religious worship ; it supplies facilities for mutual 
 improvement, and is also a mutual benefit society ; 
 it unites them for active propagandism and in- 
 fluencing the general mass of Hinduism. Its 
 strength and its weakness may best be judged by 
 its own standards. The following are the 
 
 Ten Principles of the Arya Samaj. 
 
 I. God is the primary source of all true knowledge, and of 
 the things made known by it. 
 
 II. God is all truth, all knowledge, all beatitude, bound- 
 less, almighty, just, merciful, unbegotten, without a beginning, 
 incomparable, the support and Lord of all, all-pervading, 
 omniscient, imperishable, immortal, eternal, holy, and the 
 cause of the universe : worship is due to Him alone. 
 
 III. The Vedas are the books of true knowledge, and it is 
 the paramount duty of the Aryas to read, hear, teach, and 
 preach them. 
 
 IV. We should always be ready to accept truth, and 
 renounce untruth when discovered. 
 
 V. Truth arrived at after consummate deliberation should 
 be our guiding principle in all our actions. 
 
 VI. The primary object of the Arya Samaj is to do good 
 to the world by imj)roving the j)hysical, social, intellectual, 
 moral, and sj^iritual condition of mankind. 
 
 VII. Love, justice, and prosj)erity should guide us in our 
 dealings with others. 
 
 VIII. We ought to try to dispel the darkness of ignorance, 
 and to spread the light of knowledge. 
 
 IX. No one should rest satisfied with his own individual 
 good, but ought to seek his own good in the good of others. 
 
 X. In all that concerns the interests of the public weal, 
 persons should frankly subject themselves to the good of 
 others ; but all should retain independence in what concerns 
 their personal interests. 
 
Its Principles. 225 
 
 These rules, though rather vague and flabby as 
 compared with the laws of Buddha and other old 
 codes of India, yet present a high ideal. The most 
 important practically is the sixth, and it includes 
 an extensive programme both of living and of 
 a drastic reform of abuses in Hindu society. 
 Under it the Aryas include the performance of 
 the Ac^ni-hotra, abstinence from animal food and all 
 spirituous liquors, strict attention to cleanliness 
 and to exercise, the abolition of caste and of 
 idolatry, of early marriages and of excessive expen- 
 diture on marriages, the promotion of female educa- 
 tion and the remarriage of widows, appointment of 
 Vedic missionaries and establishment of orphanages 
 and dispensaries. The two last items have, no 
 doubt, a benevolent aim, but they are also avowedly 
 established as a means of counteracting missionary 
 institutions of a similar kind. 
 
 Of the other principles above stated, the only 
 one about which there will be any question is the 
 third, which practically claims the Vedas as the 
 only true revelation. The evidence on which they 
 rest this is, that they alone satisfy the following 
 conditions, which, according to the Aryas, are 
 essential in a true revelation : — 
 
 1. It should not conflict with natural laws. 
 
 2. It should comprise precepts which are conformable to 
 the laws of Nature and the divine attributes. 
 
 3. It should contain the germ of all true science. 
 
 4. It should be communicated as soon as the world comes 
 into existence. 
 
 5. The divine commandments it contains must not be con- 
 tradictory to one another, but must be immutable and eternal. 
 
 P 
 
226 llie Arya Samaj. 
 
 6. It should not instruct us to believe in a mediator, 
 saviour, or prophet, who pretends to secure us heaven or 
 hell. 
 
 7. It must be inspired in tlie language which is not spoteii 
 in any country on the surface of the earth.^ 
 
 8. It should embrace no historical and biographical events. 
 
 9. It should be compatible with true science, and its 
 principles should stand to reason. 
 
 10. It should not sanction the killing of animated beings. 
 
 It is evident that the Arya Samaj is a movemeDt 
 entirely different in kind from the Brahma Samaj. 
 The latter is an attempt to seek out affinities 
 between Hinduism and other religions, to reach 
 the religious basis that underlies all, and present 
 it in a form as suited to India as possible. The 
 Arya Samaj, on the other hand, is the outcome of 
 a strong theistic instinct, and of a clear observa- 
 tion of the reforms needed in Hindu society, on a 
 mind ignorant of all culture but that of Hinduism, 
 and intensely resolved to find in Indian religion 
 itself the warrant for all his convictions. But it 
 is just this intensity of conviction, affirming con- 
 tradictions and assimilating obstacles, which gives 
 the Arya Samaj its power. There was something- 
 rousing in the appeal of its founder to the youth 
 of India to adopt a system of caste in which the 
 highest rank was open to the most humbly born. 
 I have conversed with an educated Arya, a Brah- 
 man by birth, who gloried in the fact that in the 
 Samaj the lowest Sudra could take his place along- 
 side of him, if he qualified himself by learning and 
 by conduct. 
 
 1 See note, p. 218. 
 
Causes of its StreiKjth. 227 
 
 But it is only when we estimate the state of 
 affairs that has been produced by English education 
 that we can understand the hold which the Arya 
 Samaj has taken. The faith of educated natives in 
 the religion of their fathers, as it had been tauc^ht 
 them, was utterly undermined. They felt that the 
 modern constitution of Hindu society was utterly 
 indefensible, and that reform was imperative. 
 Christianity seemed a foreign, and therefore a 
 hostile faith. The Bralmia Samaj seemed also 
 something of a foreign movement, without any 
 sanctions to which they could appeal. But the 
 Arya Samaj was a movement from the very centre 
 of Hinduism itself, a response to all their desires. 
 It presented a view of the original faith of India, 
 that seemed to them to harmonise with all the 
 discoveries of modern science and the ethics of 
 European civilisation. They rallied to its standard 
 with all the ardour of patriotism. Thus it has 
 come to pass that a teacher, who was utterly 
 unacquainted with the English language, and an 
 entire stranger to Western culture, has found his 
 most devoted and enthusiastic followers among 
 those who have been trained in botli of these. 
 They are generally as ignorant of Sanskrit as he 
 was of English, and so accept without questioning 
 his interpretation of the Vedas. They have brought 
 to his support all the weapons furnished by the 
 agnostic and infidel literature of Europe. They 
 are the most confident and persistent opponents 
 of Christianity, though their claim that, since the 
 establishment of the Samaj, conversions to Christ- 
 
228 The Arya Samaj. 
 
 iariity have ceased, is distinctly contradicted by 
 fact. They are ready to carry out their convictions 
 in practice/ are seeking to put down idol worship, 
 to promote female as well as other education, 
 to abolish infant marriage and allow widow re- 
 marriage, and in general, to carry out needed 
 reforms. They subscribe liberally to the funds of 
 the Samaj, and for meeting Christianity in the 
 sphere of philanthropy. The progress they have 
 made is also considerable. Last census showed 
 that they numbered 40,000 ; and though this is 
 less than had been estimated alike by friends and 
 foes, yet it must be noticed that in fifteen years the 
 Arya Samaj has secured ten times as many followers 
 as the Brahma Samaj has in sixty years. 
 
 It is still too near the time of Dayanand 
 Saraswati's death to say what the final issue of the 
 movement will be. The memory of his personal 
 influence still holds his follov/ers together, but 
 already divergences are beginning to appear. He 
 has bequeathed to his followers a legacy of con- 
 tradiction between his own teaching and his 
 pretended authorities, and between these latter and 
 European science, which must constantly embarrass 
 them.2 The Arya Apologetic is always based on 
 
 ^ The ruler of a small subordinate state in Rajputana became 
 an Arya. He at once disestablished and disendowed Hinduism, 
 by confiscating all the religious endoAvments of the temples. 
 Such a proceeding was possible only in a native state, and, though 
 we may not approve of the want of consideration shown, it 
 suggests the question whether the presence of the English 
 (government may not ultimately come to be the great bulwark of 
 Hinduism. 
 
 2 An instance of this will be found in the note, pp. 18, 19. 
 
Elements of Weakness. 229 
 
 rational or scientific grounds ; ^ the Vedas are 
 brought in only to give religious sanction, and their 
 texts explained, or explained away, to suit the 
 position. The marks of a divine revelation which 
 I have quoted can hardly be read without a smile, 
 and it would not be difficult to show that the Vedas 
 tested even by them are not divine. The same 
 failure to grasp true scientific arguments^ is seen in 
 other ways in their writings, and show that the 
 Saniaj can have vitality only in the twilight of 
 scientific thought. In denying repentance and 
 forgiveness of sins it denies a want of human 
 nature which must ultimately make it yield to 
 Christianity ; in denying a mediator it denies a 
 religious instinct which would ultimately give even 
 old Hinduism the victory. Meanwhile, though it is 
 one of the most redoubtable antagonists with which 
 Christianity has to reckon, it is one of the most 
 powerful disintegrators of old Hinduism, and 
 may thus do a work in clearing the way for 
 Christianity. 
 
 1 In the Arya Catechism the use of animal food is condemned, 
 because monkeys, though they have canine teeth, are vegetarian ; 
 because milk is a food that may be obtained from animals without 
 hurting them ; because a cow if killed will feed only eighty men 
 for one day, while if spared its milk will feed three men for nine 
 months; because it deals a blow at the prosperity of a nation, is 
 cruel to animals, is productive of disease, and pernicious to morals. 
 The texts of the Vedas that seem to sanction it are ignored. 
 Idol worship is pronounced a sin because it blunts the mind, 
 hinders spiritual progress, and brings the Hindus into contempt. 
 
 2 They glory in the antiquity of the Vedic religion, which they 
 say dates from the foimdation of the world. A tract I have quoted, 
 Beliefs of Dayanand Saraswati, bears the date, 1,960,852,987 
 A.M. ; and beneath, to sliow the modernness of Christianity, 
 1887 A.I). 
 
230 Beform Movements. 
 
 The question naturally arises, How far has this 
 and the movements that have preceded it loosened 
 the hold of Hinduism on the mass of the people ? 
 In the beginning of this chapter I have intimated 
 my belief that the movement has not yet, with the 
 great mass of the people, gone much below the 
 surface. But it is be^inninoj to affect the centres of 
 thought. Hinduism still shows a great deal of 
 vitality and activity, but this, too, is also superficial. 
 Nothing strikes one, going back after twenty years 
 to India, more than the immense number of fine 
 temples that are being built everywhere, especially 
 in sacred places. This, however, is more an 
 evidence of the security of the British rule, and of 
 the wealth that is being accumulated by natives 
 under it, than of anything else. The number 
 of pilgrims that go to sacred places is diminishing, 
 even while the population is increasing, and the 
 railway is giving additional facilities for reaching 
 them. 
 
 Caste is also being very much modified, if it is 
 not breaking up. The rules of intercourse between 
 the various castes are much less stringent, and the 
 penalties for eating and drinking with those of other 
 castes less rigorously enforced than they used to be. 
 All this, however, does not affect the root-idea of 
 caste. It is on the point of intermarriage that the 
 last battle of caste will be fought out, and this has 
 not yet been approached. I could not see that it 
 had lost any of its power as a hindrance to the 
 progress of Christianity. And while it is losing 
 power in some of the higher castes, it is increasing 
 
Modification of Caste. 231 
 
 its power in some of the lower castes, and is bring- 
 ing many of the out-castes, aboriginal tribes and 
 otliers, within the pale of Hinduism. I have 
 already referred to the manner in which tlie pro- 
 paganda is carried on. By means of it some tribes 
 whicli, twenty years ago, were outside the pale 
 of Hinduism are now brought inside of it, and 
 are much more zealous for their caste rules than 
 are some of the higher castes. Caste is like 
 a tree rotten at the core, but flourishing in its 
 branches. 
 
 It is also to be noticed that some castes, as castes, 
 are movinsj in the direction of reform. Thus the 
 Piajputs came to an agreement that they would 
 raise the acre at which their dauc^hters were to be 
 considered marriageable, and limited very strictly, in 
 proportion to the income of the father, the sum of 
 money to be spent at marriages. Other castes are 
 followiu!^ suit. 
 
 I noticed also that several of the castes liad 
 formed Samajes of their own, as though they were 
 wishing to utilise the idea of the Samaj for 
 strengthening caste. The rise of Samajes seems a 
 result of the contact of Hinduism with Christ- 
 ianity, as the rise of the Panths was of its contact 
 with Mohammedanism. There is what we may 
 call a Samaj movement going on in India. Caste 
 is seeking to assimilate it, and derive new vitality 
 from it. We have object lessons now of what may 
 have occurred in the contest with Buddhism ; and 
 a few more decades may see Hinduism entrenched 
 still in its old lines of caste, but modified to suit 
 
232 Reform Movements. 
 
 many requirements of modern civilisation, and 
 claiming that so it has always been. 
 
 One important movement that has lately taken 
 place is the rise of the Indian Congress. This is a 
 political rather than a religious movement, and so 
 I do not wish to say much on it. But in India 
 the political future is so closely bound up with 
 the religious future, that the two can hardly be 
 separated. In India, society rests on a religious 
 basis, and until Hindu society is reformed, Hindu 
 political emancipation is a vain dream. The 
 Congress has had the effect of drawing away the 
 attention of many zealous social and religious 
 reformers from the social question to the political 
 question, and so retarding instead of helping forward 
 social reform. The influence of the Congress has 
 been entirely passive on social questions ; and where 
 Government has attempted to reform by legisla- 
 tion some of the worst abuses, it has received no 
 countenance from the Congress. Eepresentative 
 Government in a caste-divided community is an 
 anomaly. If Indian reformers wish to secure the 
 political emancipation of their country on a true 
 basis, they will devote themselves to securing the 
 essential condition for this in social reform and the 
 abolition of caste distinctions. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 rOSITION AND ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 SUCH, then, is the present position of the religious 
 conflict in India. Christianity is pressing 
 forward its claims to world-wide conquest ; Hindu- 
 ism is fully awakening to the struggle, and is meet- 
 ing Christianity — among the educated by means of 
 the various Samajes, among the lower classes and 
 aborigines by developing the caste system. What 
 are the prospects of the struggle, and what attitude 
 must Christianity preserve to secure success ? Here 
 we may ask first : What have been the results in the 
 past — what success has attended Christian missions 
 up to the present time ? 
 
 We hear a great deal from some quarters of the 
 failure of missions in India. Some who speak thus 
 are hostile to missions, others are friendly ; both 
 ignore the lessons of the past history of Chris- 
 tianity, and seem to assume that, unless it makes 
 the same progress in a decade now which it did in 
 a century in the early ages, it is a failure. To 
 judge whether an enterprise is a failure we must 
 look at the anticipations wliich have been enter- 
 tained. Twenty years ago the most sanguine 
 advocates of missions did not anticipate the con- 
 
 233 
 
234 Position of Christianity. 
 
 version of India to Christianity in less than two 
 centuries. When these have passed, the world 
 will be better able to estimate the final result. 
 Meanwhile we can only judge whether the an- 
 ticipations for the last twenty years have been 
 realised. 
 
 Looking at the total Christian community of 
 India, we find that during these years it has 
 increased from about 1-^ million to 2^ millions — 
 an increase of 50 per cent. Twenty years ago the 
 number of Christians in India proper was about 
 equal to that of the Jains, and about 20 per cent, 
 under that of the Sikhs. Ten years ago their 
 number was about that of the Sikhs ; now they are 
 nearly 20 per cent, ahead of them. Excluding 
 Burmah with its 7 millions of Buddhists, and 
 looking merely at India proper, whose religions 
 alone we have been considering, we find that the 
 Christians are more numerous than the followers 
 of any of the smaller religious sects, and occupy 
 the third place. There is no doubt a vast dis- 
 tance between the 207 millions of Hindus and 57 
 millions Mohammedans on the one hand, and the 
 2^ millions of Christians on the other. But, vast 
 as it is, it must be measured with purpose to over- 
 take it, and with confidence that it can be done. 
 If, forty years ago, the prophecy had been made 
 that before the end of the century the Christians 
 would outnumber the Sikhs, how many would have 
 laughed it to scorn ! Yet that result has been 
 attained, and should encourage the Christian Church 
 to press on to the larger conquest. 
 
Growth of the Protestant Church. 235 
 
 We look, however, with special interest to the 
 progress that has been made by the Protestant 
 Church, which lias not yet succumbed, and let us 
 trust never will succumb, to the paralysing influence 
 of Hinduism. Though Protestant missions began 
 early last century, it was not till tlie middle of this 
 century that the missionary community, led by the 
 late Dr. Mullens of Calcutta, sought carefully to 
 ascertain its position and the progress it was 
 making. The census of 1851 showed, as tlie 
 fruit of upwards of a century of missionary labour, 
 a Christian community of 91,092, with a Church 
 membership of 14,661, about 16 per cent, of the 
 whole. In 1871 the numbers of the Christian 
 community liad risen to 224,258, an increase of 
 146 per cent.; and in 1890 they had risen to 
 about 560,000, an increase of 150 per cent. Those 
 in Church membership had, during the same period, 
 increased to 52,816 in 1871, and 182,722 in 
 1890. Taking the whole period of forty years, 
 we find that the Protestant community has in- 
 creased more than six-fold, and its comparatively 
 higher character is attested by the fact that, 
 whereas formerly only 1 out of 6 was a Church 
 member, now 1 out of 3 is in that position. 
 If such a rate of progress were continued, the 
 Protestant Church would absorb the whole popula- 
 tion of India about the middle of the twenty-first 
 century. 
 
 As we examine the progress in detail, however, 
 there is one fact that prevents the prospect being 
 quite so bright, — the apparent rate of progress has 
 
236 Position of Christianity. 
 
 not been maintained during the past nine years.^ 
 From 1871 to 1881 the increase of the native 
 Protestant community was from 224,000 to 
 417,000, an increase of 193,000, or 86 per cent., 
 the largest absolute and the largest proportionate 
 increase of any decade. From 1881 to 1890 the 
 increase was 143,000, or about 34 per cent., a less 
 absolute increase than the former decade, and, even 
 making allowance for the shorter time, the least 
 proportionate increase since the census began to 
 be taken. The statistics on this point are not 
 absolutely correct, owing to many of the societies 
 not sending in to the committee charged with com- 
 piling them any returns. In such cases the Chris- 
 tian community is calculated at 2^ for each 
 communicant, which is less than the proportion 
 in other missions. Taking the lowest estimate, 
 these returns show the Protestant community to 
 be increasinoj at a ratio three times as great as the 
 general population of India, and 60 per cent, 
 greater than other Christians. 
 
 And if we look at the returns of Church mem- 
 bers, the result is more hopeful. In the first 
 period, from 1871 to 1881, the increase was from 
 52,816 to 113,325, an average yearly increase of 
 6051; in the second period, from 1881 to 1890, 
 it had risen to 182,722, an average yearly increase 
 of 7722. 
 
 Yet, taking the most favourable view of these 
 
 ' Tlie last census of Protestant missions in India was taken in 
 1890, after an interval of nine instead of ten years, to bring it into 
 line with the general census in the beginning of 1891. See 
 Appendix G. 
 
Causes of AjJj^arcnt Bdardation. 237 
 
 returns, they show, if not a pause, at least a 
 retardation of the progress that had heen made 
 hefore, which calls for earnest examination as to 
 its cause. No doubt, when Christian communities 
 attain the dimensions of some of tliose in India, 
 there cannot but be much lapsing of adherents, — ■ 
 not possibl}^ into heathenism, but out of Church 
 connection into positions where they are lost sight 
 of. But this does not account for all. Several 
 missions show an absolute decrease — some as much 
 as 30 per cent. In some cases, where inquiry has 
 been made, it has been found that numbers, who 
 had been returned as belonging to the Christian 
 community in 1881, were persons who had been 
 hastily baptized. A prolonged test showed that 
 their profession had been merely nominal, and so 
 they ceased to be reckoned as Christians. 
 
 For the past twenty-five or thirty years there have 
 been occasional outcries about the expense of Indian 
 missions and the comparatively small results. Some 
 people seem to think that a mission cannot be a 
 true mission unless the missionaries have to endure 
 personal hardships and discomforts ; and that no 
 work is being done unless large numbers of bap- 
 tisms can be reported. This has led to some cheap 
 missions being attempted, and to baptism being 
 administered with fewer precautions than formerly. 
 But this does not pay in the long run. ' The 
 greater hurry the less speed ' is true in spiritual 
 matters as well as worldly matters. The Church 
 in India is now paying the penalty of the hasty 
 action of some of its agents who secured greater 
 
238 Methods of Worh. 
 
 results at the time, that proved ultimately no 
 strength to the Christian cause. It is to be feared 
 that similar methods are still adopted by some 
 missions, and it would be well that these should be 
 carefully considered. Protestant missions in India 
 are in the position of an army that has been 
 IDressing forward, but which finds that it has been 
 doing so in too great haste. It has to abandon 
 some positions that are useless, and dismiss some 
 troops that are inefficient, that it may press on with 
 greater vigour to larger conquests. And it is well 
 that in doing so it should look carefully to the 
 principles and spirit in which the fight is to be 
 fought. And we may look for this purpose at the 
 practical question of the principle on which baptism 
 is to be administered. 
 
 The simile of an army suggests the Salvation 
 Army ; and we may look first of all at its methods, 
 for it differs from other evangjelistic agjencies in 
 India in not requiring baptism of its converts, or 
 those whom it considers to be converts. It is 
 impossible to look at the Salvation Army and the 
 work it is doing in India without a strange mixture 
 of admiration and regret. In it we see forces, in 
 some respects the strongest ever brought to bear 
 on the evangelisation of India, reduced by wrong 
 method to the weakest of practical results. Its 
 agents, or, as they prefer to term themselves, its 
 officers, show themselves possessed of a whole- 
 hearted consecration, an unhesitating self-denial, a 
 joyful enthusiasm in their work, which exemplify 
 
Salvation Army. 239 
 
 the liii'best traditions of Christian devotion and 
 heroism, and ought to make the Army the most 
 successful of all Christianising agencies in India. 
 But all this is neutralised by tlie want of that prime 
 requisite of success in an arm}' — obedience. They 
 fail in obedience to Jesus Christ, whose commission 
 they seek to fulfil. In giving that commission He 
 appointed the methods, ' baptize and teach.' ^ The 
 Salvation Army neither baptizes nor teaches. It 
 has been said that Jesus Christ has inspired a great 
 deal, but instituted very little ; and just on that 
 account all that He has instituted should be care- 
 fully guarded and_ observed, in the assurance that, 
 unless He had seen it to be essential, He would not 
 have instituted it. And when the methods He 
 instituted for carrying out His great commission 
 are set aside, we need not wonder that success 
 should not be attained. 
 
 In England, and indeed in all Christian lands, 
 there was a distinct place for the Salvation Army. 
 There the institutions of Christ remained, but sadly 
 void of the spirit which they were to embody and 
 carry into practical effect. The Army came with a 
 power of the Spirit that exemplified Christian life 
 and practice in a way new to the generation, and 
 that brought life to many dead souls. In England 
 there was the body ; it needed to be vivified, and 
 for this work the Salvation Army was well adapted. 
 But in India the body required to be made as well 
 as vivified, and for this the methods of the Army 
 were not adapted. Some of the very methods 
 
 ^ Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. 
 
240 Methods of Work. 
 
 which they used tended to confuse the issues for 
 the Hindus. Their assumption of the title, and, in 
 some cases, of the dress of fakirs, brought them 
 nearer the natives, but also fostered the idea that 
 there was no fundamental difference between them. 
 They followed the Army in some of its demonstra- 
 tions without suspecting that they were breaking 
 from their former faith ; no definite act was re- 
 quired of them to make them realise this; and so, 
 when the excitement of the moment passed, they 
 were back in their old position. Hence reported 
 ' captures of villages ' and other great apparent 
 successes have turned out to be little more than 
 surface movements without permanent results.^ 
 The Salvation Army, while an example to all 
 other missions in India of Christian devotion and 
 self-renunciation, is also a warning not to abandon 
 the methods which Christ has instituted for others 
 more striking, but less effectual. 
 
 Turning now to the ecclesiastical missions, which 
 recognise baptism as a condition of Christian pro- 
 fession, we find considerable difference of practice 
 among them. In some cases it seems to be 
 administered without any more being required of 
 the person receiving it than an expression of 
 willinf^ness to receive it. In other cases the cate- 
 chumen is required to show not only knowledge 
 of the significance of baptism itself, but also full 
 
 ^ In the statistical tables for 1890 the number connected with 
 the Salvation Army is given as 1920, the authority being Badley's 
 
 Missionary Directory. 
 
Christ's Institution. 241 
 
 acquaintance with the truth, to the teaching of 
 which baptism is supposed to be the introduction. 
 The plea for the former method is that it places 
 those who receive it in the proper position for 
 beingj taucjht in the school of Christ, and in such 
 cases there is generally a considerable interval 
 between their being baptized and their being 
 admitted to the Lord's table. The plea for the 
 latter is that it is a better test of the reality of 
 conversion and of the fitness of applicants to be 
 received, and in such cases they are generally at 
 once admitted to the Communion. 
 
 If we look at Christ's words in institutincj the 
 ordinance, we find that it was closely associated 
 with teacliing, and designed for the encouragement 
 of the baptizers and teachers as much as of the 
 baptized and taught. He bade His apostles 
 disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the 
 name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost — 
 teaching them to observe all things that He had 
 commanded, and He added the promise, ' Lo, I am 
 with you alway, even unto the end of the world.' ^ 
 There is a covenant between Him and them : 
 they are to teach what He has commanded ; He 
 will be with them, to give their teaching a power 
 without which it would fail ; and the baptism is 
 the ' seal of the Covenant.' This requires certainly 
 that those who are baptized should be taught. If 
 there is no guarantee that the teaching will be 
 given, no fruit need be expected from the baptism ; 
 and in the case of those who have come to mature 
 
 i Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. 
 Q 
 
242 Administration of Baptism. 
 
 I - - ■ - — - ■ - — ■ - " 
 
 years there can be no guarantee without the volun- 
 tary intelligent assent of those baptized. 
 
 The practice of the Apostolic Churches is not 
 obligatory in modern Churches, and few if any 
 follow it entirel}^ While the apostles evidently 
 baptized all who desired it, some of whom after- 
 wards lapsed,^ at the same time all who were 
 baptized were seemingly at once admitted to the 
 Lord's table ; and in this they are not followed by 
 missions that follow them in the previous respect. 
 
 We need not lay too much stress on the spiritual 
 intuition possessed by the apostles, yet there can 
 be little doubt that those whom they baptized 
 clearly understood that they were ranging them- 
 selves under the teaching, the discipleship of Christ. 
 The Churches in India should follow their example 
 with intellif^ent freedom, never losinr? sidit of the 
 obligatoriness of all that the Master instituted, but 
 applying it as experience shows to be most effectual. 
 It may be a matter of Christian prudence to place 
 some interval between the reception of a convert 
 from heathenism into the Church by baptism, and 
 admitting him to the Communion. It may stimulate 
 him to seek a more perfect knowledge of Christian 
 truth. But that should in no way diminish the 
 regard for the Sacrament of initiation. There may 
 not need to be any full acquaintance with Christian 
 truth in those who receive it ; but unless there is a 
 clear understanding that they have thereby broken 
 with heathenism and put themselves under Christian 
 teaching, and unless there is provision for that 
 
 1 1 John ii. 19. 
 
Individualism of Christianity. 243 
 
 teaching being given, the purpose of Christ in 
 instituting it is tampered with. 
 
 And the very exertion made by the individual 
 in taking this position is itself an initiation into 
 the spirit of Christianity. It is said that the 
 Hindu cannot stand alone, and that until there 
 is a mass movement we cannot expect them to 
 come over in great numbers. This may be true, 
 but it must be remembered that individualism 
 is of the very essence of Christianity. A mass 
 movement can be a true Christian movement only 
 wlien it is a movement of individuals. It is 
 one of the truths v^^hich Christianity has to teach 
 the Hindus, that each soul must come into personal 
 relation with God ; one of the virtues it has thus 
 to teach them is to stand alone with God, even 
 against all men ; and it is well that baptism should 
 make them realise this. Only in so far as it does 
 so can its results be satisfactory. Some of the 
 facts to which I have referred show that baptisms 
 administered without adequate consideration do not 
 tend to secure permanent results, and call for care 
 in admitting to the profession of Christianity. 
 
 Turning now from these questions that have been 
 suggested by the recent census, let us look at the 
 attitude which the Church must take to accomplish 
 the work set before it of evannelisinsj India. I do 
 not propose to say anything regarding the methods 
 used. Educational missions and evangelistic missions, 
 medical missions and zenana missions, Bible cir- 
 culation, tract distribution, and the periodical press, 
 
244 Attitude of Christianity. 
 
 have all their place. I would speak rather of the 
 spirit in which they must he carried on in face of 
 the insidious enemy they have to encounter. 
 
 Twenty years ago I insisted on Intolerance as a 
 primary requisite in the propagation of Christianity 
 in India, and I am now more than ever convinced 
 of its necessity. I purposely use this word, for it 
 is with this that Hindus reproach Christianity, and 
 to it they oppose the large toleration which Hinduism 
 teaches. And if Christianity once hecomes tolerant 
 as Hinduism is, it falls vanquished. To the false 
 tolerance of Hinduism it opposes a true intolerance, 
 and to the false intolerance of Hinduism it opposes 
 a true tolerance. To that tolerance which allows 
 as true every form of belief held by others, however 
 much opposed to that held by one's self, which 
 allows conduct to be entirely opposed to conviction, 
 it opposes the intolerance of declaring the consistency 
 of truth, the obligation resting on all to search it 
 out and to maintain consistency between conviction 
 and conduct. To the false intolerance which for- 
 bids a man liberty to change his creed, or to alter 
 his profession and practice to carry out new 
 convictions, it opposes the tolerance of allowing — nay, 
 requiring — every man to carry out his belief in 
 practice, provided it does not infringe the foundations 
 of morality. 
 
 Gibbon assigns the intolerance of the early 
 Christians as one of the principal causes of the rapid 
 spread of Christianity in the first two centuries. 
 They refused to have Christ admitted as one of the 
 gods of the Eoman pantheon, and insisted that He 
 
Subtle Attitude of Hindu Tolerance. 245 
 
 alone should be worshipped. Had they taken up 
 any more tolerant position than this, the mission of 
 Christianity would have failed ; by holding true to 
 it, they overthrew the paganism of the Roman 
 world. And it is only by similar intolerance that 
 Christianity can be successful in India. The 
 position of the Hindus is much more subtle and 
 dangerous than that of the Roman pagan. They 
 do not propose to admit Christ to their pantheon ; 
 they say that He is there already, being the same 
 as Vishnu. ' Him wliom you worship as Christ 
 we worship as Vishnu ; you worship Him after 
 3'our fashion, we after ours.' And the blinding 
 influence of their system appears in their not being 
 able to see any incongruity between the two. Clirist 
 is, according to them, the stream by which Christians 
 reach the ocean of liberation ; and Krishna, that by 
 which the Hindus reach it. They acknowledge the 
 moral superiority of Christ ; I never had much 
 difficulty in getting Hindus to acknowledge that 
 He was holy and Krishna vile, but I was no 
 nearer convincing them. They would reply, ' A 
 drop of water may reach the ocean in a muddy 
 stream as well as in a pure one.' ^ 
 
 Enough has been said to show the extremely 
 subtle and dangerous position which Hinduism 
 takes, and the necessity for Christianity to maintain 
 an uncompromising position with regard to it. 
 While gladly welcoming all the truth that is to be 
 found in Hinduism, there must be no paltering with 
 the great falsehood tliat taints it — no flinching from 
 
 ^ See ante, p. 104. 
 
246 Attitude of Christianity. 
 
 the old claim put forward for Christ : ' Neither is 
 there salvation in any other ; for there is none other 
 NAME under heaven given among men whereby we 
 must be saved.' To maintain this attitude is alike 
 the duty and safety of Christianity, the only ground 
 on which it can hope to triumph. Protestant 
 missions may learn from the paralysis that has 
 come over older missions the fatal consequences 
 of any compromise. 
 
 While there are disadvantages in the close con- 
 nection between the Home and the Indian Churches, 
 and in the dependence of the latter on the former, 
 one unquestionable advantage has been that thereby 
 the firm attitude of Christianity has been preserved. 
 In the earlier Protestant missions caste w^as recog- 
 nised, and this might have spread like a cancer 
 amoncj Protestant Churches, had there not come 
 fresh labourers from home who saw with unwarped 
 eye the evil, and insisted on its being uprooted. 
 Though every true friend of Christianity in India 
 must long for the time when the Churches there 
 will be independent and stand on their own footing, 
 it would be disastrous if their bond with the home 
 Churches were severed, before they had acquired 
 the firmness and aggressiveness needful to enable 
 them to withstand and overcome the insidious 
 influence of Hinduism. 
 
 But there is a danger that the Churches at home, 
 on whom the burden of the contest must fall for a 
 long time, may be induced to rest content with half 
 victories, which are only final defeats. Christianity 
 has no doubt produced many indirect effects on 
 
Christianising Hinduism. 247 
 
 Hinduism and the Hindus, which in the absence 
 of more direct effects are dwelt on. We are told 
 of the number of secret disciples, even of ' many 
 hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women who 
 have never been baptized, who yet do not hesitate 
 to confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and 
 the Saviour of sinners,' and of the shrewd Brahmans 
 having made this concession to them, ' that they 
 may retain their caste and be excused from the 
 worship of idols, on condition that they refrain 
 from baptism.' This is a good example of how 
 Hinduism shows its toleration. It will tolerate any 
 amount of falsehood and inconsistency if it retains 
 hold of the essential point, the preservation of caste, 
 knowing that from that position it can reconquer 
 all the rest. These instances are an encouragement 
 to press on with all the ' intolerance ' which I have 
 tried to show Christianity requires. They show 
 that the work is telling, but if once we concede 
 that persons may be regarded as Christians who 
 refuse baptism and retain caste, we have surrendered 
 to the enemy. 
 
 Another form of the fallacy is stated thus, that 
 though we cannot expect to make the Hindus Chris- 
 tian, we may expect to Christianise Hinduism. This, 
 again, is a statement from the Hindu point of view 
 by persons who are unsettled in their own faith, 
 and wdio cannot altogether break with it. But to 
 accept this position is simply to consent to Chris- 
 tianity being Hinduised. Many of the worst 
 practices sanctioned by Hinduism have indeed 
 been done away with. Sati, thuggism, female 
 
248 Attitude of Christianity. 
 
 infanticide, and human sacrifice have all heen sup- 
 pressed ; but they have been suppressed by the 
 iirm action of a Christian Government actinf^ acjainst, 
 instead of along with, public opinion.^ Gradually 
 public opinion is coming to follow these reforms ; 
 and educated Hindus, at all events, are learning to 
 speak with horror of practices once sanctioned by 
 their religion. Idol worship is also seen by them 
 [to have no necessary connection with it. Thus, the 
 influence of Christianity on Hinduism has been 
 rather to strengthen its rival by forcing it to abandon 
 certain positions which weakened it, and bringing it 
 more into accordance with natural reliction. But 
 Hinduism remains the same. The contest is comincj 
 to be between the ultimate principles of the two 
 religions, and these are irreconcilable. Christianity 
 will win the day only as it faithfully proclaims the 
 name of Christ, the embodiment of the two great 
 truths — the Fatherhood of God, with its consequent, 
 the forgiveness of sins, which Hinduism denies ; 
 and the Brotherhood of man, with its consequent, the 
 denial of caste, which Hinduism affirms. 
 
 While care must be taken that the distinctive 
 position of Christianity be maintained in face of 
 Hinduism, care must also be taken that its true 
 spirit be made manifest. With the present divided 
 
 1 The latest Act of this kind, the Age of Consent Bill, forbidding 
 husbands to have power over their child-wives nntil they had 
 come to years of puberty, Avas carried against the strongest opposi- 
 tion of the Bengal community, whom it chiefly affected, and was 
 ignored by the Indian Congress, which was sitting in Calcutta 
 at the time it was passed. 
 
Influence of the English in India. 249 
 
 state of Christendom, and especially of the Protestant 
 section of it, Christianity could hardly avoid coming 
 before India in a divided form. The work of evan- 
 gelising India is so vast that it calls for the energies 
 of all sections of the Protestant Church. But this 
 diversity may itself become helpful, if it is made 
 the means of showing the essential unity which 
 exists behind it. And up to this time mission 
 comity has on the whole, with one or two excep- 
 tions, been well preserved. There is a general dis- 
 position to avoid fields occupied by other missions, 
 and where circumstances have led to two or more 
 missions working in the same district they gener- 
 ally co-operate, avoid trenching on one another's 
 field of work, and have periodical meetings together 
 to discuss questions of common interest. At greater 
 intervals there are general conferences, at which the 
 whole work in India is discussed, and general prin- 
 ciples of work often agreed on. While, therefore, 
 the evil of the divisions of Christendom are manifest 
 in India, this evil has been reduced to a minimum, 
 and the practical unity of all Christian societies has 
 been very strikingly exhibited. Yet this is an evil. 
 The Hindus speculate about our differences, and 
 the native Christians do not care for them. 
 
 Those missions that are ecclesiastically akin are 
 even now seeking to have visible as well as real 
 unity, and to form united Churches, which the 
 various missions, still continuing distinct, may work 
 together to strengthen. Whenever the native 
 Churches can let their voice be heard, they will 
 demand this as speedily as possible. 
 
250 Attitude of Christianity. 
 
 We must also remember, in considering tlie 
 future of Christianity in India, what an important 
 factor the English garrison in that country is. It 
 is touchinfT to read some of the treatises written 
 at the dawn of the mission era in India, anticipating 
 how our soldiers and governors and traders might 
 become pioneers of Christian work in that and neigh- 
 bouring lands, and to think what the record has 
 been, and what a terrible stumbling-block the lives 
 of our countrymen have often been to the natives of 
 these lands. We must remember that for the 
 natives of India, the English in India are the repre- 
 sentatives of Christianity, from whose lives they 
 are ready to judge of that religion far more readily 
 than from what they may be taught. All efforts to 
 maintain Christian observances and to foster the 
 Christian spirit among them cannot but tell on the 
 work among the Hindus.^ 
 
 And there is one class which demands the special 
 attention of the Church, that is the Eurasians. They 
 are practically natives of India. By birth, by 
 baptism, by name, and to a certain extent by up- 
 bringing, they are Christians. Among them are to 
 be found some capable of taking their places socially 
 and intellectually with the best Europeans — many 
 wlio maintain Church connection and Christian 
 conduct. But among them are to be found many 
 living in native quarters, all but in name the same 
 as the natives, not above them socially or morally, 
 and yet constituting all the witness which their 
 
 1 
 
 The Anglo-Indian Evangelisation Society is seeking to carry 
 
 out this work. 
 
Need of Farther Effort. 251 
 
 neighbours have to the character of Christ and 
 Christianity. A double responsibility is resting 
 on the Church with regard to this chass, and yet it 
 is perhaps more neglected than any other in India. 
 If it were faithfully and earnestly evangelised it 
 might come to be a strength to the native Church, 
 a power for the spread of Christianity in India. 
 
 But if Christianity is to triumph in India, if 
 that land is to be won for Christ, the Churches of 
 Europe and of America must rise to the work. It 
 is vain to look for adequate results from inadequate 
 means. About one thousand missionaries of all 
 kinds ^ have been sent from the home Churches to 
 evangelise 280 millions of people. What is this but 
 playing at missions ? Taking any test — the vastness 
 of the field, the ability of the home Churches, the 
 responsibility of a land being so entirely entrusted 
 to us in providence — the amount of effort put forth 
 is altogether unworthy. "When the thousand have 
 been made ten thousand, the Church may talk of 
 adequate effort. 
 
 And alike in the history of the past and in the 
 prospects of the future the Church may find abundant 
 encouragement to rise to the further efforts required. 
 The results already achieved are themselves an en- 
 couragement. That upwards of half a million should 
 have been gathered in already, in face of the terrible 
 obstacles encountered, and with the means used, is 
 surely a result to encourage greater exertion. They 
 are now there, a basis on which we may work. 
 
 ^ Exclusive of 700 female missionaries. 
 
252 Encouragements to Further Effort. 
 
 If caste does forbid tlie commiDgling of native 
 Christians with those who still retain the religion 
 of their fathers, they are yet nearer them than are 
 the English, nnderstand them better, and have a 
 better opportunity of commending Christianity to 
 them. The native Christians of India have, no 
 doubt, many defects, yet they are by their lives better 
 exponents of Christianity than many, if not most, 
 of the English in India. Their faults and vices are 
 the faults and vices of their countrymen, and these 
 Christianity does not eradicate in a day. Thus, it 
 may well happen that a Hindu, even after he has 
 professed faith in Christ, and proved his sincerity 
 by passing through the terrible ordeal which that 
 implies, will be found inferior in reliability, truth- 
 fulness, and manliness to an Ensjlishman who makes 
 no such profession, but who has from his infancy, 
 by precept, example, and the influence of public 
 opinion, been trained in these virtues. Bat the 
 Christian faith will ultimately produce a change 
 in his character, and will raise that of the whole 
 community.^ Already the Indian Church has pro- 
 duced many noble instances of the power of 
 Christianity, and has been adorned by preachers 
 and scholars who show what the Indian intellect 
 may accomplish when it is disciplined by Chris- 
 tianity. As these increase in number, they will 
 more and more take the lead in the work in India, 
 and the fact that such men are being raised is a 
 
 ^ Kotliing struck me more, after an absence of twenty years, 
 than the development of character in some of those who had been 
 received into the Church from heathenism shortly before I left. 
 
Progress of Female Education. 253 
 
 call to the friends of missions not to relax their 
 efforts. 
 
 The progress which female education is making 
 in India is another most hopeful element in the 
 outlook. The women of India have hitherto been 
 the greatest hindrances to the profession of Chris- 
 tianity by the natives of that land. They have 
 been the most ignorant part of the population, the 
 most difficult to reach, the most opposed to change. 
 The problem how to reach them — how to reach the 
 zenanas of the higher castes, and how to gather the 
 daughters of the lower castes into schools — seemed 
 long to baffle all missionary effort. But the edu- 
 cation of the young men began to tell on the next 
 generation. They washed to have their daughters 
 taught as well as their sons. Women began to 
 devote themselves systematically to the teaching 
 and evangelisation of women ; and the progress 
 made has been marvellous. In 1871, 1300 
 zenanas were open to the visits of the zenana 
 agents; in 1890 upwards of 40,000 were thus 
 opened. At the former date about 27,000 girls 
 were being taught in schools, and 2000 in zenanas; 
 at the latter date the numbers were 72,000 and 
 33,000 — in all, 105,000 girls receiving Christian 
 instruction. When once the work begins to tell on 
 the women of the country it will tell with double 
 power on the men. The best testimony to the 
 effect that is being produced is seen in the outcry 
 that is being raised by the Hindus themselves, who 
 feel that, now that the zenana has been reached, the 
 stronghold of their religion is menaced with capture. 
 
254 Encouragements to Further Effort. 
 
 The state of religious thought in India is another 
 strong encouragement to the Church to press for- 
 ward. The efforts at reform, which I have sought 
 to delineate, show that old beliefs are losing their 
 hold, that the old system is getting disorganised, 
 is beginning to crumble and to fall. The leaders 
 of thought are looking about to find some liold for 
 the national faith, that may yet be consistent with 
 the progress of enlightenment and the awakening 
 of conscience. But these are being, the one after 
 the other, abandoned. Those principles of human 
 nature which Hinduism has ignored are surely 
 asserting their sway to its overthrow. These 
 principles are consciousness and conscience. The 
 former bears witness to our own personality, the 
 latter to the paramount claims of what' is good and 
 true. These two great principles still do exist in 
 the Hindus — antidotes to the subtle pantheistic 
 poison which has for ages been circulating through 
 their national life. These are the auxiliaries to 
 which we have resort in pressing on them the 
 reliojion of Jesus. In recallinof them to their man- 
 hood we are calling them to Christianity. 
 
 The past religious history of the Hindus, too, 
 points to Christ as its only possible completion. In 
 the history of their very errors we may find 
 encouragement for the future. A dreary history 
 of human darkness has been the search of that 
 great people after God and the truth for three 
 thousand years. Yet let us recognise that it is the 
 truth they have been feeling after. Partial glimpses 
 of it they have had and followed, till they found 
 
Past History of Hinduism. 255 
 
 them unsatisfying for man's whole nature ; tlien 
 they have followed other parts of truth, going from 
 extreme to extreme of relictions thoniilit, like a 
 pendulum whose beat is through thousands of years. 
 Impatient of the dead sacerdotalism into which 
 primitive elemental worship and primitive sacrifice 
 had developed, they sought rest first in Buddhism, 
 and then in Hinduism. The former offered them 
 morality without God, and that failed to satisfy 
 them ; the latter offers them God without holiness, 
 incarnations without moralitv, and this too is 
 failing to satisfy them. Christianity offers them 
 Christ — God and holiness, the perfect incarnation, 
 the desire of the Hindu as of all nations. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 C' 
 
 R 
 
APPEXDIX. 
 
 A. 
 
 BUDDHA'S SYSTEM. 
 
 The teacliing of Buddha may be divided into two parts — 
 Doctrinal and Practical. The former is summed up in the 
 Four Great Verities which he discovered under the mimosa 
 tree. These are : — 
 
 1st. Suffering exists wherever animated being exists. 
 
 2ncl. The cause of suffering is desire, i.e. a craving for what 
 is only a temporary illusion. 
 
 3rd. Deliverance from suffering can be effected only by 
 deliverance from desire, or by attaining Nirvana. 
 
 4:th. Nirvana can be attained only by following the method 
 of Buddha. 
 
 The method included in the Fourth Verity consists of eight 
 paths leading to Nirvana. Of these the first four applicable 
 to all are— 1st, right vision or faith (cf. Matt. vi. 22) ; 2nd, 
 right judgment or thoughts ; 2rd, right language ; Ath, right 
 actions. This is a simple enough statement, that Buddha's 
 disciples must have the right faith, and seek to be perfect in 
 thought, word, and deed. The remaining four paths are 
 applicable especially to the priesthood, and show the in- 
 fluence of his false conception of man's end, or Nirvana. 
 They are — 5th, right means of livelihood, or the profession 
 of a recluse ; 6th, right application of the spirit to the 
 study of the law ; 7th, right memory, or freedom from 
 error in recollecting the law ; 8th, riglit meditation, wliicli 
 
260 Appendix. 
 
 conducts tlie intelligence to a quietude nearly approaching 
 Nirvana. 
 
 The Practical part of his system has the same double 
 aspect, both in its negative and positive injunctions. The 
 negative part has five commandments binding on all — \st, 
 not to kill — extending even to animal life ; 2nd, not to steal ; 
 3rc?, not to commit adultery ; Uli, not to lie — this extends to 
 the using of improper language ; 5f/i, not to use strong drink ; 
 and five binding S23ecially on priests — \st, not to take repasts 
 at improper times ; 2nd, not to look at dances and plays ; 
 3rf?, not to have costly raiments, perfumes, etc.; 4i/i, not to 
 have a large bed or quilt ; bth, not to receive gold or silver. 
 
 The positive part of the moral law consists in enjoining six 
 virtues on all — charity, purity, patience, courage, contempla- 
 tion, science. Of these the first — charity — is the most 
 important, and includes caring not only for man, but also 
 for all animate beings down to the smallest insect. Twelve 
 observances are further enjoined on recluses — 1st, to use 
 clothes made only of rags picked up in burying-grounds or 
 on the road ; ^nd, to have only three such coats all sewn by 
 the wearer's hands ; ^rd, to have a cloak of yellow wool to 
 cover all, prepared in the same way ; 4^/i, to live only on food 
 given in charity and without asking ; bth, to take only one 
 meal daily ; Qth, never to eat or drink after mid-day ; 1th, to 
 live in the forests or jungles ; d)th, to have no roof but the 
 foliage of the trees ; Qth, to sit with the back supj)orted by 
 the trunk of the tree ; 10th, to sleep sitting and not lying ; 
 11th, never to change the position of the carpet or quilt when 
 it has once been spread ; 12th, to go once a month to burying 
 or burning grounds to meditate on the vanity of earth. 
 These are rules which Buddha is said to have followed him- 
 self, and which are enjoined on his disciples. 
 
 It will be observed that throughout this teaching there is a 
 complete distinction, if not antagonism, between the religion 
 for the masses and the discipline for the priesthood. The 
 former is intelligible and human, and a clear expression of 
 the moral law as regards human relationshij), though defective 
 as ignoring the filial relationship. The latter is a cold-hearted, 
 unnatural endeavour to attain a selfish end. 
 
Appendix. 261 
 
 B. 
 
 Note, p. 70. 
 
 SCHOOLS OF HINDU PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 There are said to be six schools or Darshan of Hindu 
 Philosophy, but they are arranged also in three pairs accord- 
 ing to the views they support. 
 
 I. The Sensational School included — 1st, the Nyaya or 
 Logic, said to be founded by Gautama. He taught the method 
 of reasoning which has been adopted by all the schools, 
 whence the name of his school. He considered Sensation 
 to be the origin of our knowledge, and set himself to 
 investigate it. He started the idea of Adrishta the unseen, 
 to account for what cannot be accounted for otherwise. 
 
 2nd. The Atomic School, said to be founded by Kanada, is 
 connected with the Nyaya. But he supplemented it by 
 investigating the objects of sensation, and introduced the 
 idea of atoms as the material cause of the universe. 
 
 II. The second pair included, 1^^, The Sankhya or numeral 
 system, said to be founded by Kapila. It starts with the 
 object of our perceptions and sensations, and may therefore 
 be considered materialistic. It teaches the eternity of matter. 
 God could not create the universe without desire and con- 
 sequent want of power. If He had desire He could not have 
 power, and if He had power He could not have desire. 
 According to him, Prakriti, — which corresponds very much 
 with matter, as explained by the most advanced school of 
 modern materialists, — the rootless root, is the eternal cause of 
 all things, and contains within itself 'the promise and 2)otency' 
 of every form of existence. It is inanimate, non-sentient, and 
 prolific. Beside it is Purusha, the soul, intelligent, sentient, 
 and non-productive, because free and indifferent. 
 
 2?i(Z. The Yoga or mystic system, founded by Patanjali : 
 adopted the above system, but introduced the idea of God, 
 and dwelt more on how the soul is to be freed from bondage 
 to Prakriti. 
 
262 A]Jiocndix. 
 
 III. The third pair included, Isf, the Purva Mimansa, — 
 original decider, — founded by Jainiini, which sought to bring 
 back the Brahmans to the Vedas as the source of authority. 
 It has but one distinctive tenet, the eternity of the Vedas, or, 
 as he puts it, the eternity of word or sound (Sabda). 
 
 2nd. The Uttara Mimansa, — second decider, — said to be 
 founded by Vyasa. It appeals to the Veda, too, as decider ; 
 but attaches itself to the concluding part of it, the Upanishads 
 (see ante, p. 46), and hence is commonly called the Vedanta. 
 It seeks to answer the question what is and what is not, and 
 answers Brahma, God alone is, everything else is not. One 
 section, acknowledging the reality of the visible universe, 
 identifies it with God ; another, the more general, denies the 
 reality of the visible world, and calls it Maya, or illusion. 
 This is now the most influential school, and the study of 
 the others is supposed to be incomplete without a knowledge 
 of it. 
 
 With all the schools two axioms are accepted — ex nihilo 
 nihil fit, nothing from nothing ; and the transmigration of 
 the soul. Their object is to explain the existence of the 
 world and the circumstances of human life in conformity 
 with these axioms. The authors of the various schools are 
 given here as generally accepted by tlie Hindus, but there is 
 doubt whether they are real or mythical characters. There 
 is also considerable doubt as to the date of the rise of the 
 various schools. Some make the older ones anterior to Bud- 
 dhism, but Bannerjea, whom I have followed, advances strong 
 reasons for considering them all subsequent to the rise of that 
 religion, and designed to combat it. 
 
Appendix. 263 
 
 C. 
 
 Note, p. 79. 
 
 HINDU LOGIC. 
 
 The form of tlie Hindu syllogism goes far to illustrate the 
 Hindu mode of reasoning. It consists of five parts : — 
 
 l$t. The Proj)osition {pratagya) as : The mountain is fiery. 
 ^nd. The Reason (hetu), Because it gives forth 
 
 smoke ; 
 3rd. The Example ( Udaharna), For whatever is smoky 
 
 is fiery, as a culinary 
 
 hearth ; 
 4th. The Application ( Upanaya), But so is this mountain 
 
 smoky ; 
 5th. The Conclusion (Nigaman), Therefore it is fiery. 
 
 The last three members of this syllogism correspond very 
 much with the Aristotelian, and either the first two or last two 
 seem superfluous. The advocates of Hindu Logic defend it 
 on the ground that it is rhetorical rather than philosoj^hical, 
 designed to convince an adversary, to display a truth already 
 discovered rather than to investigate the truth itself. But this 
 is its great vice. There is no canon for the investigation or 
 discovery of truth. It is obvious that its weakness lies in the 
 third member, the example. If this were always made a true 
 induction or a carefully tested example, it would be legitimate. 
 But it admits of a simple instance establishing a universal 
 conclusion, or the most distant analogy being taken for an 
 instance in point. This is the defect of the syllogism, and it 
 is the defect of all Hindu reasoning. I once asked a pundit 
 to state logically his argument that man's sjjirit was sinless, 
 which he did as follows : — 
 
 ' Man's spirit is sinless, 
 
 Because it is distinct from the sin which man commits ; 
 
 For all things are distinct from that which they contain, as 
 
264 Appendix. 
 
 the water of a muddy stream is distinct from the mud 
 
 which it contains ; 
 But so is the spirit of man distinct from the sin which it 
 
 may be said to contain ; 
 Therefore it is sinless.' 
 
 This was an attempt to put into a logical form the stock 
 argument used by the Hindus — Spirit is free from sin as water 
 is distinct from all the dirt which may be mingled with it. 
 
 D. 
 
 Note, p. 162. 
 
 MOHAMMEDAN DOCTRINE OF SIN. 
 
 The following extracts from the Mohammedan Commentary 
 on the Holy Bible by Sir Sayad Ahmad Khan, will show the 
 Mohammedan view of sin and its origin : — 
 
 'When God created man and gave him life, he was like 
 other animals wholly void of discernment — he had not the 
 power of knowing good and evil. Only in so far as God 
 showed him, did he know anything. For this reason he was 
 without vexation, he was wholly guiltless, and he had no fear 
 of any kind of death, for what he did at that time, he did not 
 with his own understanding. God revealed to him the power 
 of knowing good and evil, and warned him not to take it, 
 for, if he did, he would die a certain kind of death, namely, 
 he would fall into this severe calamity, that he would be re- 
 sponsible for his own deeds, would have himself to distinguish 
 between every action as right or wrong, and, as he would 
 receive the reward of his good deeds, would receive also the 
 punishment of evil deeds. Man did not heed this warning of 
 God, and acquired a knowledge of good and evil, by reason of 
 which we are now responsible for our actions, are involved in 
 evil deeds, and receive the reward of our good deeds. Thus it 
 may be said that this is the prime cause of the coming of evil 
 to man.' — Part II. p. 158. 
 
Appendix. 265 
 
 ' Christian divines have made it a basis of their faith that, 
 by the disobedience of Adam and Eve, sin has passed upon all 
 men, and therefore all men are guilty. If their sin was 
 pardoned without any punishment, that would be opposed to 
 justice, and if every one had to bear all his own punishment, 
 that would be opposed to mercy. Therefore God gave the 
 promise of a coming Saviour, namely, Jesus Christ, who is 
 God Himself, but who became incarnate in the form of Christ, 
 who was the seed of the woman, not of the man. . . . But we 
 Mohammedans do not consider this disobedience of Adam and 
 Eve to have been the beginning of sin, nor do we look on this 
 event as bringing guilt on the human race. We believe this 
 event to have been the cause of the knowledge of good and 
 evil for mankind, by reason of which they have not remained 
 void of responsibility like other creatures. If, therefore, any 
 one will walk according to the guidance of God, he shall 
 obtain salvation ; and if any one will act in a way opposed to 
 it, he shall be punished.' — Part II. pp. 182, 183. 
 
 E. 
 
 Note, p. 185. 
 
 NATURAL RELIGION IN HINDU LITERATURE. 
 
 Besides one or two extracts that have already been given, I 
 subjoin the following specimens of high moral and religious 
 sentiments taken from Hindu poets. 
 
 The following, found in the Hitopadesa, is translated by 
 Sir Edwin Arnold : — 
 
 ' Take no thought for your life^ (Matt. vi. 23-30). 
 
 * For thy bread be not o'er thoughtful, God for all hath taken 
 
 thought ; 
 When the babe is born, the milk too to the mother's breast is 
 
 brought : 
 
266 Appendix. 
 
 He who gave the swan his silver, and the hawk his plumes of 
 
 pride, _ 
 
 And his purple to the peacock — He will verily provide.' 
 
 The following is a translation of a Tamil hymn by Mr. 
 Card well : — 
 
 ^ All Thy worhs -praise TJiee' (compare Ps. cxlvii.). 
 
 ' Whilst Thee, with tongues of splendour, the orbs of heaven 
 praise ; 
 
 Whilst gems to Thee their voices, with tongues of brilliance, 
 raise ; 
 
 Whilst unto Thee wood- warblers, with tongues of joyance, 
 sing ; 
 
 Whilst wood-flowers Thy sweet praises from tongues of fra- 
 grance fling ; 
 
 Whilst Thee, with tongues of clearness, the water -floods 
 applaud : 
 
 Thus, day by day, from all things dost Thou receive not laud ? 
 
 Wilt Thou not deign to suffer the tongue Thou gavest me — 
 
 Though I be dumb and thoughtless — to offer praise to Thee ? ' 
 
 The following are translated from various Indian writers 
 by Dr. John Muir : — 
 
 ' Why heholdest thou the mote which is in thy 'brother's eye V etc. 
 
 ' Thou mark'st the faults of other men, 
 Although as mustard seeds minute ; 
 Thine own escape thy partial ken, 
 Though each in size a Bilva fruit.' 
 
 No second youth for Man (compare Job xiv. 7). 
 
 ' The empty beds of rivers fill again, 
 
 Trees, leafless now, renew their vernal bloom, 
 Returning moons their lustrous phase resume. 
 But man a second youth expects in vain.' 
 
 Tlie lapse of Time not practically noticed. 
 
 ' Again the morn returns, again the night ; 
 Again the sun, the moon, ascends the sky ; 
 Our lives still waste away as seasons fly, 
 But who his final welfare keeps in sight ?' 
 
Appendix. 267 
 
 F. 
 
 Note, j). 222. 
 THE AEYA SAMAJ. 
 
 *Tlie teaching of Dayanand Saraswati, like that of other 
 Hindu guides, covers the whole breadth of human life and 
 human nature, physical, social, and religious, from birth to 
 death ; from the learning of the alphabet up to grammar and 
 logic, and the acquisition of divine knowledge ; from the 
 washing of hands to the offering of burnt-incense, and the 
 contemplation of the Deity. It is a strange mixture of the 
 ancient and the modern, of Eastern and Western notions, of 
 Hindu cosmogony and modern science, of antiquated and 
 impracticable theories and silly and trifling precepts. I can 
 only touch upon a few points to show the nature of the teach- 
 ing, and what may be expected if the Arya Samaj should 
 acquire the influence it aims at. 
 
 ' Passing over the ceremonies connected with birth and 
 infancy, we find ample and curious, as well as utterly im- 
 practicable, instructions regarding education. Dayanand goes 
 in for compulsory education for both boys and girls. No 
 child must be alloAved to remain at home after eight years of 
 age ; they must all be sent to boarding-schools. The boys' 
 and girls' school must be four miles apart, and no school must 
 be within eight miles of a town or village ! There must be no 
 coming and going, and no correspondence whatever between 
 parents and children. Boys must remain at school studying 
 the Yeda for at least sixteen and the girls for at least eight 
 years. 
 
 ' The present system of caste is denounced as a human inven- 
 tion, but four classes (varn) are recognised as having Yedic 
 authority — the Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra. 
 These should not be regarded as hereditary, but at the age 
 of twenty-five in the case of a man, and of sixteen in the case 
 of a woman, before leaving school, they should be subjected 
 to an examination, and their class determined accordingly. 
 
268 Appendix. 
 
 If members of the same family should happen to come out in 
 different classes, the Shudra could not thereafter eat with his 
 brothers of the higher grades. And if parents should lose 
 their only son by his falling into a lower rank than them- 
 selves, Dayanand consoles them with the thought that some 
 other youth, of their own class, would be assigned to them in 
 place of their son. 
 
 ' As to marriage, in no case must it take place before twenty- 
 five in the case of a man and sixteen in the case of the woman ; 
 but for the highest and most honourable marriage the man 
 must be forty-eight and the woman twenty-four years of age. 
 The marriage arrangements must be made with the consent 
 of the parties chiefly concerned. Photographs of young 
 women of the marriageable age should be sent to the young 
 men's colleges, and of young men of twenty-five or upwards 
 to the ladies' college ; and with the photos there should be a 
 full description of the young men and women, and of their 
 character and attainments, and so they should make their 
 choice and have the marriage at the time of leaving school. 
 Other Hindus are slow to admit the marriage of widows, but 
 the Arya Samaj allows no second marriage in the case of 
 either males or females. The crying need of India is the 
 re-marriage of widows — Dayanand would put widowers and 
 widows on the same footing, not by enfranchising widows, but 
 by subjecting widowers to the same restriction.' — Rev. James 
 Gray, in United Presbyterian Missionary Record^ Dec. 1889. 
 
 The above account of the teaching of Dayanand Saraswati, 
 by one who is perhaps better qualified for speaking of it than 
 any other, shows that the Arya Samaj has accepted its founder's 
 systems with considerable modifications. The impracticable 
 part of the teaching has been allowed to drop. The spirit of 
 finding a warrant for all Hindu reform exclusively in the 
 ancient Scriptures of India — interpreted, allegorised, or ration- 
 alised — seems the main result of his work. 
 
AjJi^endix. 
 
 269 
 
 G. 
 
 Note, p. 236. 
 
 STATISTICS OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 
 
 
 Foreign 
 
 Ordained 
 
 Agents. 
 
 Native 
 
 Ordained 
 
 Agents. 
 
 Foreign 
 
 and Eurasian 
 
 Lay Preachers. 
 
 Native 
 Lay Preachers. 
 
 Churches and 
 Congregations. 
 
 • 
 
 m 
 
 > 3 
 
 OQ 
 
 a 
 
 03 
 
 '3 
 S 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 1851, 
 
 339 
 
 21 
 
 
 493 
 
 267 
 
 91,092 
 
 14,661 
 
 1861, 
 
 479 
 
 97 
 
 ... 
 
 1266 
 
 971 
 
 138,731 
 
 24,976 
 
 1871, 
 
 488 
 
 225 
 
 ... 
 
 1985 
 
 2278 
 
 224,258 
 
 52,816 
 
 1881, 
 
 586 
 
 461 
 
 72 
 
 2488 
 
 3650 
 
 417,372 
 
 113,325 
 
 1890, 
 
 857 
 
 797 
 
 118 
 
 3491 
 
 4863 
 
 559,661 
 
 182,722 
 
 MORRISON AMD GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 
 ON THE FIRST EDITION OF 
 
 Hinduism and its Relation to Cliristianity. 
 
 'Tlie perusal of this book has given us great satisfaction. 
 ... To bring out the leading principles of the various forms 
 of Hinduism, to show where they are in harmony, and M'hen 
 and how they differ, is the task Mr. Robson has set himself ; 
 and he is well fitted for the undertaking. He is as free 
 as a man can hope to be from intolerance ; he shows great 
 acuteness and clearness of perception in dealing with the 
 abstruse and complicated problems before him, and he 
 generally succeeds in conveying an intelligible apprehension 
 of their significance and bearing. The book is not large, but 
 it is thorough, as far as it goes. Its value to the missionary 
 in India can hardly be overrated, for it offers a clear and 
 simple exposition of the religious forces with which he will 
 have to grapple, and an easy introduction to that knowledge 
 which is essential to success.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 'The book is full of interesting details respecting the 
 North- West, where the author was himself stationed as a 
 missionary ; and any one who wishes to read an intelligent 
 account of the change which is slowly coming over the Hindu 
 mind will find in it abundant materials for thought.' — 
 Athenxum. 
 
 'This is a most valuable book; it well deserves careful 
 reading. It is a successful effort to explain to English thinkers 
 the nature and characteristic features of that philosophy which 
 underlies Hinduism, which is known more or less to every 
 Hindu, above the lowest classes, and which has baffled the 
 assaults of missionaries who, feeling sure that they had 
 arguraentatively overthrown the Hindu "cult," or, as we call 
 it, the Hindu religion, were puzzled to find their hearers still 
 unconvinced that their true " faith" had been assailed at all — 
 that is, the philosophy of their faith. The gross external 
 Hinduism is tolerably familiar to us all ; but the esoteric 
 Hinduism is familiar to few, and has never, that we know of, 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE FIRST EDITION— continued. 
 
 been described in phrcases at once so concise and so intelligible 
 as those of Mr. Robson,' — Spectator. 
 
 'The good work which the book before us has rendered, is 
 the clear setting forth of that remarkable system which should 
 receive so much careful apjireciation from the argumentativ^e 
 Christian. He has unfolded Avith great skill what it is the 
 people of this country hold axiomatically. He shows the 
 historical development of the Indian creeds. He brings us 
 down to the present time, and demonstrates the critical 
 character of the contest Christianity has entered upon in this 
 country.' — Friend of India. 
 
 'If all missionaries were able to take the same unprejudiced, 
 views of Hinduism, and to treat the religion which they go 
 out to supplant with the same intelligent respect, we should 
 have brighter hopes of an early triumph of Christianity in 
 India than we entertain at present.' — Literary World. 
 
 'The author evinces throughout the possession of the 
 important qualifications necessary to the right performance 
 of his task — a wide, accurate knowledge of the subject ; 
 intimate conversance with Hindu literature ; an acute, dis- 
 criminative, impartial mind, well skilled in logic and meta- 
 physics ; clear and firm principle ; a philosophic temper ; and 
 a chaste, terse style.' — Kelso Chronicle. 
 
 'Mr. Robson has done excellent service by the publication 
 of this work, in which he exhibits in a clear and powerful 
 light the character of the system so long dominant in India.' — 
 Inverness Courier. 
 
 ' We have read it with deep interest and admiration of the 
 great ability and various knowledge which it displays. It 
 richly deserves, and will amply repay, the careful study of all 
 who wish to be acquainted with the inner life, and incidentally 
 of the outward condition, of the strange people of that 
 wonderful Eastern land.' — United Presbyterian Magazine. 
 
 ' Nothing can be more manifest or more admirable than the 
 way in which the writer tries to do full justice to a system 
 with which he has been engaged in the most bitter strife.' — 
 Sir Grant Duff, in Contemporary Review. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth, price Seven Shillings and Sixpence. 
 
 THE BIBLE: 
 
 Its ReYelatioD, Inspiration, and Evidence. 
 
 ' Dr. Robson's method is simply to take the Bible as he finds 
 it, and setting aside all theories and traditional prepossessions, 
 to examine with caution and care into the account which the 
 book gives of itself, and of the revelation of which it is the 
 record.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 ' His work is no mere reproduction of old and familiar 
 arguments ; he claims our attention for an independent study, 
 and has adduced abundant matter to justify his claim.' — North 
 British Daily Mail. 
 
 ' "We have only praise to express, both for the way in which 
 the problem is stated, and for the method which is followed 
 in attempting its solution.' — Daily Free Press. 
 
 ' Dr. Robson has here presented us with a book of real 
 interest and value. . . . The work is distinguished by clear- 
 ness and freshness.' — Church Bells. 
 
 ' The work is not only one of great thoughtfulness, but of 
 remarkable skill in stating the points clearly, and taking them 
 up one by one so as to carry the reader with the author.' — 
 Banner. 
 
 ' ... Is a work well calculated to remove many of the mis- 
 conceptions which exist in people's minds about the meaning 
 of the terms "Inspiration" and "Revelation."' — Church 
 Times. 
 
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