Can this Indian aspect of nature, one wonders, be the true explanation of the fierceness of her goddesses as contrasted with her gods, and the offering of bloody sacrifices to goddesses only? Mother Nature is malignant, not benign.

[Sidenote: Indian life estimated by the economic standard of life's value.]

The value of life and the little worth of life in India may be gauged in another way. In the language of the political economist, the value of human life in any country may be estimated by the average wage, which determines the standard of comfort and how far a man is restricted to the bare necessities of bodily life. Again, judged by that standard, life is probably in no civilised country at a lower estimate than in India, where the labourer spends over 90 per. cent of his income upon the bare necessities for the sustenance of the bodies of his household.

[Sidenote: Indian pessimism only a mood.]

[Sidenote: Humanlife is rising in value]

[Sidenote: Pessimism is declining]

All that is true, and yet the conclusion is only partly true. In spite of all such reasoning, and acknowledging that the physical characteristics of India have largely made her what she is, politically, socially, and even religiously, I venture to think that the pessimism of India is exaggerated. Not a pessimistic temperament, but a mood, a mood of helpless submissiveness, a bowing to the powers that be in nature and in the world, seems to me the truer description of the prevailing "pessimism." At least, if it be the case, as I have tried to show, that during the past century in India, human life has been rising in value, the pessimistic mood must be declining. Let us observe some facts again. In a Government or Mission Hospital, there is a European doctor taking part in the offensive work of the dressing of a coolie's sores,—we assume that the doctor's touch is the touch of a true Christian gentleman. To the despised sufferer, life is gaining a new sweetness, and to the high-caste student looking on and ready to imitate his teacher, life is attaining a new dignity. That human life has been rising in value is patent. The wage of the labourer has been steadily rising—in one or two places the workers are become masters of the situation; the rights of woman are being recognised, if only slowly; the middle classes are eager for education and advancement; the individual has been gaining in independence as the tyranny of caste and custom has declined; the sense of personal security and of citizenship and of nationality has come into being. Whatever the merits of the great agitation in 1905 against the partition of the Province of Bengal, and inconceivable as taking place a century ago, it is manifestly the doing of men keenly interested in the conditions under which they live. It is a contradiction of the theory of an inherent Indian pessimism. Self-respect and a sense of the dignity and duties of manhood are surely increasing, and making our earth a place of hope and making life worth living, instead of a burden to be borne. "The Hindus," says Sir Alfred Lyall, "have been rescued by the English out of a chronic state of anarchy, insecurity, lawlessness, and precarious exposure to the caprice of despots."[107]

[Sidenote: Asceticism is declining.]

Best proof probably that pessimism is declining is the fact that asceticism is declining. The times are no longer those in which the life of a brahman is supposed to culminate in the Sannyasi or ascetic "who has laid down everything," who, in the words of the Bhagabat Gita, "does not hate and does not love anything."[108] The pro-Hindu writer often quoted also acknowledges the new pleasure in life and the religious corollary of it when she says that the recent rise in the standard of comfort in India is opposed to the idea of asceticism. Desire, indeed, is not gone, and the cords of the heart are not breaking. Says the old brahman, in the guise of whom Sir Alfred Lyall speaks: "I own that you [Britons] are doing a great deal to soften and enliven material existence in this melancholy, sunburnt country of ours, and certainly you are so far successful that you are bringing the ascetic idea into discouragement and, with the younger folk, into contempt."[109] Welcome to the new joy of living, all honour to the old ascetics, and may a still nobler self-sacrifice take their place!

[Sidenote: Pessimism, asceticism, transmigration are allied ideas.]

For Western minds it is difficult to realise the close connection between the doctrine of transmigration and the mood of India, rightly or wrongly termed pessimism. Our instinctive feeling is that life is sweet; while there is life there is hope, we say; "healthy optimism" is the expression of Professor James in his Varieties of Religious Experience; it is "more life and fuller that we want." In keeping with this Western and human instinct, the Christian idea of the Hereafter is a fuller life than the life Here, a perfect eternal life. To the pessimist, on the contrary [and Hindu philosophy is pessimistic, whatever be the new mood of India], the question is, "Why was I born?" The Indian doctrine of transmigration comes with answer—"Life is a punishment: it is the bitter consequence of our past that we are working out; we must submit to be born into the world again and again, until we are cleared." "Yes, until your minds are cleared," the Indian pantheist adds, "life itself is a delusion, if you only knew it; life itself, your consciousness of individuality or separateness, is a delusion." But the pantheist's thought is here beside our present point.

[Sidenote: Transmigration the antithesis of eternal life.]

To the pessimistic Indian accepting the Indian view of transmigration, it is therefore no gospel to preach the continuation of life, either here or hereafter. "To be born again" sounds like a penance to be endured. Mukti, commonly rendered salvation, is not regeneration Here and eternal life Hereafter; it is deliverance from further lives altogether. If, however, we accept the statement that the value of human life in India is rising, that life is becoming worth living, and that the pessimistic mood is no ingrained fundamental trait, we are prepared to believe that the hopeful Christian conception of the Here and the Hereafter is finding acceptance. Rightly understood, the Christian conception is at bottom the antithesis of pessimism and its corollary, transmigration. To deny the one is almost to assert the other. The decay of the one is the growth of the other. For the Christian conception of the Here and the Hereafter—what is it? Life, eternal, in and through the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. "God gave unto us eternal life, and the life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life."[110] Says Harnack in his volume What is Christianity? "The Christian religion means one thing, and one thing only—eternal life in the midst of time by the strength and under the eyes of God." Not that the new idea in India is to be wholly ascribed to Christian influence. A marked change in Christian thought itself during the nineteenth century has been the higher value of this present life. Christianity has become a vitalising gospel for the life Here even more than for the Hereafter. But assuming the truth of what we have sought to show, namely, that within the past century the winning personality of Christ has come to New India, a new incentive to noble life and service, we have at least a further reason for believing that pessimism and transmigration are fading out of Indian minds. The new Advent, as that at Bethlehem, is a turning-point of time; the gloomy winter of pessimism is turning to a hopeful spring.



CHAPTER XVIII

INDIAN TRANSMIGRATION AND THE CHRISTIAN HERE AND HEREAFTER

"The dew is on the lotus. Rise, good sun! And lift my leaf and mix me with the wave. The sunrise comes! The dewdrop slips into the shining sea.

If any teach Nirvana is to cease, Say unto such they lie. If any teach Nirvana is to live, Say unto such they err."

(Buddha's teaching in Arnold's Light of Asia.)

[Sidenote: Over against Transmigration, Christian immortality is continuity of the individual's memory.]

To appreciate the impact of the Christian idea of the Here and Hereafter upon the Hindu idea of Transmigration and Absorption, the two ideas must be more fully examined. Stated briefly, the Christian idea is that after this life on earth comes an Eternity, whose character has been determined by the life on earth. The crisis of death terminates our bodily activities and renders impossible any further action, either virtuous or sinful, and ushers the soul, its ledger closed, its earthy limitations cast off, into some more immediate presence of God. If in communion with God, through its faith in Jesus Christ, the soul is in a state of blessedness; if still alien from God, the soul is in a state of utter misery, for its spiritual perception and its recollection of itself are now clear. That, at all events, seems a fair statement of the belief of many Protestants, so far as their belief is definite at all. But over against transmigration, what are the essential and distinctive features of that Christian belief? Its essentially distinctive feature, both in the case of the blessed and of the miserable, is a continuity of the consciousness in the life that now is with that which is to come. The soul in bliss or misery is able to associate its existing state with its past. Even on earth, as the modern preacher tells us, heaven and hell are already begun. Over against the Hindu idea of transmigration, accordingly, we define the Christian idea of immortality as the continuity of our consciousness, or the immortality of the individual consciousness.

[Sidenote: Transmigration is essentially dissolution of the individual's memory.]

Per contra, the distinguishing feature of the Hindu doctrine of transmigration or rebirth is the interruption of consciousness, the dissolution of memory, at the close of the present existence. In the next existence there is no memory of the present.

"The draught of Lethe" does "await The slipping through from state to state."

The present life is a member of a series of lives; there are said to be 8,400,000 of them, each member of which is as unconscious of the preceding as you are of being I. As a seed develops into plant and flower and seed again, so the soul in each new member of the series develops a conscious life, lapses from consciousness, and hands on a germinal soul for a new beginning again. As the seed transmits the type, and also some variation from the type, so is the germinal soul transmitted through unconsciousness, ennobled or degraded by each conscious existence it has lived. At each stage the germinal soul represents the totality, the net outcome of its existences, as in each generation of a plant the seed may be said to do. So far, the doctrine of transmigration is a doctrine of the evolution of a soul, a declaration that in a sense we are all that we have been, that virtue and vice will have their reward, that in a sense "men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves." It does not leave hard cases of heathen or of reprobates to the discernment and mercy of God; it offers them, instead, other chances in subsequent lives. A not unattractive doctrine it is, even although the attractive analogy of the evolution of a plant breaks down. For in the scientific doctrine of evolution, individuals have no immortality at all; it is only the species that lives and moves on. But in Hinduism, as in Christianity, we are thinking of the continuity of the individual souls.

[Sidenote: The end of transmigration is absorption into Deity.]

[Sidenote: The saint Ramkrishna's obliviousness of self.]

To proceed with the statement of the doctrine of transmigration. The climax of the transmigrations is Nirvana or extinction of the individual soul, according to the Buddhist, and union with or absorption into Deity, according to the Hindu.[111] Buddhism has gone from the land of its birth, as Christianity and even Judaism from Palestine, and I pass from the Buddhist doctrine. The Hindu climax, of absorption into Deity, is reached when by self-mastery personal desire is gone, and by profound contemplation upon Deity a pure-bred soul has lost the consciousness of separation from Deity. The distinction between I and the great Thou has vanished; the One is present in the mind not as an objective thought, but by a transformation of the consciousness itself. The words of Hindus themselves in the Advanced Text-book of Hindu Religion are: The human soul (the Jivatmic seed) "grows into self-conscious Deity." Listen also to the words of Swami Vivekananda, in the Parliament of Religions, Chicago, about his master, Ramkrishna Paramhansa's growing into self-conscious Deity: "Every now and then strange fits of God-consciousness came upon him.... He then spoke of himself as being able to do and know everything.... He would speak of himself as the same soul that had been born before as Rama, as Krishna, as Jesus, or as Buddha, born again as Ramkrishna.... He would say he was ... an incarnation of God Himself." Again Swami Vivekananda tells us: "From time to time Ramkrishna would entirely lose his own identity, so much so as to appropriate to himself the offerings brought for the goddess" (to the temple in which he officiated). "Sometimes forgetting to adorn the image, he would adorn himself with the flowers."[112] Transmigration is not necessarily bound up with the pantheistic view of the world, but in Hinduism, transmigration is only a ladder towards the realisation of the One.

[Sidenote: Contrasts—"Born again" and a spiritual aristocracy of long spiritual descent.]

[Sidenote: Heaven and Hell not necessary ideas in Transmigration.]

Radical differences from Christian thought emerge. In the Hindu conception, the acme is reached only by a spiritual aristocracy of long spiritual descent; for the common multitude there is no gospel of being born again in Christ, no guiding hand like that of Our Lord towards the Father's presence. The upward path, according to the Hindu idea, is the path of philosophical knowledge and of meditation, not the power of union with Jesus Christ to make us sons of God. Most striking difference perhaps of all—in the Hindu philosophical system there is no place for even the conceptions of heaven and hell except as temporary halting-places between two incarnations of the soul, which practical necessity requires. For the soul, this world is the plane of existence; union with omnipresent Deity is the climax of existence that the Hindu devotee seeks to attain; yet not in a Hereafter, but as he sits on the ground no longer conscious of his self. "The beatific vision of Hinduism," says a recent pro-Hindu writer, "is to be relegated to no distant future."[113] Heaven and Hell are mocked at as absurdities by the new sect of the Āryas in the United Provinces and the Punjab, who retain the doctrine of transmigration.[114]

[Sidenote: Several heavens and hells in popular Hinduism.]

Hindus are divided as to the existence of these temporary halting-places between the successive incarnations of the soul. The Text-book of Hindu Religion, already referred to, speaks unhesitatingly about their place in the Hindu system. The Āryas, on the other hand, hold that the instant a soul leaves its body it enters another body just born. The soul is never naked—to employ a common figure. Of course in popular Hinduism it is not surprising to find not merely the ideas of Heaven and Hell, but even that each chief Deity has his own heaven and that there are various hells. In the Tantras or ritual books of modern Hinduism, there is frequent mention of such heavens and hells, and when the idea of rebirths is also met with, the rebirths are regarded as stages towards the reward or punishment of the individual conscious souls. It is the popular idea of heaven that has given rise to the common euphemism for to die, namely, to become a deva or inhabitant of heaven.

[Sidenote: Transmigration, associated with pessimism and pantheism, is likewise yielding.]

We have observed the pessimistic mood of India yielding before the improved conditions of life, and the brahmanical pantheism before the thought of God the Father. Bound up as the idea of transmigration has been with the pessimism and pantheism of India, we are prepared to find that it too is yielding. Of that we now ask what evidence there is in the ordinary speech and writings of educated India, apart from controversy or professedly Hindu writings, in which the accepted Indian orthodoxy would probably appear.

[Sidenote: Educated Hindus speak of the dead as if their former consciousness continued.]

From the ordinary speeches and writings of educated Hindus regarding the dead, no one would infer that their doctrinal standpoint was other than that of the ordinary religious Briton, namely, that the dead friend has returned to God or has been called away by God, or the like. A native judge in Bengal, one of the most distinguished leaders of the Hindu Revival, writes as follows: The beatitude which the new Radha-Krishnaites aspire to "is not the Nirvana of the Vedantists, the quiescence of Rationalism. Nirvana and quiescence are merely negatives. The beatitude [of the new Radha-Krishnaites] is a positive something. They do not aspire to unification with the divine essence. They prefer hell with its torments to such unification."[115] A few years ago, at a public meeting in Calcutta, the acknowledged leader of Hinduism, speaking of a Hindu gentleman whose death we were lamenting, said: "God has taken him to himself"—certainly not a Hindu statement of the passing of a soul. Similarly, in 1882 we find one nobleman in Bengal writing to another regarding his mother's death: "It is my prayer to God that she may abide in eternal happiness in heaven."[116] Generations of Hindu students I have known to find pleasure in identifying themselves with Wordsworth's views of immortality:

"Trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home,"

and

"The faith that looks through death."

[Sidenote: Transmigration now no more than a conventional explanation of how misfortunes befell one.]

Somewhat dreamlike Wordsworth's views may be, but his belief is clearly not in transmigration. To the educated Hindu, who may not consciously have rejected the idea of transmigration, the doctrine is really now no more than a current and convenient explanation of any misfortune that has befallen a person. "Why has it befallen him? He must have earned it in some previous existence. It is in the debit balance of the transactions in his lives." Such are the vague ideas floating in the air. Upon any individual's acts or plans for the future, the idea of transmigration seems to have no bearing whatever beyond a numbing of the will.[117] For in theory, the Hindu's fate is just. In strict logic no doubt the same numbing effect might be alleged about the Christian doctrine of predestination. Even when misfortune has overtaken an educated Hindu, I think I am justified in saying that the more frequent thought with him is now in keeping with the new theistic belief; the misfortune is referred to the will of God. As already said, it is a commonplace of the unfortunate student who has failed, to ascribe his failure to God's will.

[Sidenote: Transmigration and Predestination more properly contrasted.]

[Sidenote: Illustration from actual fact.]

There is room for the Christian thought of the Hereafter, because in reality, as theologians know, the doctrine of transmigration stands over against the Christian doctrine of predestination rather than over against the Christian doctrine of the Here and Hereafter. Transmigration is a doctrine of what has gone before the present life rather than of what will follow. Every educated Anglo-Indian whom I have consulted agrees that in a modern Hindu's mouth transmigration is only a theory of the incidence of actual suffering. Here is the doctrine of karma (works), that is of transmigration or merited rebirth, in the actual life of India—transmigration and the pessimistic helplessness of which I have spoken? In the last great famine of 1899-1900, in a village in South-western India, a missionary found a victim of famine lying on one side of the village street, and not far off, upon the other side, two or three men of the middle class. The missionary reproached them for their callousness. What might be answered for them is not here to the point; their answer for themselves was, "It is his karma." The missionary did what he could for the famine sufferer, and then when repassing the group could not forbear remarking to them, "You see you were wrong about his karma." "Yes, we were wrong," they replied. "It was his karma to be helped by you." The same views of karma and of transmigration, as referring to the past, not the future, are apparent in a recent number of The Inquirer, a paper conducted in Calcutta for the benefit of Hindu students and others. I take the following from the question column: "Do Christians believe in the doctrine of reincarnation? If not, how do you account for blindness at birth?" The questioner's idea is plain, and the coincidence with the question put to Christ in St. John's Gospel, chapter ix, is striking. Hindus thus have room for an idea of the future of the soul, as Christians, on their side, have for a theory of the soul's origin.

[Sidenote: The idea of the Hereafter not dynamical with Christians at present.]

The Christian idea of the Hereafter cannot, as yet, be called a strongly dynamical doctrine of Christianity in the sense that the Person of Our Lord has proved dynamical. Not that interest in the subject is lacking. I have referred to questions put by educated Hindus in The Inquirer. Out of fifty-seven questions I find eight bearing on the Christian doctrine of the Hereafter or the Hindu doctrine of Transmigration. In the Magazine of the Hindu College, Benares, out of fourteen questions I find four bearing on the same subject. The want of force in the Christian doctrine no doubt reflects its want of force for Christians themselves in this present positive age. For even Tennyson himself was vague:

"That which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home."

[Sidenote: The new sects and the doctrine of Transmigration.]

[Sidenote: The Text-book of Hindu Religion.]

[Sidenote: A European's place on the ladder of transmigration.]

Of the sects of recent origin, only the Brāhma Samāj or Theistic Association rejects the doctrine of transmigration avowedly. We have already said that the Ārya Samāj or Vedic Theists of the United Provinces and the Punjab hold strongly to the doctrine. It is noteworthy that they should do so, the Vedas being their standards wherewith to test Modern Hinduism, for the doctrine of transmigration is scarcely hinted at in the Vedas, and in the oldest, the Rigveda, there is said to be no trace of the doctrine.[118] It appears in the later writings, the Upanishads, and is manifest throughout the Code of Manu (c. A.D. 200). Mrs. Besant, chief figure among the Indian Theosophists, now virtually a Hindu Revival Association, preaches the doctrine, and, in fact, lectured on it in Britain in 1904. At the same time, transmigration is no part of the Theosophist's creed. As might be expected, the Text-book of Hindu Religion, of the Hindu College, Benares, gives the doctrine of transmigration a prominent place, although the explicitness with which it is set forth is very surprising to one acquainted with the way the doctrine is generally ignored by the educated. I quote from the Hindu Text-book, published in 1903, that Westerns may realise that in dealing with transmigration we are not dealing simply with some old-world doctrine deciphered from some palm-leaf written in some ancient character. After describing—here following the ancient philosophical writings, the Upanishads—how the Jivatma or Soul comes up through the various existences of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms until it reaches the human stage, the Text-book proceeds to describe the further upward or downward process. It is declared that the downward movement (from man to animal) is now much rarer than formerly—that concession is made to modern ideas—but the law of the downward process is as follows: "When a man has so degraded himself below the human level that many of his qualities can only express themselves through the form of a lower creature, he cannot, when his time for rebirth comes, pass into a human form. He is delayed, therefore, and is attached to the body of one of the lower creatures as a co-tenant with the animal, vegetable, or mineral Jiva [life], until he has worn out the bonds of these non-human qualities and is fit to take birth again in the world of men. A very strong and excessive attachment to an animal may have similar results." Where modern ideas reach in India, one can understand such ideas as those melting away. A second passage from the Text-book is interesting, as showing the compiler's idea of the place of a life in Europe in the chain of existences, although in this case also the statement is made only about "ancient days." "The Jivatma [soul] was prepared for entrance into each [Indian] caste through a long preliminary stage outside India; then he was born into India and passed into each caste to receive its definite lessons; then was born away from India to practise these lessons; usually returning to India to the highest of them, in the final stages of his evolution." In other words, people of the outer world, say Europeans, are rewarded for virtue by being born into the lowest Indian caste, and then, after rising to be brahmans in India, they go back to Europe to give it the benefit of their acquirements; and finally crown their career by reappearing in India as a brahman philosopher or jogi. Surely we may laugh at this without being thought unsympathetic or narrow-minded. We recall Mrs. Besant's assertion that she had a dim recollection of an existence as a brahman pandit in India. According to the spiritual genealogy of the Hindu Text-book, she may hope to be born next in an Indian child, and become a jogi possessed of saving knowledge of the identity of self with Deity.

[Sidenote: The women of the middle class and transmigration.]

I asked a lady who had been a missionary in Calcutta for many years, how far a belief in transmigration was apparent among the women of the middle class. She could recall only two instances in which it had come to her notice in her talks with the wives and daughters of educated India. Once a reason was given for being kind to a cat, that the speaker's grandmother might then be in it as her abode, although the observation was accompanied with a laugh. On the second occasion, when the lady was having trouble with a slow pupil, one of the women present, sympathising with the teacher, said, "Do not trouble with her; perhaps next time when she comes back she will be cleverer." The general conclusion, therefore, I repeat: Transmigration is no longer a living part of the belief of educated India; the Christian conception of the Hereafter is as yet only partially taking its place.



CHAPTER XIX

THE IDEAS OF SIN AND SALVATION

"Conscience does make cowards of us all."

—SHAKESPEARE.

[Sidenote: Recapitulation.]

[Sidenote: The new Theism.]

In the new India, as fish out of the water die, many things cannot survive. We have seen the educated Hindu dropping polytheism, forgetting pantheism, and adopting or readopting monotheism as the basis of his religious thinking and feeling. For modern enlightenment and Indian polytheism are incongruous; there is a like incongruity between Indian pantheism and the modern demand for practical reality. Likewise, both polytheism and pantheism are inconsistent with Christian thought, which is no minor factor in the education of modern India. Further, the theism that the educated Hindu is adopting as the basis of his religion approaches to Christian Theism. The doctrines of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man have become commonplaces in his mouth.

[Sidenote: Homage to Christ Himself]

Likewise, the educated Hindu is strongly attracted to the person of Jesus Christ, in spite of His alien birth and His association with Great Britain. There is a sweet savour in His presence, and the man of any spirituality finds it grateful to sit at His feet. That familiar oriental expression, hyperbolical to our ears, but ever upon the lips in India to express the relationship of student to trusted professor, or of disciple to religious teacher, expresses exactly the relationship to Jesus Christ of the educated man who is possessed of any religious instinct. To such a man the miracles, the superhuman claims, the highest titles of Jesus Christ, present no difficulty until they are formulated for his subscription in some hard dogmatic mould. Then he must question and discuss.

[Sidenote: Transmigration forgotten.]

Again, the educated Hindu finds himself employing about the dead and the hereafter not the language of transmigration, but words that convey the idea of a continuation of our present consciousness in the presence of a personal God. For life is becoming worth living, and the thought of life continuing and progressing is acceptable. This present life also has become a reality; a devotee renouncing the world may deny its reality; but how in this practical modern world can a man retain the doctrine of Maya or Delusion. It has dropped from the speech and apparently out of the mind of the educated classes.

[Sidenote: The ideas of Sin and Salvation by faith in Jesus Christ not yet dynamical.]

I have suggested that those features of Christianity that are proving to be dynamical in India will be found to be those same that are proving to be dynamical in Britain. The converse also probably holds true, as our religious teachers might do well to note. The doctrines of Sin and Salvation through faith in Jesus Christ do not yet seem to have commended themselves in any measure in India. Positive repudiation of a Christian doctrine is rare, but the flourishing new sect of the North-West, the Āryas, make a point of repudiating the Christian doctrine of salvation by faith, although not explicitly denying it in their creed. Over against it they set up the Justice of God and the certainty of goodness and wickedness receiving each its meed. One can imagine that salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, the outstanding feature of Christianity, may have been unworthily presented to the Ārya leaders, so that it appeared to them merely as some cheap or gratis kind of "indulgences." The biographer of the Parsee philanthropist, Malabari, a forceful and otherwise well-informed writer, sets forth that idea of salvation by faith, or an idea closely akin. He is explaining why his religious-minded hero did not accept the religion of his missionary teachers. "The proud Asiatic," he says, "strives to purchase salvation with work, and never stoops to accept it as alms, as it necessarily would be if faith were to be his only merit." The unworthy presentation of "salvation by faith" may have occurred either in feeble Christian preaching or in anti-Christian pamphlets. Neither is unknown in India; and anti-Christian pamphlets have been known to be circulated through Ārya agencies.

[Sidenote: The ideas of sin incompatible with pantheism.]

To appreciate the attitude of the Hindu mind to the doctrines of Sin and Salvation, we must return again to the rough division of Hindus into—first, the mass of the people, polytheists; secondly, the educated classes, now largely monotheists; thirdly, the brahmanically educated and the ascetics, pantheists. It is only with the monotheists that we have now to deal. As already said—to the pantheist the word sin has no meaning. Where all is God, sin or alienation from God is a contradiction in terms. The conception of sin implies the two conceptions of God and Man, or at least of Law and Man; and where one or other of these two conceptions is lacking, the conception of sin cannot arise. In pantheism, the idea of man as a distinct individual is relegated to the region of Maya or Delusion; there cannot therefore be a real sinner. Does such reasoning appear mere dialectics without practical application, or is it unfair, think you, thus to bind a person down to the logical deductions from his creed? On the contrary, persons denying that we can sin are easy to find. Writes the latest British apostle of Hinduism, for the leaders of reaction in India are a few English and Americans: "There is no longer a vague horrible something called sin: This has given place to a clearly defined state of ignorance or blindness of the will."[119] I quote again also from Swami Vivekananda, representative of Hinduism in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893. It is from his lecture published in 1896, entitled The Real and the Apparent Man. His statement is unambiguous. "It is the greatest of all lies," he says, "that we are mere men; we are the God of the Universe.... The worst lie that you ever told yourself is that you were born a sinner.... The wicked see this universe as a hell; and the partially good see it as heaven; and the perfect beings realise it as God Himself. By mistake we think that we are impure, that we are limited, that we are separate. The real man is the One Unit Existence." Such is the logical and the actual outcome of pantheism in regard to the idea of sin, and such is the standpoint of Hindu philosophy.

[Sidenote: Sankarachargya, the pantheist's, confession of sins.]

Or if further illustration be needed of the incompatibility of the ideas of pantheism and sin, listen to the striking prayer of Sankarachargya, the pantheistic Vedantist of the eighth century A.D., with whom is identified the pantheistic motto, "One only, without a second."[120] It attracts our attention because Sankarachargya is professedly confessing sins. Thus runs the prayer: "O Lord, pardon my three sins: I have in contemplation clothed in form thee who art formless; I have in praise described thee who art ineffable; and in visiting shrines I have ignored thine omnipresence."[121] Beautiful expressions indeed, confessions that finite language and definite acts are inadequate to the Infinite, nay, contradictions of the Infinite, expressions fit to be recited in prayer by any man of any creed who feels that God is a Spirit and omnipresent! But in a Christian prayer such expressions would only form a preface to confession of one's own moral sin; after adoration comes confession. Whether, like Sankarachargya, we think of the Deity objectively, as the formless and literally omnipresent Being, the pure Being which, according to Hegel, equals nothing, or whether like Swami Vivekananda we think of man and God as really one, all differentiation being a delusion within the mind—there is no second, neither any second to sin against nor any second to commit the sin.

[Sidenote: The masses and the sense of sin.]

[Sidenote: Prescriptions for sinners.]

For the ignorant masses, the sense of sin has been worn out by the importance attached to religious and social externals and by the artificial value of the service of a hereditary monopolist priesthood. These right, all is right in the eyes of the millions of India. When one of the multitude proposes to himself a visit to some shrine or sacred spot, no doubt the motive often is some divine dissatisfaction with himself; it is a feeling that God is not near enough where he himself lives. But what is poured into his ears? By a visit to Dwaraka, the city of Krishna's sports, he will be liberated from all his sins. By bathing in the sacred stream of the Ganges he will wash away his sins. All who die at Benares are sure to go to heaven. By repeating the Gayatri (a certain verse of the Rigveda addressed to the sun) a man is saved. "A brahman who holds the Veda in his memory is not culpable though he should destroy the three worlds"—so says the Code of Manu. The Tantras, or ritual works of modern Hinduism, abound in such prescriptions for sinners. "He who liberates a bull at the Aswamedika place of pilgrimage obtains mukti, that is salvation or an end of his rebirths." "All sin is destroyed by the repetition of Kali's thousand names." "The water of a guru's [religious teacher's] feet purifies from all sin." "The man who carries the guru's dust [the dust of the guru's feet] upon his head is emancipated from all sin and is [the god] Siva himself." "By a certain inhalation of the breath through the left nostril, and holding of the breath, with repetition of yam, the Vāyu Bija or mystical spell of wind or air, the body and its indwelling sinful self are dessicated, the breath being expelled by the right nostril."[122] And so on ad infinitum. Superstition, Western or Eastern, has no end of panaceas. We recall the advertisements of "Plenaria indulgenzia" on the doors of churches in South Italy. Visiting Benares, the metropolis of popular Hinduism, the conception of salvation everywhere obtruded upon one is that it is a question of sacred spots, and of due offerings and performances thereat.

[Sidenote: The signification of sacrifices to the Indian masses.]

[Sidenote: Description of animal sacrifice.]

What to the masses is sacrifice even, the word which to western ears, familiar with the term in our Scriptures, suggests acknowledgment of sin and atonement therefor? It is a mistake to regard sacrifices in India as expiatory; they are gifts to the Deities as superior powers for boons desired or received, or they are the customary homage to the powers that be, at festivals and special occasions. Animal sacrifices are distinguished from the offerings of fruits and flowers only in being limited to particular Deities and pertaining to more special occasions. An actual instance will show the place that sacrifices hold. In a letter from a village youth to his father, informing him how he had proceeded upon his arrival at Calcutta, whither he had gone for the University Matriculation Examination, he reports that he has offered a goat in sacrifice in order to ensure his success. What he probably does is this. In a bazaar near the great temple of Kalighat, near Calcutta, the greatest centre of animal sacrifices in the world, he buys a goat or kid, fetches it into the temple court and hands it over to one of the priests whom he has fee'd. The priest puts a consecrating daub of red lead upon the animal's head, utters over it some mantra or sacred Sanscrit text, sprinkles water and a few flowers upon it at the actual place of slaughter, and then delivers it over again to the offerer. Then when the turn of the offerer, whom we are watching, has come, he hands over the animal to the executioner, who fixes its neck within a forked or Y-shaped stick fixed fast in the ground. With one blow the animal's head is severed from its body. The bleeding head is carried off into the shrine to be laid before the image of the goddess, and become the temple perquisite. The decapitated body is carried off by the offerer to furnish his family with a holiday meal. With his forehead ceremonially marked with a touch of the blood lying thick upon the ground, the offerer leaves the temple, his sacrifice finished. Such is animal sacrifice; if the description recalls the slaughter-house, the actual sight is certainly sickening. Yet, far as a European now feels from worship in such a place, and thankful to Him who has abolished sacrifice once for all, there is no doubt religious gratification to those who go through what I have described. Our point is that, as Sir M. Monier Williams declares, in such an offering, "there is no idea of effacing guilt or making a vicarious offering for sin."[123]

[Sidenote: The educated classes and the idea of sin.]

[Sidenote: The brahma monopoly of nearness to the Deity broken down.]

The educated classes, breathing now a monotheistic atmosphere, although in close contact with polytheism in their homes and with pantheism in their sacred literature, have reached the platform on which the idea of sin may be experienced. A member of that class, a pantheist no longer, is in the presence of a personal God, a Moral Being, and is himself a responsible person, with the instincts of a child of that Supreme Moral Being, our Father. With his education, he knows himself to be independent of brahmanical mediation in his intercourse with that Being. As confirmation, it is noteworthy how many of the religious leaders of modern times, like Buddha of old, are other than brahman by caste. In a previous chapter the names of a number of these non-brahman leaders were given. Even the Hindu ascetics of these latter days are more numerously non-brahman than of old, for in theory only brahmans have reached the ascetical stage of religious development. Whatever the reason, the brahmanical monopoly of access to and inspiration from the Deity is no longer recognised by new-educated India.

[Sidenote: The worship of the new sects—its significance.]

In like manner, the new religious associations seem to feel themselves directly in the presence of God. Congregational worship, a feature new to Hindus, is a regular exercise in the Brāhma Samāj or Theistic Association of Bengal, the Prārthanā Samājes or Prayer Associations of Western India, and the Ārya Samāj or Vedic Theistic Association of the United Provinces and the North-West of India. When Rammohan Roy, the theistic reformer, opened his church in Calcutta in 1830, he introduced among Hindus congregational worship and united prayer, before unknown among them and confessedly borrowed from Christian worship.[124] The public worship in all these bodies is indeed not unlike many a Christian service, consisting of Prayer to God, Praise of God, and expositions of religious truth. In a small collection of hymns, "Theistic Hymns," published some years ago for the use of members of the Ārya Samāj, we find many Christian hymns expressive of this personal relationship to God. We find "My God, my Father, while I stray," and "O God, our help in ages past." Neither of these hymns, however, it must be noted, contains confession of sin. Curiously incongruous to our minds is the inclusion among these hymns of poems like "The boy stood on the burning deck," and "Tell me not in mournful numbers," and "There's a magical tie to the land of our home," etc.[125] Even among the Hindu revivalists, judged by that test of the incoming of public worship, we perceive the growth of the idea of personal relationship to God. A recent publication of that party is "Songs for the worship of the Goddess Durga." One of them, we may note in passing, is the well-known hymn, "Work, for the night is coming." All such personal relationship, we again repeat, is incompatible with pantheism, and almost equally so with the popular sacerdotalism. Not without significance do the new theists of Western India call their associations the Prārthanā Samājes or Prayer Associations, and give to the buildings in which they worship the name of Prayer Halls instead of temples. Let not men say that religion and theological belief belong to separable spheres.

[Sidenote: The idea of sin naturally accompanies the new monotheism.]

Once more, the public worship and prayer attendant on the new monotheism of the new religious associations are the signs that the stage has been reached where sin will be felt and confessed. As yet, however, it cannot be said that the thought of sin is prominent. In the creeds of the Ārya Samāj and the Prārthanā Samājes, the word sin does not occur. What we find in the Brāhma Samāj is as follows. From the creed of the Southern India Brāhma Samāj, of date about 1883, we quote paragraph 7: "Should I through folly commit sin, I will endeavour to be atoned [sic] unto God by earnest repentance and reformation."[126] From the "Principles of the Sadharan [Universal or Catholic] Brāhma Samāj," set forth in the organ of the body, we quote a paragraph 8: "God rewards virtue and punishes sin, but that punishment is for our good and cannot last to eternity." From a publication by a third section of the Brāhma Samāj, the party of Keshub Chunder Sen, we quote: "Every sinner must suffer the consequences of his own sins, sooner or later, in this world or in the next; for the moral law is unchangeable and God's justice irreversible. His mercy also must have its way. As the just king, He visits the soul with adequate agonies, and when the sinner after being thus chastised mournfully prays, He as the merciful Father delivers and accepts him and becomes reconciled to him. Such reconciliation is the only true atonement."[127] Even in the last quoted, the expression "adequate agonies" shows its standpoint regarding salvation from sin to be salvation by repentance, and not the standpoint of St. Paul, "I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me."



CHAPTER XX

THE IDEA OF SALVATION

"The slender sound As from a distance beyond distance grew, Coming upon me—O never harp nor horn Was like that music as it came; and then Stream'd thro' my cell a cold and silver beam, And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail."

TENNYSON.

[Sidenote: Hinduism superseded Buddhism because it offered salvation, not extinction.]

Salvation does mean something to every class. The huge fabric of Brahmanism does not continue to exist without ministering to some wide-felt need of the masses. It was in obedience to some inward demand, however perverted, that children were cast into the Ganges at Saugor, that human sacrifices were offered and self-tortures like hook-swinging were endured. These have been put down by British authority, but there still remain many austerities and bloody sacrifices and strange devices to satisfy the clamant demand of our souls. Even may we not say that, along with other reasons for the disappearance of Buddhism from India, some response more satisfying to the human need must have been offered by the rival system of Hinduism. Hinduism has deities and avatars; Buddhism had none. Two of the most interesting spots in India, the most sacred in the world to Buddhists, are Budh-gaya, where under the bo tree Buddha attained to enlightenment, and Sārnāth, where he began his preaching. Yet the worship at neither place to-day is Buddhist. At the scene of Gautama's enlightenment, where he became Buddha or Enlightened, one of the conventional statues of Buddha is actually marked and worshipped as Vishnu, the Hindu deity, the Preserver in the Hindu triad. Even at that most holy shrine of Buddhism, Hinduism has supplanted it, for popular Hinduism offered salvation, while Buddhism offered extinction. Turning from the masses to the philosophical ascetic—when he cuts himself off from family life with all its variety of pleasure and interest, not to speak of the self-torture he also sometimes inflicts, he too has some corresponding demand, some adequate motive to satisfy. His is the resolute quest for salvation of the higher, older type. But we are dealing with modern, new-educated India, and now we ask ourselves: What does the modern, new-educated Indian mean by salvation? Why does the thought of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ fail to reach his heart?

[Sidenote: Three ways of salvation in Hinduism: more strictly, three stages.]

[Sidenote: 1. Saving knowledge]

[Sidenote: Or now Beatific Vision.]

The acute Indian mind, with its disposition to analyse and its tenderness towards all manifestations of religion, has noted three different paths of salvation, or more strictly three stages in the path. The last only really leads to salvation, the other two paths are tolerant recognition of the well-meaning religious efforts of those who have not attained to understanding of the true and final path of salvation. For convenience sake we may roughly designate the three ways as Saving Works, and Saving Faith, and Saving Knowledge, placing the elementary stage first. One of the Tantras or ritual scriptures of Modern Hinduism, the Mahanirvāna Tantra, thus explains the three stages in the path and their respective merits: "The knowledge that Brahma alone is true is the best expedient; meditation is the middling [= the means?]; and (2) the chanting of glories and the recitation of names is the worst; and (3) the worship of idols is the worst of the worst.[128] Of the pantheist's "saving knowledge," perhaps enough has been said. But again, it is the piercing of the veil of Maya or Delusion which hides from the soul that God is the One and the All. It is the transformation of the consciousness of "I" into that of the "One only, without a second." It is the ability to say "Aham Brahman," i.e. I am Brahma. In the Life of Dr. Wilson, the Scottish Missionary at Bombay, we read that in 1833, Dr. Wilson went with a visitor to see a celebrated jogi who was lying in the sun in the street, the nails of whose hands were grown into his cheek, and on whose head there was the nest of a bird. The visitor questioned the jogi, "How can one obtain the knowledge of God?" and the reply of the jogi was, "Do not ask me questions; you may look at me, for I am God." "Aham Brahman," very probably was his reply. That is pantheistic salvation, mukti, or deliverance from further human existences and their desires and delusions. At last the spirit is free, and the galling chains of the lusting and limited body are broken. But as pantheism is declining, such cases are growing fewer, and for the educated Hindus, now largely monotheists, the saving knowledge is rather a beatific vision of the Divine, only vouchsafed to minds intensely concentrated upon the quest and thought of God, and cut off from mundane distractions. This is the union with God which is salvation to many of the modern monotheistic Hindus.

[Sidenote: The quest of the beatific vision still implies the dissociation of religion and active life.]

[Sidenote: An unproductive religious ideal.]

What concerns us here is that in the conception of the beatific vision, we still find ourselves in a different religious world from ours—religion exoteric for the vulgar, and religion esoteric for the enlightened; religion not for living by, but for a period of retirement; a religion of spiritual self-culture, not of active sonship and brotherhood. Far be it from me to say that at this point the West may not learn as well as teach, for how much thought does the culture of the spirit receive among us? How little! However that may be, this conception of the religious life is deeply rooted in educated India. The impersonal pantheistic conception of the Deity may be passing into the theistic, and even into Christian theism; the doctrine of transmigration may be little more than the current orthodox explanation of the coming of misfortune; the doctrine of Maya or the illusory character of the phenomena of our consciousness, it may be impossible to utter in this new practical age; and Jesus Christ may be the object of the highest reverence; but still the instinctive thought of the educated Hindu is that there is a period of life for the world's work, and a later period for devotion to religion. When dissatisfaction with himself or with the world does overtake him, instinctively there occur to him thoughts of retirement from the world and concentration of his mind, thereby to reach God's presence. Very few spiritually minded Hindus past middle life pass into the Christian Church, as some do at the earlier stages of life. Under the sway of the Hindu idea of salvation, by knowledge or by intense intuition, they withdraw from active life to meditate on God, with less or more of the practice of religious exercises. Painful to contemplate the spiritual loss to the community of a conception of religion that diverts the spiritual energy away from the community, and renders it practically unproductive, except as an example. Once more we recall as typical the jogi, not going about doing good, anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, but fixed like a plant to its own spot, and with inward-looking eyes. Time was that there were jogis and joginis (female jogis) in Europe; but even of St. Theresa, at one period of her life a typical jogini, we read that not long after her visions and supernatural visitations, she became a most energetic reformer of the convents.

[Sidenote: The jogi, not the brahman, is the living part of present-day Hinduism.]

That quest for the beatific vision or for union with God, is the highest and the most living part of present-day Hinduism, whether monotheistic or pantheistic. Not the purohit brahman (the domestic celebrant), or the guru brahman (the professional spiritual director), conventionally spoken of as divine, but the jogi or religious seeker is the object of universal reverence. And rightly so. The reality of this aspect of Hinduism is manifest in the ease with which it overrides the idea of caste. In theory brahmans are the twice-born caste, the nearest to the Deity and to union with Him. A man of lower caste, in his upward transmigrations towards union with God or absorption into Deity, should pass through an existence as a brahman. In the chapter on Transmigration we found that the upward steps of the ladder up to the brahman caste had been clearly stated in an authoritative Hindu text-book. The word brāhman, the name of the highest caste, is itself in fact a synonym for Deity. But as a matter of fact, men of any caste, moved by the spirit, are found devoting themselves to the jogi life. "He who attains to God is the true brāhman," is the current maxim, attributed to the great Buddha.

[Sidenote: Saving Faith, or Bhakti.]

[Sidenote: Bhakti implies a personal God.]

[Sidenote: Bhakti a genuine feeling because it may override caste.]

[Sidenote: Bhakti not fit to cope with caste.]

This brings us to the second of the three paths of salvation, the middle portion of the upward path to the mountain top of clear, unclouded vision of the All, the One Soul. In Hindu theory, at this second stage man is still amid the clouds that cling to the mountain's breast. For easy reference I have named it Salvation by Faith, although the English term must not mislead. The extract from the Mahanirvāna Tantra, already quoted, describes this inferior stage as the method of "chanting of glories and recitation of names" of gods. The Sanscrit name, Bhakti, is rendered devotion, or fervour, or faith, or fervent love; and in spite of alien ideas associated with bhakti, bhakti is much more akin to Faith than are many of the features of Hinduism to the Christian analogues with whose names they are ticketed. For example, bhakti practically implies a personal god, not the impersonal pantheistic Brahma. Intense devotion to some personal god, generally Vishnu the preserver, under the name Hari, or either of Vishnu's chief incarnations, Ram or Krishna, is the usual manifestation of bhakti. In actual practice it displays itself in ecstatic dancing or singing, or in exclaiming the name of the god or goddess, or in self-lacerations in his or her honour. Lacerations and what we would call penances, be it remembered, are done to the honour of a Deity; they are not a discipline like the self-whipping of the Flagellants and the jumping of the Jumpers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. "Bhakti," says Sir Monier Williams, "is really a kind of 'meritorious work,' and not equivalent to 'faith' in the Christian sense."[129] Bhakti is the religion of many millions of India, combined more or less with the conventional externals of sacrifice and offerings and pilgrimages and employment of brahmans, which together constitute the third path of salvation, by karma or works. That ecstatic adoration is religion for many millions of India, although the name bhakti may never pass their lips. We judged the idea of salvation by knowledge, or by intense concentration of mind, to be genuinely felt, because it could override the idea of caste. Applying the same test here, we must acknowledge the genuineness of feeling in bhakti. Theoretically, at least, as Sir Monier Williams says, "devotion to Vishnu supersedes all distinctions of caste"; and again, "Vishnavism [Vishnuism], notwithstanding the gross polytheistic superstitions and hideous idolatry to which it gives rise, is the only Hindu system worthy of being called a religion."[130] In actual practice the repudiation of caste no doubt varies greatly. In some cases, caste is dropped only during the fit of fervour or bhakti. At Puri, during the celebrated Juggernath (Jagan-nath, Lord of the world) pilgrimage, high caste and low together receive and eat the temple food, afterwards resuming their several ranks in caste. As a matter of fact it was found at the census of 1901, that with the exception of a few communities of devotees, all the professed Vishnuites returned themselves by their caste names. Hindu bhakti, like Christianity, is in conflict with caste, and bhakti has not proved fit to cope with it.

[Sidenote: Bhakti in other religions.]

[Sidenote: In Christian worship.]

Bhakti, then, is simply the designation for fervour in worship or in presence of the Deity, as it appears in Hinduism. For fervour is not peculiar to any religion, even ecstatic fervour. We see it among the Jews in King David's dancing before the ark of the Lord, and we see it in the whirling of the dervishes of Cairo, despite Mahomedans' overawing idea of God. May we not say that the singing in Christian worship recognises the same religious instinct, and the necessity to permit the exercise of it. Many of the psalms, we feel we must chant or sing; reading is too cold for them—the 148th Psalm for example, "Praise ye the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights: praise ye Him, sun and moon," and so on.

[Sidenote: Bhakti a natural channel for religious feeling, now being reconsecrated.]

We pass over the extravagances and gross depths to which bhakti, devotion or faith or love, may degenerate in the excitement of religious festivals—corruptio optimi pessimum. Even, strange to say, we find the grossness of bhakti also deliberately embodied in figures of wood and stone. Passing that over, we repeat that in bhakti or devotion to a personal God, or even only ecstatic extravagant devotion to a saint or religious hero semi-deified, we have a natural channel for the religious feeling of Indians, a channel that in these days is wearing deep. I speak of the middle classes, not of the ignorant masses, and my point is that the middle classes and the new religious organisations including the Indian Church are reconsecrating bhakti. Here is a portion of a bhakti hymn of one of the sections of the Brāhma Samāj:

"The gods dance, chanting the name of Hari; Dances my Gouranga in the midst of the choral band; The eyes full of tears, Oh! how beautiful! Jesus dances, Paul dances, dances Sakya Muni."

[Sidenote: Bhakti in the Indian Church.]

Between singing the song and acting it while singing, the distance in India is little. The explanation of a recent Hindu devotee, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, is: "A true devotee, who has drunk deep of divine Love, is like a veritable drunkard, and as such cannot always observe the rules of propriety."[131] Manifestations of bhakti we would soon have in the Indian Christian Church were the cold moderating influence of Westerns lessened; and as the Church increases and becomes indigenous, we must welcome bhakti in measure. Every religious procession will lead to manifestations of bhakti. In the Church of Scotland Magazine, Life and Work, for November 1904, we are told of a convert at Calcutta: "She kept speaking and singing of Jesus.... She appeared to the Hindu family to be a Christ-intoxicated woman." Again, in the Indian Standard for October 1905, we read of a religious revival among the Christians of the hills in Assam, where the Welsh missionaries work. We may contrast the concomitants of the revival with those attending the late revival even among the fervid Welsh. At one meeting, we are told, "the fervour rose at times to boiling heat, and scores of men were almost beside themselves with spiritual ecstasy. We never witnessed such scenes; scores of people literally danced, while large numbers who did not dance waved their arms in the air, keeping time, as they sang some of our magnificent Khassie hymns."

[Sidenote: Saving knowledge naturally superseded by Bhakti in the new monotheism.]

[Sidenote: An object of bhakti needed for educated India.]

[Sidenote: Buddha, Krishna, Chaitanya.]

[Sidenote: Jesus Christ, the supereminent object of bhakti.]

If what I have frequently repeated in these chapters be correct—that in the nineteenth century educated India has become largely monotheistic, it is in keeping therewith that the prevailing conception of religion should have changed, alongside, from the quest of Saving Knowledge to that of Bhakti or enthusiastic devotion to a person. Direct confirmation of that inference, a recent Hindu historian supplies. In a different context altogether, he declares: "The doctrine of bhakti (Faith) now rules the Hindu to the almost utter exclusion of the higher and more intellectual doctrine of gnan (Knowledge of the Supreme Soul)." The conception of the all-comprehending impersonal Brahma has, indeed, lost vitality; for the educated also the externals of the popular religion have lost their significance and become puerile. But for them also, the objects of popular bhakti, Ram and Krishna, are as much epical as religious heroes. Hinduism needs an object of bhakti for her educated people. The fact explains several of the novel religious features of the past half-century. The great jogi, Buddha, although not a brahman, was rediscovered as a religious hero for Hindus; at the commencement of the century he was a heretic to the brahmans. "The head of a sect inimical to Hinduism," the great Rammohan Roy calls him. So Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia had a great vogue some twenty years ago. Then Krishna has had his life re-written and his cult revived—purged of the old excesses of the Krishna-bhakti. More recently, Chaitanya, the religious teacher in Bengal in the fifteenth century, has been adopted by certain of the educated class in Bengal as an object of bhakti. Here, it seems to me, is found the place of Christ in the mind of educated India. They are fairly familiar now with the story of the New Testament, and Jesus Christ stands before them as the supereminent object of bhakti; and I venture to say is generally regarded as such, although comparatively few as yet have adopted the bhakti attitude towards Him. The Imitatio Christi, however, is a well-known book to the spiritually minded among the educated classes. India has advanced beyond the cold, intellectual, Unitarian appreciation of Jesus Christ that marked the early Brāhma and Prārthanā Samāj movements and manifested itself in their creeds in express denial of any incarnation. For Brāhma worship, I have seen the hymn, "Jesus, lover of my soul," transformed into "Father, lover of my soul." Hindus of the newer bhakti attitude to Christ would find no difficulty in singing the hymn as Christians do, provided the doctrinal background be not obtruded upon them. Sober faith has dawned, and will formulate itself by and by.



CHAPTER XXI

CONCLUSION

"Draw the curtain close, And let us all to meditation."

SHAKESPEARE, Hen. VI. II.

Sailing, say to India, from Britain down through the Atlantic, close by the coast of Portugal and Spain, and then, within the Mediterranean, skirting the coast of Algeria, and so on, one is often oppressed with a sense of his isolation. We can see that the land we are passing is inhabited by human beings like ourselves; and those houses visible are homes; and signs of life we can see even from our passing vessel. What of all the tragedies and comedies that are daily being enacted in these houses—the exits and the entrances, the friendships and the feuds, the selfishnesses and self-sacrifices, the commonplace toil, the children's play, that are going on the very moment we are looking? We are out of it, and our affections refuse to be wholly alienated from these fellow-beings, although the ship of which we form a part must pursue her own aim, and hurries along.

The Briton's tie to India and Indians is of no passing accidental character. Our life-histories are not merely running parallel; our destinies are linked together. Christian feeling, duty, self-interest, and the interest of a linked destiny all call upon us to know each other and cherish mutual sympathy. Not that the West has ever been without an interest in India, as far back as we have Indian history, in the Greek accounts of the invasion of India by Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. Writing in the first century B.C. and rehearsing what the earlier Greek writers had said about India, Strabo, the Greek geographer, testifies to the prevailing interest in India, and even sets forth the difficulty of knowing India, exactly as a modern student of India often feels inclined to do. "We must take with discrimination," he says, "what we are told about India, for it is the most distant of lands, and few of our nation have seen it. Those, moreover, who have seen it, have seen only a part, and most of what they say is no more than hearsay. Even what they saw, they became acquainted with only while passing through the country with an army, in great haste. Yea, even their reports about the same things are not the same, although they write as if they had examined the things with the greatest care and attention. Some of the writers were fellow-soldiers and fellow-travellers, yet oft-times they contradict each other.... Nor do those who at present make voyages thither afford any precise information." We sympathise with Strabo, as our own readers also may. The interest of the West was of course interrupted when the Turks thrust themselves in between Europe and India and blocked the road Eastward overland. But the sea-road round the Cape of Good Hope was discovered, and West and East met more directly again, and Britain's special interest in India began. Judged by the recent output of English books on India, the interest of Britons in things Indian is rapidly increasing, and, pace Strabo, it is hoped that this book, the record of the birth of New Ideas in India, will not only increase the knowledge but also deepen interest and sympathy. For even more noteworthy than the number of new books—since many of the new books deal only with what may be called Pictorial India—is the deepening of interest manifest in recent years.

That self-glorifying expression, "the brightest jewel in the British crown," has grown obsolete, and India has become not the glory of Britain, but the first of her imperial responsibilities. The thought of Britain as well as the thought of new India has changed. To the extent of recognising a great imperial responsibility, the mission efforts of the Churches and the speeches of statesmen and the output of the press have converted Britain. India, what her people actually are in thought and feeling, what the country is in respect of the necessities of life and industrial possibilities—these are questions that never fail to interest an intelligent British audience. In this volume, the aim has been to set forth the existing thoughts and feelings, especially of new-educated India, and to do so on the historical principle, that to know how a thing has come to be, is the right way to know what it is and how to treat it. The history of an opinion is its true exposition. These chapters are not speculations, but a setting forth of the progress of opinion in India during the British period, and particularly during the nineteenth century. The successive chapters make clear how wonderful has been the progress of India during the century in social, political, and religious ideas. The darkness of the night has been forgotten, and will hardly be believed by the new Indians of to-day; and ordinary Britons can hardly be expected to know Indian history beyond outstanding political events. Not, however, to boast of progress, but to encourage educated Indians to further progress, and to enlighten Britons regarding the India which they are creating, is the hope of this volume. Further progress has yet to be made, and difficult problems yet await solution, and to know the history of the perplexing situation will surely be most helpful as a guide. What future is in store for India lies hidden. It would be interesting to speculate, and with a few ifs interposed, it might be easy to dogmatise. What will she become? is indeed a question of fascinating interest, when we ask it of a child of the household, or when we ask it of a great people rejuvenated, to whom the British nation stands in place of parent. In the history of the soul of a people, the century just ended may be but a brief space on which to stand to take stock of what is past and seek inspiration for the future, to talk of progress made and progress possible.

"Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from away? Far, far behind, is all that they can say."[132]

But the past century is all the experience of India we Britons have, and we are bound to reflect well upon it in our outlook ahead.



[Footnote 1: The Senate and People of Rome—Senatus Populus-que Romanus.]

[Footnote 2: In the Hindu College at Benares, affiliated to Allahabad University, certain orthodox Hindus also objected to sacred texts being read in the presence of European professors and teachers. Think of it, in that college preparing students for ordinary modern degrees!—Bose, Hindu Civilisation, I. xxxiii.]

[Footnote 3: One of the Zoroastrian Persians who fled to Western India at the beginning of the eighth century A.D. At the census of 1901 they numbered 94,190. They are most numerous in the city of Bombay.]

[Footnote 4: Asiatic Studies, I.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., I. iii.]

[Footnote 6: Quinquen, Report on Education in India, 1897-1902.]

[Footnote 7: For an apparently contrary view, see Census of India, 1901, Report, p. 430: "Railways, which are sometimes represented as a solvent of caste prejudices, have in fact enormously extended the area within which those prejudices reign supreme." The sentence refers to the influence of the fashion of the higher castes in regard to child marriage and prohibition of the marriage of widows.]

[Footnote 8: Sir W.W. Hunter, England's Work in India.]

[Footnote 9: The manifold origins of castes are fully discussed in the newest lights in the Census of India Report, 1901.]

[Footnote 10: Miss Noble [Sister Nivedita], finds herein an apology for caste. "The power of the individual to advance is by this means kept strictly in ratio to the thinking of the society in which he lives." (The Web of Indian Life, p. 145.)]

[Footnote 11: Sir A. Lyall, Asiatic Studies, I. v.: "A man is not a Hindu because he inhabits India or belongs to any particular race or state, but because he is a Brahmanist." Similarly Census of India, 1901, Report, p. 360: "The most obvious characteristics of the ordinary Hindu are his acceptance of the Brahmanical supremacy and of the caste system."]

[Footnote 12: Harvest Field, March 1904; Madras Decen. Missionary Conference Report, 1902.]

[Footnote 13: Introduction to Translation of the Ishopanishad.]

[Footnote 14: Benares Hindu Coll. Maga. Sept. 1904.]

[Footnote 15: Karkarin: Forty years of Progress and Reform, p. 117.]

[Footnote 16: Census of India, 1901, Report, pp. 496, 517, 544.]

[Footnote 17: Miss Noble [Sister Nivedita], Web of Indian Life, p. 133.]

[Footnote 18: Report, Census of India, 1901, p. 163.]

[Footnote 19: Census of India, 1901, Report, p. 163.]

[Footnote 20: Census of India, 1901, Report, p. 522.]

[Footnote 21: Lux Christi, by C.A. Mason, p. 255. 1902.]

[Footnote 22: In Italy, in 1891, the sexes were almost equal, being males 1000 to females 995.]

[Footnote 23: Census of India, 1901, Report, p. 115.]

[Footnote 24: A case of Suttee is reported in the Bengal Police Report for 1903.]

[Footnote 25: Report, Census of India, 1901, pp. 442, 443.]

[Footnote 26: Justice Amir Ali, Life and Teaching of Mohammed.]

[Footnote 27: Sister Nivedita, Web of Indian Life, p. 80.]

[Footnote 28: Church of Scotland Mission Record, 1894; East and West, July 1905.]

[Footnote 29: Trotter, India under Queen Victoria.]

[Footnote 30: P. 428.]

[Footnote 31: Hindu was originally a geographical term referring to the country of the River Indus. It is derived from the Sanscrit (Sindhu), meaning river, from which also come Indus, Sindh, Hindu, Hindi, and India. The names Indus and India are English words got from Greek; they are not Indian, terms at all, although they are coming into use among educated Indians.]

[Footnote 32: Hindi is also used as a comprehensive term for all the kindred dialects of Hindustan. See R.N. Cust, LL.D, Oecumenical List of Translations of the Holy Scriptures, 1901. The above account follows that given in the Census Report for 1901.]

[Footnote 33: The correct form, brahman, not brahmin, is employed by the majority of recent writers.]

[Footnote 34: Quoted in Census of India, 1881.]

[Footnote 35: The Web of Indian Life, pp. 101, 298.]

[Footnote 36: I. xvi.]

[Footnote 37: Ancient Geography of Asia, by Nibaran Chandra Das.]

[Footnote 38: For other testimony to the new national feeling, see Decen. Missionary Conference Report, 1902, p. 305, etc.; Sister Nivedita, Web of Indian Life.]

[Footnote 39: This may not be so in the extreme south-west, where there have been Christians since the sixth century.]

[Footnote 40: The Indian National Congress, by John Murdoch, LL.D., 1898. (Christian Literature Society, Madras.)]

[Footnote 41: Karkaria: Forty Years of Progress and Reform, 1896, p. 94.]

[Footnote 42: The Indian National Congress, by John Murdoch, LL.D., p. 95. (Madras Christian Literature Society.)]

[Footnote 43: The Indian National Congress, by John Murdoch, LL.D. (Madras Christian Literature Society), p. 142, etc.]

[Footnote 44: Asiatic Studies, I. iii., II. i.]

[Footnote 45: The Indian National Congress, by John Murdoch, LL.D., p. 153. (Madras Christian Literature Society.)]

[Footnote 46: Smith, Life of Alexander Duff, 1881, Chapter V.]

[Footnote 47: Asiatic Studies, II. I. 7, 37.]

[Footnote 48: Report of Madras Decennial Missionary Conf., 1902, p. 311.]

[Footnote 49: Acts iv. 33.]

[Footnote 50: Acts xvii. 18, 32.]

[Footnote 51: Statistical Atlas of India, 1895.]

[Footnote 52: Census of 1901.]

[Footnote 53: Hinduism and its Modern Exponents, by Rev. C.N. Banerji, B.A.]

[Footnote 54: Monier Williams, Brahmanism, etc., p. 18.]

[Footnote 55: Monier Williams, Hinduism, p. 38.]

[Footnote 56: Youngson, Punjab Mission of the Church of Scotland, p. 27.]

[Footnote 57: "The Arya Samaj," by Rev. H.D. Griswold, D.D., Madras Decen. Mission. Conference Report; "The Arya Samaj," by Rev. H. Forman, Allahabad Mission Press, 1902; Biographical Essays, by Max Mueller—"Dyananda Saraswati"]

[Footnote 58: For another explanation of the separation, see Lillie, Madame Blavatsky, chap. vii.]

[Footnote 59: 62,458,077 Mahomedans at Census of 1901.]

[Footnote 60: Census of India, 1901, Report, pp. 371-73.]

[Footnote 61: Disguised as Necharis in the Report, Census of India, 1901, p. 373. See Youngson, Punjab Mission of the Church of Scotland, p. 14; Madras Decen. Miss. Conf. Report of 1902, p. 341.]

[Footnote 62: Asiatic Studies, I. 1.]

[Footnote 63: Guru-prasad Sen in Introduction to the Study of Hinduism, quoted in Madras Decen. Miss. Conf. Report, p. 280.]

[Footnote 64: Sister Nivedita, Web of Indian Life, pp. 175, 179.]

[Footnote 65: Cf. Philosophic Hinduism, p. 27, Madras, C.V.E.S.]

[Footnote 66: Amy W. Carmichael, Things as they are in South India.]

[Footnote 67: Monier Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, p. 54.]

[Footnote 68: Indian Missions from the Outside.]

[Footnote 69: Hinduism, p. 88. Things as They Are, iv. by Amy W. Carmichael.]

[Footnote 70: Intellectual Progress of India, P. Mitter, p. 5.]

[Footnote 71: Defence of Hindu Theism: Appeal to the Christian Public (II. 91).]

[Footnote 72: Smith, Life of Dr. Wilson.]

[Footnote 73: Rammohan Roy, Appeal to the Christian Public.]

[Footnote 74: Vedic Hinduism, (Madras C.V.E.S.) 1888.]

[Footnote 75: Bose, Hindu Civilisation during British Rule, i. 95.]

[Footnote 76: Monier Williams, Modern India, 1878, p. 101.]

[Footnote 77: Plato in the Timaeus teaches the eternal existence of matter as a substance distinct from God. See also p. 134.]

[Footnote 78: Max Mueller, Ramakrishna, p. 48.]

[Footnote 79: Sister Nivedita, The Web of Indian Life.]

[Footnote 80: Monier Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, p. 25, etc.]

[Footnote 81: For the Yoga System, see pp. 127, 128, 134.]

[Footnote 82: Text-book of Hindu Religion, etc., p. 60.]

[Footnote 83: See also Life of Rev. J.J. Weitbrecht, 1830, p. 318.]

[Footnote 84: Max Mueller, Ramakrishna, p. 8.]

[Footnote 85: Weekly Statesman (Calcutta), 14 IX. 1905.]

[Footnote 86: Rev. Dr. Griswold in Madras Decen. Missionary Conf. Report, 1902, p. 317.]

[Footnote 87: Asiatic Studies, II. i. 11.]

[Footnote 88: Sister Nivedita, The Web of Indian Life, pp. 191, 287.]

[Footnote 89: Avatar=a descent.]

[Footnote 90: Lillie, India and its Problems.]

[Footnote 91: Smith, Life of Dr. John Wilson, pp. 63, 65.]

[Footnote 92: Lillie, India and its Problems, p. 130.]

[Footnote 93: Biographical Sketch of K.M. Banerjea, p. 79. K.M. Banerjea, Christianity and Hinduism, pp. 1, 2, 11. Monier Williams, Hinduism, p. 36, etc; Brahmanism and Hinduism, pp. 4, 14, 17, 33. Compare Hebrews i. 2, 3.]

[Footnote 94: Hinduism and its Modern Exponents, Rev. C.N. Banerjea, B.A. Calcutta, 1893.]

[Footnote 95: Sketches of Indian Christians (Madras C.L.S.), 1896.]

[Footnote 96: Lectures in India.]

[Footnote 97: P.N. Mitter, Intellectual Progress of Modern India.]

[Footnote 98: U.F. Church of Scot. Mission Report for 1903; Madras Decen. Missionary Conference Report, 1903, pp. 310, 311.]

[Footnote 99: Farquhar, The Future of Christianity in India (Chr. Lit. Soc).]

[Footnote 100: K.C. Banurji, Esq., M.A., B.L., Registrar of Calcutta University.]

[Footnote 101: Asiatic Studies, I. v. 143.]

[Footnote 102: Madras Decen. Miss. Conf. Report, 1902, p. 345.]

[Footnote 103: Translated by Rev. J.L. Thakur Das, of Lahore.]

[Footnote 104: J.N. Farquhar, M.A., in The Future of Christianity in India, Madras C.L.S.]

[Footnote 105: For a fuller statement, see Farquhar, The Future of Christianity in India. C.L.S., Madras.]

[Footnote 106: Flint, Philosophy of History.]

[Footnote 107: Asiatic Studies, I. i.]

[Footnote 108: Bhag. Gita, v. 3, quoted by Max Mueller in Ramakrishna, p. 3.]

[Footnote 109: Asiatic Studies, II. i. 35.]

[Footnote 110: John v. 11.]

[Footnote 111: The term Nirvana is not used by ordinary uneducated Indians: it is known only to the educated.]

[Footnote 112: Max Mueller, Ramakrishna.]

[Footnote 113: Sister Nivedita, The Web of Indian Life.]

[Footnote 114: Rev. H. Forman, The Arya Sarmāj, Allahabad.]

[Footnote 115: Madras Decen. Missionary Conf. Report, 1902, p. 276.]

[Footnote 116: Hastie, Hindu Idolatry and English Enlightenment.]

[Footnote 117: "The tendency of the doctrine of Karma has been to promote contentment."—Bose, Hindu Civilisation, I. lix.]

[Footnote 118: Sir M. Monier Williams' Brahmanism and Hinduism.]

[Footnote 119: Sister Nivedita, The Web of Indian Life, p. 198.]

[Footnote 120: Taken from the Chhāndogya Upanishad.]

[Footnote 121: Lilly, India and its Problems.]

[Footnote 122: K.S. Macdonald, Sin and Salvation ... in the Tantras, Calcutta Methodist Publ. House.]

[Footnote 123: Brahmanism and Hinduism, pp. 25, 24; Hinduism, p. 39.]

[Footnote 124: Monier Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism.]

[Footnote 125: The Ārya Samāī, by Rev. Henry Forman. Allahabad, 1887.]

[Footnote 126: Religious Reform, Part IV. Madras C.V.E.S., 1888.]

[Footnote 127: Religious Reform, Part IV. Madras C.V.E.S., 1888.]

[Footnote 128: K.S. Macdonald, Sin and Salvation ... in the Tantras. Calcutta Methodist Publ. House.]

[Footnote 129: Monier Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, p. 63.]

[Footnote 130: Monier Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, Chap. V.]

[Footnote 131: Max Mueller, Ranuikrishna Paramahansa, p. viii.]

[Footnote 132: A.H. Clough. Quoted by Lord Curzon at Simla, September 1905.]



INDEX

Absorption into Deity, 153, 223, 226, 230.

Agnosticism, 183.

Agra, 2, 67, 82.

Ahmad, Mirza Gholam, of Qadian, 202-4, 210.

Ahmad, Sir Syed, 146.

Akbar, 13, 95.

Allah, 3, 207.

Allahabad, 13.

Ammonius, the Neo-Platonist, 208-9.

Anglo-Indians, viii, 51-2, 67, 88, 89, 91, 100, 101, 105, 114, 123, 124, 160.

Anti-British feeling, ix, xi, 88-95, 101, 137, 144-5, 190, 192, 240.

Anti—Christian feeling, 137, 191-2, 241.

Anti-foreign feeling, 128, 191-2, 240. See Indian bias.

Army. See British soldiers.

Ārya Samāj, 30, 36, 46, 56-7, 64, 122, 132-40, 143-5, 149, 169, 172, 181-2, 210, 228-9, 241-2, 250-2.

Aryans, 32, 70, 78, 134, 139, 156

Ascetics, 12, 47-9, 107, 157, 184, 219, 249, 255.

Asoka. 77-8.

Assam, 35, 214, 265.

Aurangzeb, 3, 14, 77.

Avatars (descents or incarnations), 184-8, 200, 211.

Avidya (ignorance). See Delusion.

Awakening, Intellectual, 19, 76, 118. See New.

Banerjea, K.M., 46, 94, 188-9.

Banyan tree, 12-3.

Baroda, 26, 35, 54, 58.

Beef, 18, 136.

Benares, 3, 13, 54, 132, 142, 246.

Benares, Hindu College, 25, 142-3, 155, 173, 182, 234-5.

Bengal, v, 8-9, 35-6, 47-8, 54, 60, 64, 69, 75, 81-2, 84, 106, 127, 129, 130, 138, 145, 163, 168, 178, 191, 194-5, 198-9, 218, 230-1, 250, 267.

Bentinck, Lord W., 25.

Besant, Mrs., 31, 38, 140-2, 208, 237.

Bhagabat Gita, 96, 198-9.

Bhakti (enthusiastic devotion), 187, 261-8.

Bible, 111, 194-8, 205-6, 211-2, 233. 247, 253, 263-4, 267.

Blavatsky, Madame, 31, 140-1, 209.

Bombay, 2, 44, 46, 54, 69, 75, 81, 84-6, 96, 130-1, 138-9, 167, 172, 195, 257.

Bose's Hindu Civilisation, etc., 75, 160, 170, 196.

Brahma, 70, 169, 175-7, 256-7, 261, 266.

Brahmā, 70, 176-7, 185.

Brāhma Samāj, 30, 36, 56-7, 62-4, 71, 122, 125-31, 143, 145-6, 148, 169-71, 179, 192, 194-5, 234, 250, 252, 264, 267-8.

Brahman privileges, 6-7, 16-7, 24, 42, 60, 245-6, 249.

Brahmanism, 69-70, 255.

Brahmans, 7, 21, 23, 26, 30, 35, 38-9, 49, 60, 68-9, 128, 151, 158, 167, 219, 237, 249-50, 260, 262.

Breath, Ritual management of the, 246.

Britain and India. See India.

British Government, 2, 8, 14, 25, 33-6, 53, 55, 73-6, 79, 92-4, 106, 144, 208, 217-9.

British Government, a theological illustration, 154, 157.

British Government, Acts of, 14, 53-5, 72, 254.

British Government and caste, 33-6.

British influence, vii, ix, 4-5, 14-15, 42-4, 61, 106, 272-3.

British merchants, viii.

British soldiers, 2, 15.

Brotherhood of man, 102, 239.

Buddha or Sakya Muni, 161, 186, 196, 199, 223, 227, 249, 260, 264, 267.

Buddhism, Buddhists, 66, 70, 77, 141, 196, 226, 254-5.

Calcutta, 2, 17, 25-6, 36, 43, 45-8, 63, 72, 79, 85-6, 99, 122, 125-6, 181, 192, 198, 230, 232, 247-8, 250.

Calcutta University, 6, 49, 68, 134, 247.

Capital in India, 92-3.

Cashmere, 204.

Caste, 22, 39, 46, 48, 56, 75, 95, 128, 132, 135, 137, 142-3, 158, 190, 211, 218, 260, 262-3.

Caste declining, 16-8, 35, 37-8, 218.

Castes: Brahman. See Brahman; Kayasth (Clerk), 5, 35, 48, 49; Kshatriya or Soldier, 35; Mahratta, 35; Nayar, 33; Pariah, 33; Shaha, 35; Soldier, 35; Sudras (the group of lowest castes recognised as within Hinduism), 6, 21.

Census of 1901, 5, 17, 33-6, 53-4, 57, 59, 61, 64, 106, 131, 154, 207, 263.

Central Provinces, 17.

Chaitanya or Gauranga, 22, 199-200, 264, 267.

Chet Ram, 204-8.

Chinese—Literati, 43, 113; Pilgrim, 13; Anti-foreign feeling, 191.

Christ. See Jesus Christ.

Christian civilisation in India, xi, 4, 14.

Christian doctrine in contrast, 172, 174, 181, 186, 207, 221-34, 238, 241, 253, 261-2.

Christian influence, 146, 153, 156, 158-9, 169-71, 179, 197, 206, 222.

Christian religion, The, 221-2.

Christian worship, 117, 128, 187, 245, 250, 263, 264.

Christianity in India, xi, 14, 41, 44, 73, 80, 101, 105-9, 112, 115, 125-7, 133, 143, 148-9, 165, 182, 190, 196-7, 241.

Christians, 151, 163, 203-4, 233-4.

Christians, Indian, 5, 30, 32, 37, 45, 52, 56-7, 62-4, 66, 89, 122-5, 137, 143, 169, 190-2, 194-5, 264-6.

Citizenship, Idea of, 24, 72-3, 87, 101, 104, 218.

Civil Servants, vii-ix, 87, 160, 188.

Cochin, 33.

Colleges, Indian, x, 48-9, 74.

Common welfare, Idea of. See Public.

Commons, House of, 102.

Company, East India, 99.

Comparative religion, 107-8.

Conflict of ideas, 4, 6, 7, 49, 117. See Christian doctrine.

Congress, The—the All-India political association, 76-93, 133, 139, 144.

Conservatism, Indian, vi, 11-20, 46, 49, 83, 142, 158-165.

Coronation, Bengali representative at, 29.

Cow, Sanctity of the, 136, 151, 202.

Creator, 177, 186, 189.

Cremation and burial, 105.

Curzon, Lord, 15, 89, 93, 274.

Darjeeling, 18.

Daru-l-harb, 145-6.

Delhi, 2, 67, 68, 82.

Delusion, 153, 157, 173-7, 184-5, 220, 241, 243, 257-8.

Devotee. See Jogi.

Digby, William, 92-3.

Doctors, Indian lady, 62.

Doctrine. See Christian; Hindu.

Drink-selling, 18.

Dualistic conceptions, 172, 178, 242.

Dufferin Association, Lady, 62.

Durga, the Goddess, 251.

Dutt, Narendranath, B.A. See Vivekananda.

Eating together, 81, 104, 160.

Educated Indians, The New, v, vii, ix, 44-5, 55, 58, 76, 83, 86-7, 89, 91, 97-8, 112, 115, 117-8, 124, 127, 132, 140, 143, 149, 155-6, 159-62, 167-71, 173-4, 178, 183, 185, 189-92, 196, 211, 222, 230-42, 250, 255, 258.

Education in India— Boys, 5, 43. Females, 5, 46, 55-6, 62. Influence of, 15, 39-49, 94, 101, 106, 115, 126, 132, 146, 160, 168.

Edward VII., 2, 29, 76.

Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 44.

English education. See Education.

English-knowing Indians. See Educated Indians.

English language, 14-5, 39-41, 44, 78, 81, 83.

English literature, 14, 23, 73, 179.

Esoteric religion. See Knowledge.

Eternal entities, Three, 134, 172.

Europe, Voyages to, 26-9, 45, 48, 101, 127, 149.

Europeans. See Anglo-Indians.

Evolution of India, v.

Extinction. See Nirvana.

Family ties, Indian, 52, 60.

Famines, 2, 20, 74, 92-3, 94, 98, 106, 215, 232-3.

Farquhar, J.N., 197-8, 209.

Females. See Education; Infanticide; Women.

Females fewer than males, 52-4.

Flesh-eating. See Food.

Food forbidden, vi, 18, 26-7, 48, 105, 136-7.

Future of India, 41, 98, 116, 273-4.

Ganges, The, 17, 246, 254, 266-7, 272-3.

Girls. See Education.

God, 134, 150, 154-7, 166-9, 172-5, 178-82, 184, 211, 221-2, 224-5, 230, 242-5, 250-1.

God, Fatherhood of, 116-8, 149, 179-82, 228-9, 239-40, 249-50.

Goddesses, 107, 178-9, 216, 227, 251.

Gujarat, 82, 178.

Gunning Lectures, v. xii.

Guru (religious teacher or spiritual guide), xi, 163-5, 200, 206, 246, 260.

Hari, the God, 187, 197.

Harnack, Prof., 209-10, 221.

Hastie, Rev. Dr., 48, 231.

Heaven and hell, Ideas of, 224, 228-30. See Hereafter.

Hereafter, The, 117, 149, 213-38, 240.

Hindu, Hinduism, Definitions of, 24, 26, 66, 69-70, 78, 151-4, 169.

Hindu doctrines, 144-69, 200, 228.

Hindu exclusiveness, 6, 30, 47, 75, 80, 142, 149.

Hindu Religion, Catechism of, 182.

Hindu Religion, Text-book of, 38, 142-3, 173-7, 227, 229, 235-7, 260.

Hindu religious mood, 7, 180.

Hindu reverence for holy men, 165.

Hindu Revival, 38, 79, 122, 143, 155, 173, 193, 211, 230, 235, 251.

Hindu rites, 158-65, 245-9.

Hindu Triad, 70, 176-7, 185-7, 207 255

Hinduism, 7, 112-3, 133, 135, 138, 142-3, 145, 159-60, 163, 173, 182, 200, 202, 206-9, 228-9, 230, 246-7, 255, 260, 263, 266.

Hinduism and Christianity. See Christian doctrine.

Hinduism regarded as local or racial, 40-1, 114-6.

Hinduism, Solidarity of, 17, 23-4, 75.

Hindus, 106, 128, 133-4, 140, 142, 144, 150, 178, 180, 204, 242, 250.

Hindus and Mahomedans, 3-4, 89, 137, 144, 204.

Hindustan, Hindustani, 66-8, 81.

Ideas, New. See New.

Idolatry, 544-5, 48, 65, 127, 133, 135, 166-9, 171, 211, 256, 262.

Ilbert Bill, 88.

Illusion. See Delusion.

Immortality. See Hereafter.

Incarnation. See Avatar.

India, Indians (meaning of), 65-6, 78.

India, Ancient, 139-41, 236.

India and Britain, xi, 2-4, 78, 91, 95-8, 236-7, 270-4.

India and Mahomedans, 145-6.

India, Features of, 158, 202, 204, 206, 212-17, 221.

India, New. See Educated.

India ruled by Indians, 91.

Indian bias, 95-7, 128, 190.

Individual's rights, The, 21-5.

Infanticide, 53-4.

Interest in India, 1-4, 107, 270-4.

Japan, 89, 98, 113, 195.

Jesus Christ, 112, 117-9, 149, 184-213, 221-2, 227-8, 234, 240-1, 248, 253, 255, 258, 264-5, 267-8.

Jesus Christ and Chaitanya, 199-200.

Jesus Christ and Krishna, 187-9, 198-9.

Jesus Christ distinguished from Christians and Christianity, 192-7, 207-11.

Jews, 104, 151, 203, 263.

Joga philosophy (the system which specially instructs devotees), 127-8, 134.

Jogi (a devotee), 185, 212, 228, 237, 240, 257-60, 265.

John's Gospel, St., 195, 212, 233.

Juggernath, 263.

Justice, God's, 181, 241, 252.

Kali, the Goddess, 178, 246.

Kalighat, 108, 248.

Karachi, 82, 86.

Karma (works, or rebirth according to one's acts), 262. See Transmigration.

Kayasth (clerk), caste. See Castes.

Keranis (Christians), 137.

Knowledge, Saving, 175, 177, 220, 244, 256-9, 266.

Koran, 145, 182, 203.

Krishna, vi, 96, 186-9, 198-200, 204, 211, 227, 245, 261, 264, 266-7.

Krishnaites, Neo-, 198, 209, 230.

Kulin brahmans (Kulin signifies a recognised aristocracy within a caste), 60.

Lahore, 122, 180, 204, 206.

Law, Profession of, 42, 62.

Legislative Councils, 73, 84-5.

Life, Economic value of, 216-8, 221.

London, 79, 93, 100, 126.

Lyall, Sir Alfred, 8, 24, 69, 94, 105, 151, 182, 202, 218-19.

Macaulay, 44, 99, 168.

Madras, 2, 46, 54, 69, 81-2, 84, 140-1, 152, 161, 170-1, 196.

Mahabharat, 186, 198.

Mahatmas (great spirits), 141, 209.

Mahomedanism, 36-7, 107-8, 128, 144-7, 169.

Mahomedans, 3, 37, 41, 50, 59, 61, 66, 68, 78, 80, 89, 96, 128, 137, 144-7, 151, 163, 182, 196, 202-4, 206-7, 263.

Mahomedans. See Hindus and Mahomedans.

Mahrattas, 78, 82.

Malabari (a Parsee reformer), 7, 30, 46, 90, 195-6, 241.

Mantra (sacred Sanscrit text), 164, 248.

Manu, 143, 235, 246.

Marriage, 22-3, 26, 31-2, 55-61, 104, 135.

Marriage age for girls, 4, 14, 19, 46, 55-8.

Marriage of widows, 19, 26, 31, 45, 55, 57, 63, 135.

Mary, mother of Jesus, 195, 205, 207.

Masses, The, 43, 182, 228, 242, 245, 254-5.

Matter, 134, 172-3.

Maya or unreality of the objects of Sense and Consciousness. See Delusion.

Merchants, British, viii.

Messiahs, Indian, 201-4.

Methodists, 111, 265-6.

Middle Class, New. See Educated.

Mission College, 49, 142, 180, 195.

Missionaries, viii, 52, 54, 62, 99, 106, 123, 124, 158, 167, 187, 189, 191, 195-7, 202, 217, 232, 237, 241. See Scotland.

Missionary Conference, Decennial, 106, 136.

Moghul empire and emperors, 2-4, 14, 67, 77.

Monier Williams. See Williams.

Monotheism, 107, 117, 126, 127-8, 130, 134, 140, 150, 153-5, 161, 166-183, 239, 242, 252, 258, 260, 266.

Mosque, 3, 13-4, 50.

Mother (title of deities), 178-81.

Mozumdar, P.C., 30, 195.

Mukti, 40-1, 246. See Salvation.

Mueller, Max, 75, 136, 170, 175.

Municipalities, 86.

Murdoch, Rev. Dr. John, 81, 91, 93, 95, 170, 196.

Mutiny, The, 95.

Nanda-kumar, 25, 42.

Nationality, Idea of, 9, 24, 75, 95, 101, 104, 124, 129, 132, 134, 139, 190, 218.

Native States, 76, 95.

Nature, Tyranny of, 214-6.

Naturis, 146-7.

Neo-Platonists a religious parallel to New Indians, 207-12.

New Era, The, 1-10, 19, 76.

New ideas, v, vi, ix, xi, 4, 6-10, 15, 19, 49, 76, 165, 236.

New India. See Educated.

New Testament. See Bible; John; Paul.

Newspapers. See Press.

Nirvana, 226, 230, 255.

Noble, Miss (Sister Nivedita), 22, 31, 32, 75, 153, 175, 185, 228, 243.

North-West, The, 82, 172, 241, 250.

Northern India, 2, 28-9, 37, 66-8, 77, 107, 130.

Pandit (learned man or teacher), xi, 31, 47, 134, 142, 162.

Pantheism, 107, 126-9, 140, 150, 153, 155-7, 166, 169-78, 182-5, 209, 220, 229, 239, 242-5, 249, 251, 256-8, 260-1.

Parameswar, 176-7, 207.

Paramhansa, Ramkrishna, 47, 48, 175, 199, 227, 265.

Pariahs. See Castes.

Parliament of Religions, 30, 48, 128, 152, 227, 243.

Parsees, 7, 41, 66, 82, 138, 178.

Patriotism, 95, 116, 130, 132, 134-5, 141, 149, 172, 190. See Indian bias.

Paul, Saint, 111, 253, 264.

Pessimism, Indian, 212-22, 229, 232.

Philosophy, Hindu, 47, 70, 128, 172-6, 179, 220.

Physical changes, 120-2.

Pilgrims, 13, 245-6, 262-3.

Plains, The, 2, 66, 130.

Political activity, 20, 138.

Political criticism, Idea of, 7, 72-4, 76, 78.

Political Economy, 99, 216.

Political ideas, New, v, 7, 72-102, 104.

Political reformers, 83.

Polygamy, 55, 59-61.

Polytheism, 128, 133, 150, 153-6, 166-72, 182, 239, 242, 249, 262.

Poona, 97.

Post Office, 2, 34, 76.

Poverty, Indian, 20, 99. See Famines.

Prajapati, 188-9.

Prārthanā Samājes (Prayer Associations), 122, 130-1, 138, 169, 171-2, 250-2, 267.

Prayer, 128, 130, 244-5, 250-1.

Press, The Indian, 20, 26, 72, 73, 75, 88-9, 92, 99.

Priesthood, Hereditary, 7, 163, 245.

Priesthood twofold, 163-5.

Professions, Modern, 42, 144.

Progress, xi, 8, 52, 273.

Public meetings, 17, 113.

Public questions, Idea of, 16-7, 72.

Punjab, 36, 47, 84, 130, 132-3, 138, 201, 228, 234.

Purans or later Hindu Scriptures, 137.

Purohit (celebrant priest), 163-5, 260.

Purusha (the first embodiment of the Universal Spirit), 21, 188-9.

Qadian. See Ahmad.

Race feeling, 88-95.

Railways, 2, 17, 18, 76.

Rajputana, 54, 58.

Ram, 77, 186, 227, 261, 266.

Ramabhai, Pandita, 46.

Ramayan, The, 77, 186.

Rao, Sir T. Madhava, 28, 46.

Reactionaries, 20, 46, 149, 243. See Conservatism; Hindu Revival.

Reformers. See Political, Religious, Social.

Reincarnation. See Transmigration.

Religious ideas, Hindu, 7, 94, 104, 115, 117, 150.

Religious ideas, New, v, 8, 9, 103, 150.

Religious leaders not brahmans, 30-1, 249.

Religious reformers, 22, 45-6, 49.

Renaissance, Indian, 19, 104. See New.

THE END