India, Its Life and Thought

These and many other similar expressions represent an evident effort to graft the materialistic conceptions of the Sankya upon the Vedanta, which is in nothing more emphatic than in denying the existence of all that is phenomenal and material.

Krishna gave to Arjuna, at the latter's request, a vision of his true Self separate from, and infinitely higher than, the humble and illusive garb of his incarnation. And it was to him "as if in the heavens the lustre of a thousand suns burst forth all at once." And what a vision! Gazing upon it, Arjuna exclaims, "O God! I see within your body the gods, as also all the groups of various being; and the lord Brâhm seated on his lotus seat, and all the sages and celestial snakes. I see you, who are of countless forms, possessed of many arms, stomachs, mouths, and eyes on all sides. And, O Lord of the Universe, O you of all forms! I do not see your end, middle, or beginning.... I believe you to be the eternal being. I see you void of beginning, middle, or end—of infinite power, of unnumbered arms, and having the sun and the moon for eyes, and having a mouth like a blazing fire and heating the universe with your radiance. For this space between heaven and earth and all the quarters are pervaded by you alone. Looking at this wonderful and terrible form of yours, O high-souled one! the three worlds are affrighted. For here these groups of gods are entering into you.... Our principal warriors, also, are rapidly entering your mouths, fearful and horrific by reason of your jaws. And some with their heads smashed are seen stuck in the spaces between the teeth. As the many rapid currents of a river's waters run toward the sea alone, so do the heroes of this human world enter your mouths blazing all around. As butterflies, with increased velocity, enter a blazing fire to their destruction, so too do these people enter your mouths with increased velocity, only to their destruction. Swallowing all these people, you are licking them over and over again from all sides with your blazing mouths!"

Here we verily have a fine combination of the sublime and the ridiculous! The Apostle of Jesus was given to witness a vision of heavenly things such as could not be uttered. This disciple of Krishna does not hesitate to paint in such glowing terms a vision of the divine, that, to all but a Hindu, the picture seems not only incongruous but highly absurd and disgusting. One can hardly imagine that any mortal, to whom a vision of the divine being had been granted, could fail so utterly to furnish us with an edifying description of the same.

In this Song, Krishna claims to be, at the same time, absolute Deity and the supreme incarnation. In nothing do the East and the West differ more radically than in their teaching concerning incarnation or "descent." In Christianity, God only once became incarnate; and in that Incarnation every believing soul has found its needs fully satisfied. Never, in all these two thousand years, did our Lord Christ satisfy more completely the human soul and bring rest to more human hearts than at the present time.

To the Christian, Jesus represents the ultimate of God's earthly manifestation, as He does the complete realization of human salvation.

But in Hinduism, incarnation is presented as a continuous passion of the Deity. The absolute Spirit forever amuses itself with the "sacred sport" of ever changing emanations and manifestations. Myriads of "descents" are recorded in their sacred books, of all degrees and forms of grotesqueness, and not a few of unblushing vileness. It is an interesting fact that the same Krishna who poses, and by millions of Hindus is accepted, as the Supreme Deity, is nevertheless represented in the most popular books of Hinduism to-day—the Puranas, which are known in their legends to all Hindus and which wield a supreme influence over them in their life—as a very different being. In these books the story of Krishna is one of fetid, unblushing immorality and voluptuousness. The publishing of these narratives in the English language in a western land at the present time would be considered a crime punishable with imprisonment. And thus this Hindu god, who is the most popular in India and who appeals most to the imagination of the people, led a life upon earth whose record is a story of immorality which brings a crimson blush to the pure.

But, to return to the Hindu conception of incarnation, it must be remembered that it is unique in this particular; viz. that it regards the Deity as continually returning to the world to visit and to help human beings. In the Gita, Krishna remarks:—

The inadequacy of any one incarnation is here proclaimed, and the idea of constant communication with and impartation of himself to humanity through repeated descents is here inculcated. And it is a fundamental conception of Hinduism—a conception which differentiates it essentially from the Christian religion.

From this remark of Krishna, who speaks here as the Supreme Being, one would suppose that Hindu incarnations have been, and still are, definitely intended to enhance human piety upon earth, and have been such as to accomplish this purpose. As a matter of fact, the historic or legendary incarnations of India, as they are now recorded in their sacred books, have practically no ethical or spiritual content. I defy any Hindu to take the narratives of these descents, as found in the Puranas and other books, and show from them that there was anything more than physical and social relief to men intended by them or accomplished through them. I have yet to find, in those narratives, the conception of human sin and moral depravity and of the purpose of the incarnation to break the fetters of sin and to bring spiritual light and moral beauty to those among whom it manifested itself. The gulf which thus stands between the Hindu ideal of incarnation and the real incarnations which are recorded in Hindu literature, including that of Krishna himself, is wide and impassable. One has well said that the incarnation of Krishna is an incarnation of lust, and the record of his 16,100 wives and 180,000 sons is but a suggestion of the correctness of this estimate. Even the incarnation of Buddha, which, doubtless, is the highest and best among those incorporated into the Hindu Pantheon, is expressly stated by Hindu authorities to be for the purpose of deceiving and destroying the people.

When one begins to compare the picture of the Christian Incarnation with that of any and of all those that occupy the Hindu mind, and fill many volumes of Hindu literature, we pass from noon-day light into Egyptian darkness.

2. The doctrine of âtma, or the human self, or soul, is more in accordance with the Sankya than the Vedantic school. The individual soul is represented, not as a part of the Supreme Soul, which is the distinct doctrine of the Adwaitha philosophy, but as a separate entity which is immutable and eternal. Listen to Krishna's argument to Arjuna, in order to urge him into battle and to shed the blood of his friends: "Learned men grieve not for the living nor the dead. Never did I not exist, nor you, nor these rulers of men; nor will any of us ever hereafter cease to be. As in this body, infancy and youth and old age come to the embodied self, so does the acquisition of another body; a sensible man is not deceived about that.... There is no existence for that which is unreal; there is no non-existence for that which is real.... These bodies, appertaining to the embodied self which is eternal, indestructible, and indefinable, are said to be perishable; therefore do engage in battle, O descendant of Bharata! He who thinks it to be the killer and he who thinks it to be killed, both know nothing. It kills not, is not killed. It is not born, nor does it ever die, nor, having existed, does it exist no more. Unborn, everlasting, unchangeable, and primeval, it is not killed when the body is killed.... But even if you think that it is constantly born, and constantly dies, still, O you mighty man of arms! you ought not to grieve thus. For to one that is born, death is certain; and to one that dies, birth is certain."

There is a great deal more in this line of the indestructibility of the soul; but nothing is said of the Vedantic idea that the soul has no real, separate existence, and that even this illusory existence, in human conditions, will terminate when the self shall be recognized to be, as it really is, an unsevered and inseparable part of the Supreme Soul.

The eternal existence of the soul is posited by every school of Hindu thought. In the Sankya philosophy, the human self, as we have seen, is a separate, uncreated entity; and the teaching of the Divine Lay concerning it is in harmony with this. And it must be confessed that in many respects this doctrine is inferior to the Vedantic, which emphasizes the spiritual character, and the divine origin and destiny, of the soul.

3. The doctrine of Liberation, or of Redemption, as found in the Bhagavad Gita, is a strange combination of all the ways which Brahmanism has inculcated through its many schools, with other ways here added. "In every way men follow in my path," declared Krishna. In the pursuance of any religious practices whatever, men were assured that they would be acceptable if they were only Krishna-olaters.

(1) But the highest path which leads unto God is the path of knowledge (Gnana). "Sacrifices of various sorts are laid down in the Vedas. Know them all to be produced from action, and knowing this you will be released from the fetters of this world. The sacrifice of knowledge is superior to the sacrifice of wealth, for action is wholly and entirely comprehended in knowledge.... Even if you are the most sinful of all sinful men, you will cross over all trespasses by means of the boat of knowledge alone. As a fire well kindled, O Arjuna! reduces fuel to ashes, so the fire of knowledge reduces all actions to ashes. For there is in this world no means of sanctification like knowledge, and that one perfected by devotion finds within one's self in time. He who has faith, whose senses are restrained, and who is assiduous, obtains knowledge. Obtaining knowledge he acquires, without delay, the highest tranquillity.... Therefore, O descendant of Bharata! destroy with the sword of knowledge these misgivings of yours which fill your mind, and which are produced from ignorance." "He who is possessed of knowledge, who is always devoted, and whose worship is addressed to one only, is esteemed highest. For to the man of knowledge I am dear above all things, and he is dear to me. All these are noble, but the man possessed of knowledge is deemed by me to be my own self."

From time immemorial Indian sages have looked upon God as the Supreme Intelligence; He is the absolute Wisdom, and to know Him or it, and to know that "I am it" (Tat twam asi), this is the highest wisdom (Brahma Gnana), and it gives immediate entrance into the heaven of beatification or of absorption. And the only sin which such a man, and which this system of thought, recognizes is the sin of ignorance (Avidia); that is, the folly, or stupidity, of thinking that one's soul is separate from the divine Soul. To know, under these mundane conditions of delusion (Maya), and while under the tyranny of passion and of action (Karma), that I am, after all, identical with the divine Spirit, and that the thought of a separate existence is a snare and a bondage,—this is the immediate shattering of my earthly bondage and the full entrance of my soul (like a drop of water to its mother ocean) into the eternal peace and tranquillity (Sayutcha) of the godhead—a state of unconscious calm which shall never after be disturbed.

Thus the highest way of salvation, as taught by Hindus of all classes, is the way of knowledge. It is the highest step in the progress of human redemption. All other ways of salvation are but preliminary, or stepping-stones, to this. There is no return to the bondage of this world of Him who has crossed the river of death "in the boat of knowledge." All others must again return and further, by new births, the cause of the soul's emancipation.

(2) The second path of liberation here inculcated is that of self-restraint, of asceticism. From time immemorial the ascetic has been India's ideal of a man of piety. He is a man who has turned his back upon the pleasures of the world, even its harmless amusements and physical enjoyments, and has given himself to stern rigid self-denial. By thus denying himself every pleasure that body can bring and every satisfaction that human society can furnish; yea, more, by a renunciation of everything worldly to the extent of supreme physical pain and social deprivation, he separates and weans himself from all that is temporal, that he may pass on in sadness up the pathway of redemption. This is the way of Yoga; and the Yogi to-day finds highest admiration in India as its ideal of life.

In the Divine Lay also this pathway of Yoga finds emphasis and exaltation.

"The devotee whose self is contented with knowledge and experience, who is unmoved, who has restrained his senses, and to whom a sod, a stone, and gold are alike, is said to be devoted.... A devotee should constantly devote himself to abstraction, remaining in a secret place, alone, with his mind and self restrained, without expectations and without belongings. Fixing his seat firmly in a clean place, not too high nor too low, and covered over with a sheet of cloth, a deerskin, and kusa grass—and there seated on that seat, fixing his mind exclusively on one point with the working of the mind and sense restrained, he should practise devotion for the purity of self.... Thus constantly devoting himself to abstraction, a devotee whose mind is restrained attains that tranquillity which culminates in final emancipation and assimilation with me.... The self-restrained, embodied self lies at ease within the city of nine portals, renouncing all actions by the mind, not doing or causing anything to be done."

This path of abstraction and asceticism leaves the soul to theosophic knowledge, which is consummated in the supreme bliss of assimilation with the Divine.

So enamoured has India been of this method of life throughout the centuries that Yoga has been reduced to a science, and has been elaborated to a degree which is ridiculous and almost idiotic. Listen, for instance, to Krishna's instructions where he speaks of the ascetic as "holding his body, head, and neck even and unmoved, remaining steady, looking at the tip of his own nose," etc. These ridiculous posturings and idiotic attitudes cannot, as has been well said by Barth, but lead to idiocy or to a loss of all mental aptitude.

The ultimate aim of Yoga is to reduce the soul to tranquillity and quiescence, by abstracting the mind from all things earthly, and thus leading to cessation from action; for action is said to lead to new fruit, which must be eaten by the soul; and for this purpose new births are necessary, which delay final absorption in the deity.

The spirit of Hinduism is thus evident in its exaltation of this method of life. It has made the path of abstraction and the elimination of every thought, emotion, and ambition, its ideal. In other words, man, by self-repression and the effacement of every faculty of mind and body, is to attain unto final beatification or emancipation. This is an end in itself, according to the Hindu plan of life.

In Christianity, on the other hand, self-realization and not self-effacement must be the consummation of life. The way of the Cross, that is, the path of self-denial, is indeed most rigidly enjoined; but it is the denial of the lower self, the meanest passions of the soul, in order that the highest faculties may find complete realization. Thus, in Christianity, also, asceticism has a place of value; but it is as a means to a higher end, and that is, perfect growth and development of the man unto the "measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

(3) It also possesses the distinction of emphasizing works or action as necessary to salvation. Indeed, the Bhagavad Gita is unique among the books of India in teaching that action is superior to renunciation.

Sri Krishna says: "Renunciation and pursuit of action are both instruments of happiness. But of the two, pursuit of action is superior to renunciation of action."

This is, indeed, strange teaching in the realm of Hindu literature, where action is universally taught to be both in itself an evil and to be the cause of sin. Krishna, by some magic of his own power, here reverses the ordinary Hindu teaching. "He who has controlled his senses and who identifies his self with every being, is not tainted, though he performs actions." "He who, casting off all attachment, performs actions, dedicating them to Brâhm, is not tainted by sin, as the lotus leaf is not tainted by water." Indeed, we are told that some "perform actions for attaining purity of self." Thus we see inculcated the peculiarly un-Hindu doctrine that he who works for God is for that reason absolved from the fruit of his action; yea, more, by his very acts attains unto purity, and approaches the consummation of absorption. Still more, the very motive of Krishna, in this Divine Song, is to stir up the warlike courage of Arjuna and to lead him into the bloody activities of war. "Therefore do you, too, perform actions, as was done by men of olden times."

But action, in order that it may be effective, must be according to prescribed rules. Any work which is inculcated in the sacred books is both sacred and useful in the scheme of redemption. And among these prescribed works, few are more useful than the performance of sacrifice. Men "have their sins destroyed by sacrifice. Those who eat the nectar-like leavings of the sacrifice prepare for the eternal Brâhm. This world is not for those who perform no sacrifice. Thus sacrifices of various sorts are laid down in the Vedas. Know them all produced from action, and knowing this you will be released from the fetters of this world."

Idolatry, also, is a part of this sacred duty. "Desiring the success of action, men in this world worship the divinities, for in this world of the mortals, the success produced by action is soon obtained." "Those who worship the divinities go to the divinities, and my worshippers, too, go to me." "Even those, O Son of Kunti, who being devotees of other divinities worship with faith, worship me only, but irregularly. For I am the enjoyer as well as Lord of all sacrifices. But they know me not truly, therefore do they fall," i.e. they return to the world of mortals. This teaching may be called polytheism rather than idolatry. And yet at the time this book was written, polytheism had already degenerated into idolatry.

The most definite and multitudinous courses of action are those enforced by the caste system. And these also are emphasized in this song. Krishna here informs us that he is the author of the caste system. "The four-fold division of castes was created by me according to the apportionment of qualities and duties." Elsewhere, in Hindu writings, we are abundantly informed that Brâhm created these four divisions of men from his head, his shoulders, his loins, and his feet, respectively.[3]

He only lives well and works worthily who lives in strict accordance with caste rules, and who works in obedience to the dictates of caste tyranny. We are here informed that "one's own duty, though defective, is better than another's duty well performed. Death in performing one's own duty is preferable; the performance of the duty of others is dangerous." Here, of course, "one's own duty" is the duty prescribed to a man by the Hindu caste system. "The duties of Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas, and of Sudras, too, O terror of your foes, are distinguished according to the qualities born of nature. Tranquillity, restraint of the sense, penance, purity, forgiveness, straightforwardness, also knowledge, experience, and belief in the future world, this is the natural duty of the Brahmans. Valour, glory, courage, dexterity, not slinking away from battle, gifts, exercise of lordly power, this is the natural duty of Kshatriyas. Agriculture, tending cattle, trade, this is the natural duty of Vaisyas. And the natural duty of Sudras, too, consists in service. Every man intent on his own respective duties obtains perfection." And, again, "One's duty, though defective, is better than another's duty well performed. Performing the duty prescribed by nature one does not incur sin. One should not abandon a natural duty though tainted with evil."

Thus the most stupendous system of social and religious evil that the world has ever known—the Hindu caste system—is here boldly taught and inculcated as the most sacred duty of life. One man is born for pious leadership, another born to fight, another born for menial service; and woe be to any one of them who abandons this so-called "natural duty" and strives for a betterment or a change of life! This is the divinely inculcated system of bondage which has enthralled India for twenty-five centuries.

But it is gratifying to know that, though taught and inculcated in this highest book of their faith, Hindus are beginning to denounce the whole system. Both a social and a religious consciousness are beginning to rebel against its very existence.

But we pass from this lowest aspect of "action" to the highest when we remark that all acts should, according to Krishna, be free from attachment. No duty is more frequently enforced in the Bhagavad Gita than that of detachment in religious activity; nor is there any higher than this within the whole compass of this Song. It is the duty of man to work out righteousness and to exercise virtue without regard to the results or the fruits of his action. It is the high-water mark of the teaching of the book.

"Your business is with action alone; not by any means with fruit. Let not the fruit of action be your motive to action." "Wretched are those whose motive to action is the fruit of action." Therefore, perform all action, which must be performed, without attachment. For a man, performing action without attachment, attains the Supreme. "Forsaking all attachment to the fruit of action, always contented, dependent on none, he does nothing at all, though he engages in action. Devoid of expectations, restraining the mind and the self, and casting off all belongings, he incurs no sin."

We must not, however, give to this detachment a Christian value. For it is a part of Hindu thought to condemn every emotion and sentiment, however lofty as an asset of life. It regards every desire, however noble in itself, and every sentiment, however exalted, as essentially evil; for it is a momentary barrier to that equilibrium and quiescence of soul which the Hindu has always maintained to be the highest cultivation of the self. Therefore, action, in order to be of any permanent value, must be severed from every passion, desire, or expectation. And thus the Hindu does not here seek so much the existence of pure altruism as he does the absence of desire, which means soul unrest and the removal of one of the barriers to soul emancipation. It is, he says, when love and every other passion cools off into a quiet intellectual calm, and the soul is animated, not by sentiment, but by clear vision, that Sayutcha, or absorption into the Brâhm, is attained.

If, then, detachment is a keyword to Higher Hinduism and man is forbidden to seek after any good, even the highest, in connection with his religious activities, what then can be an adequate motive to a religious life of good works?

Here is introduced another keyword of this Eclecticism—the word Bhakti.

The doctrine of Bhakti finds a supreme place in the Divine Song. Bhakti means devotion or love to Krishna himself. Perhaps the Christian word "Faith" best expresses the full meaning of the word Bhakti. Krishna says, in substance, Have no attachment to the results of your acts; but be attached to me who am the supreme God, and live and act according to the noble impulse of that attachment.

"Among all devotees, he who being full of faith worships me, with his inmost self intent on me, is esteemed by me to be the most devoted." "Even if a very ill-conducted man worships me, not worshipping any one else, he must certainly be deemed to be good, for he has well resolved." "Place your mind on me, become my devotee, my worshipper; reverence me, and thus making me your highest goal, and devoting yourself to abstraction, you will certainly come to me." "On me place your mind, become my devotee, sacrifice to me, reverence me, you will certainly come to me. I declare to you truly, you are dear to me. I will release you from all sins. Be not grieved." "No one amongst men is superior to him in doing what is dear to me."

It is probable that the Bhagavad Gita was the first to introduce this doctrine of faith. It is, of course, a doctrine possible only in connection with a personal God, and was doubtless introduced through the new cult of Krishna-olatry. It is foreign to Vedantism, whose God is the Impersonal and the Ineffable One; foreign also to the Sankya school, where God is neither known nor needed. It is essentially a new teaching, and is a peculiar feature of the worship of the incarnations of Vishnu.

But, introduced by this Song of the Adorable One, it has been incorporated into the Hindu religion, and figures now as one of the most powerful motives of that faith. And this new doctrine brings the Hindu religion into warmer relationship to Christianity than at any other point. Sir Monier Williams truly claims that Hinduism, in no other teaching, so closely approaches Christianity as in the doctrine of faith.

But, like all other teachings of Hinduism, this doctrine also has been considerably distorted in the process of appropriation; so that "faith" in the worship of Vishnu's incarnations, to-day, is more potential as an act than is "faith" in Christianity. For, in Hinduism, it matters not on what god or ritual the Bhakthan places his faith, it has power to redeem him from all troubles.

It should be remembered that Bhakti is perhaps the most distinctive and mighty influence in Vaishnavism, if not in all Hinduism, at the present time.

(4) Little is said in Hinduism with a view to inculcate and to reveal the efficiency of altruism, or the love of man for man. In the Bhagavad Gita hardly any reference is made to this which is so dominant a note in the Christian faith. Krishna does remark that one should have "regard also to keeping people to their duties," in performing action. "Whatever a great man does, that other men also do; ... wise men should not shake the convictions of the ignorant who are attached to action, but acting with devotion should make them apply themselves to all action." "He who identifies himself with every being is not tainted, though he performs actions." "The sages who are intent on the welfare of all the beings obtain the Brahmic bliss."

This certainly is neither very clear, nor at all adequate, as the inculcation of the most fundamental of all duties, the love of our fellow-men and the sacrifice of self in the interest of common humanity. The Vedantin claims that the unity of all being, as taught by him, is a strong injunction upon him to love all the parts of that unity. But the Bhagavad Gita does not teach clearly even this Vedantic doctrine. Selfishness is too much stamped upon the Hindu faith. It is too exclusively an individualistic religion. It is every one for himself in the great struggle of man for redemption. It pre-eminently tends to cultivate in man both pride in his own achievement and an exclusively selfish devotion to the consummation of his own redemption.

4. In the Bhagavad Gita little is said of the character of the salvation which is to be achieved by the devotee of Krishna. Indeed, the nature of this consummation is left very much in mystery. We are told that Krishna's worshipper will come to him. "He who, with the highest devotion to me, will proclaim this supreme mystery among my devotees will come to me freed from all doubts." Again we are taught that such a devotee, "understanding me, truly enters into my essence." This carries the definite and universal thought of Hinduism, that man will be absorbed in the Deity. In another place we are told that the worshipper "who is purified by the penance of knowledge has come into my essence."

This is the eschatology of all Hindu Shastras. The peculiar teaching of the Bhagavad Gita concerning action and its emphasis upon a strenuous life in this world would have led us to expect the teaching of a future of some kind of activity. Instead of that, it falls back upon the old and hackneyed pantheistic idea, that the human soul, being ultimately divested of its human bodies, both gross and fine, passes on in its nakedness into oneness with the Absolute, and thus loses all the faculties which, so far as we know, constitute its greatness, power, and glory. In this condition of absorption the human soul is not only deprived of its separate existence, but also of all self-knowledge, which is the true basis of personality.

As to the process of this salvation we are here taught, as in all Hindu writing, that it is attained through metempsychosis, or reincarnation. The human soul, like the divine, in Brahmanism, passes through many incarnations (some writers say 8,400,000) before it receives the crown of perfection, or of absorption. Krishna says: "As a man, casting off old clothes, puts on others and new ones, so the embodied self, casting off old bodies, goes to others and new ones." "I have passed through many births, O Arjuna, and you, also," says Krishna; "I know them all, but you, O terror of your foes! do not know them."

This devious and tedious path of reincarnation is the one over which every soul must pass. And between every incarnation and that which follows, the soul, clothed upon with a subtle body, passes through many heavens and hells in order to eat the fruits of its past actions. And there is a remnant of these fruits left which necessitates the return to a new body and a new human existence.

These upper and nether regions through which the soul passes and settles its accounts with the past, are not in any sense permanent. Concerning this, the Bhagavad Gita says that men, "reaching the holy world of the Lord of Gods, they enjoy in the celestial regions the celestial pleasures of the gods. And having enjoyed that great heavenly world, they enter the mortal world when their merit is exhausted." After, perhaps, millions of these human incarnations (and, indeed, the incarnation may be of lower animal and of vegetable), the self will gradually be perfected, they say, and will pass on into the calm essence of the supreme Soul, as a drop of water descends in rain and blends again with the ocean. I see absolutely no reason why this interminable process of metempsychosis should lead to the perfection of the soul rather than to its complete demoralization. Indeed, there is nothing ethical at all in the character of these reincarnations, so far as they are described by Hindu writers.

III

This, then, is the "Divine Lay" of the Hindu religion, the book most cherished and most highly extolled by more than two hundred and thirty million Hindus.

We are, first of all, impressed by the many contradictions which disfigure the book. Hardly a page is free from conflicting doctrines and methods of life. It could not be otherwise in any effort to harmonize the mutually contradictory teachings of the conflicting schools of religious thought and practice in this complicated faith.

On the other hand, we see in this Song an honest and an able attempt to bring the many tenets of that faith into a consistent whole. And we cannot help feeling that, while the view of God and man here presented, and the ways of salvation here enunciated, are not satisfactory, yet we find scattered through its pages gems of thought and beauties of religious conceptions and instruction which are beyond cavil, and which to-day seem to satisfy many millions of our fellow-men.

But, at the close of a careful perusal of the book, one feels that it is radically unsatisfying.

In the first place, it is wanting in any power for life. In order to feel this, one has only to compare it, for a moment, with the Gospels of Christianity. We find here philosophical disquisitions on the Divine Being which few men can understand and none can hope to harmonize. In the Gospels, on the other hand, we see presented a scheme of life which, at the same time, satisfies the highest philosophy and is perfectly intelligible to the most simple-minded. Here a bewildering number of mutually contradictory ways of life are urged upon us, not one of which can appeal in fulness and power to the common man. There do we find one clear way of salvation—the way of faith in Christ; and in order to walk in that way the power of the Divine Spirit is promised to every one, even to the humblest soul and to the greatest sinner, that he might accept the Christ and live in and through Him a holy and a righteous life.

Above all, we have here represented an incarnation the records of whose doings, in the sacred writings of the Hindus, shock us by their immorality and disgust us by their coarseness. And yet he arrogates to himself the nature and the functions, as he makes upon us the demands, of the supreme Deity. There, on the other hand, we witness the spectacle of the Christ who so lived the divine life, and whose immaculate holiness is so overwhelming, that His claim to be one with the Godhead brings no shock or sense of incongruity to any one to-day. He has so impressed men of all generations that untold millions, in all lands, have felt no hesitation in believing Him when He says, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Here do we indeed find the supreme contrast between the manual of Hindu faith and the Gospels of Christianity; and it is a contrast at the most vital point of religion.

CHAPTER VII

But it is well to remember these are not all of Hindu literature; nor do they represent the current thought or the general religious life of the people.

They indeed reveal the highest and the best that has ever come to light in the thought and spiritual culture of this people. For that reason, the Bhagavad Gita is worthy of the name we gave it—the Hindu bible.

In view of all these things, who would say that God did not visit this people, or left Himself without witness among them? While He was leading the Hebrews in the time of Moses, He was also stirring this people through its old rishis, or sages. While He was rebuking the degenerate Jewish people through their later prophets, He was raising and inspiring the great prophet of India, the Buddha, to protest against a debased Brahmanism.

But let it not be supposed that this literature of "Higher Hinduism" is, in any sense, popular in India. Those religious books which engage the mind of the masses are of a very different class. They are the wild legends of the Puranas, and inane dialogues and lying incantations of the Tantras—two classes of works which are both the most popular and are lowest in the range of their ideas and most demoralizing in the cults which they present.

These books were ostensibly written for the common people and for women. And the common people delight in them and are intoxicated by their religious exaggerations and excesses.

Thus the faith of the people, as a whole, is far removed, in its grovelling thought, its idolatrous practices, and its thousand-headed ritual, from the teaching of Higher Hinduism.

Above all, we must remember that the Hinduism of to-day is not the Brahmanism of thirty centuries ago. It has been the passion of that faith, from the beginning, to absorb all cults and faiths that have come into contact with it. Hinduism is an amorphous thing; it has been compared to a many-coloured and many-fibred cloth, in which are mixed together Brahmanism, Buddhism, Demonolatry, and Christianity. And all these, utterly regardless of the many contradictions which they bring together, form modern Hinduism.

This is true also of the gods of India. The earliest of the Vedic gods had elements of nobility in them. The most universally recognized of their divinities in primitive times, Varuna, is free from the vain passions and moral obliquities of more recent gods. Indeed, as one follows the course of time and the consequent multiplication of deities in India, one sees in their pantheon a steady deterioration of character, until we come to the most popular of modern Hindu deities, Krishna and Kali, the one well-called "the incarnation of lust," and the other "the goddess of blood." One is the deification of human passion, while the other is an apotheosis of brute force. And yet the cults of those two deities have attained, at the present time, the maximum of popularity throughout the land.

The same fact is manifest in connection with the customs of the people. In early Vedic times, hardly one of those institutions which now so disfigure this religion existed among the people. Idolatry, the caste system, and the many forms of degradation of women are of later growth. Never, in all the history of the country, did they exist and flourish as they do at the present time.

Thus it will be seen that, while the religion of the Brahmans in its earliest, primitive stage was merely an ethnic faith and largely the echo of the spiritual yearning of the human soul, its development has neither added to its power nor broadened its horizon. On the contrary, it grows weaker and has, age after age, added superstition to superstition, until it has reached its maximum of error and of evil at the present time.

It is wise neither to ignore nor to underestimate the best that is in a faith; nor is it fair to shut one's eyes to its achievement as revealed in the life of the common people.

Indeed, the religious life of the masses is the truest index of the real value of a religion, if it has wrought upon them many centuries, as Hinduism has, in this land.

I

In the West the national evolutionist says to us, "Let the people of India alone, that they may evolve their own faith. It is not by cataclysmic change, but by growth, that they will ultimately find their true redemption." Others, who have listened perhaps to the pleasing words of a clever, yellow-robed Hindu Swami, ask the question, "Why should we spend our money in sending the Gospel to these wonderfully bright people of the East; are they not able to take care of themselves; and is not their faith adequate to their needs?"

To this we simply say: "Come with us to India and see for yourselves. Live, as some of us have, for a third of a century in this land, and see, hear, feel, and understand what this Hinduism is. And, having understood the situation, ask yourselves whether this ancestral faith of India has in itself real saving power and redeeming efficacy for any one." I maintain that, to know Hinduism, is to feel a deep sympathy with the people who have inherited it as their faith, and to desire to bring to them the Gospel of life and of salvation in Christ Jesus. The people of India are, perhaps, the most religious upon earth. In this respect they are very unlike the Japanese and Chinese, who are worldly, prosaic, practical. Hindus are poetic, other-worldly, and spiritually minded. They have a keen instinct for things of the spirit. They are, also, very unlike the people of the West. Among Westerners, religion is largely an incident in life. It has for them a separate department, a small corner, in the life. In the East, on the other hand, religion enters into every detail of life. There is hardly a department or an interest in life which is not subsidized by faith and which has not to be conducted religiously.

Moreover, the people of India thought out and elaborated most profound systems of theosophic thought in the far, remote past. When our ancestors were in the depths of savagery, Indian sages were indulging in metaphysical disquisitions which are even to-day the admiration of western sages. And there were many among those ancient Hindu rishis whose self-propelled flight toward God and divine things, and whose spiritual aspirations and yearnings were so beautiful that we can but speak with profound respect and entertain the highest admiration of them. Religion is not merely a philosophy, or even an aspiration; it is something vastly more than this.

The Hindu Swami will visit the West and discourse sweetly, in persuasive English, upon Hindu philosophy. But he will not practise his religious rites or reveal his idolatrous habits and his bondage of caste to those western people who admire him. These things would at once create a revulsion of feeling against him and his philosophy. And yet these are much more an essential part of his faith than all his moral platitudes and eloquent disquisitions.

And it should not be forgotten that this same Swami, in the very act of crossing the oceans to visit the West, violates one of the most prominent commands of his faith.

II

What, then, is Popular Hinduism?

I shall endeavour to analyze it and present some of its outstanding features, such as are witnessed all over the land.

1. That which obtrudes itself upon all sides and which is, perhaps, its most determining factor is its caste system. In other lands, mean social distinctions obtain and divide the people. In India only, Caste is a religious institution, founded by the authority of Heaven, penetrating every department and entering into every detail of life, and enforced by strictly religious penalties. One has well said that Hinduism and caste are convertible terms.

2. Another outstanding feature of popular Hinduism is its Polytheism.

While pantheism is the essential philosophy of the land,—a pantheism which denies the existence of all beings and everything save Brâhm (the Supreme Soul),—nevertheless this pantheism has, in the popular mind, degenerated into the greatest pantheon the world has ever known. Even ten centuries ago its gods were said to number three hundred and thirty millions! And this army of deities has been multiplying ever since. Even twenty-five centuries ago, the fertile imagination of the Brahman had so peopled this world with gods and godlets of all grades that the stern and sensible mind of the great Buddha became disgusted with the whole pantheon; and he established his new faith as a reaction from the old to the extent of ignoring any Divine Being.

If, in these earlier days, such a man was unable to endure this manifestation of human folly, what can we not say in these days, when, in addition to the acknowledged host of well-known Hindu deities, every family has its god, and every hamlet its protecting demons; and when trees, rivers, mountains, and a thousand other objects represent to the popular mind separate godlets? One can well say that India has gone mad in its passion for populating the world with gods.

3. Moreover, this pantheon has been incarnated. It has descended into a wild and hideous idolatry. There is no other land on earth where idolatry is so rampant as it is in India. Images are found everywhere. If the gods are numberless, how much more the idols which represent them, and which are found in every hamlet and house and upon roadsides!

In addition to those idols which are made for regular and permanent worship, there are myriad others which are made of clay and other perishable substances, to be used for the time only, and then to be thrown into the river or to be washed away by the rain.

And what hideous objects these idols of India are! The images of the gods of the ancient Greeks were beautiful, and one feels sometimes almost inclined to excuse an image-worship where ignorance weds art to religion and combines beauty with devotion.

But there is no such excuse for the idolatry of India. In all my travels through this great land I have hardly seen an image, or an idol, which is what may be called an artistically beautiful object. On the other hand, many of them are peculiarly gross and revolting in appearance. The most universally worshipped god in all India is Ganesh. His idols are found all over the land, not only in temples and shrines, but on roadsides, and in all places where people assemble. And this Ganesh, the son of Siva, is represented by the grossest and most hideous idol. This "pot-bellied god" has his body crowned with an elephant head!

Of course, Hindu taste cannot be judged by western standards. One cannot fail to recognize this fact in trying to judge types of human beauty in this land. But even Hindu types of beauty are not at all realized in their idols. It would often seem as if that which was most revolting in appearance is that which appeals most strongly to the Hindu, as an outward expression of the divine. In any case, it is true that the idolatry of India is farthest removed from the chaste, the beautiful, and the elevating.

And this evil is intensified by the fact that all worshipped idols are bathed with oil, and therefore attract all the dust, dirt, and grime of the immediate vicinity.

Educated Hindus, though they tell you that these idols are only for the ignorant masses, rarely decline to unite with their families in bringing their offerings to, and in worshipping, the same.

Some will tell us that in idolatry people do not worship the idol itself, but the god who is supposed to reside within it. Even if this were true, one could not admire such a worship did he know the character of the god which is supposed to reside therein. But their statement regarding this is not true. I have personally inquired of many of the common people who are idolaters, and I have never yet found a man whose mind, in worship, passes beyond the idol itself. I admit that the educated mind may leap in thought behind the image; but the masses of the people do not. It is, at best, a debasing worship, and drags the people down to the level of the hideous objects before which they prostrate themselves.