(1) Animism. At the base of all the religions, perhaps at the base of all religions all over the world, lies a mass of primitive beliefs, not perhaps yet consciously classed by the holders of them as distinctly religious, which are called by the question-begging name of Animism. By this statement, I mean merely that many of the more ignorant and simple folk who profess and call themselves Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Muhammadans, or Christians, are in fact at the animistic stage of intellectual evolution. The religious impulse is there, but has not become specialised. There is no religious theorising, but merely communal and transmitted beliefs about the nature of things in general. Perhaps I had better quote Sir H. H. Risley's definition of Hinduism as it exists in India. "It conceives of man," he says, "as passing through life surrounded by a ghostly company of powers, elements, tendencies, mostly impersonal in their character, shapeless phantasms of which no image can be made and no definite idea can be formed. Some of these have departments or spheres of influence of their own: one presides over cholera, another over small pox, another over cattle disease; some dwell in rocks, others haunt trees, others, again, are associated with rivers, whirlpools, waterfalls, or strange pools hidden in the depths of the hills. All of them require to be diligently propitiated by reason of the ills which proceed from them, and usually the land of the village provides the means for their propitiation."
If this definition, that of a kindly and experienced student of primitive thought and emotion, be correct, there is already an attempt at analysis and classification. But the analysis is feeble, the classification very elementary. The differences which seem obvious to the civilised man, who inherits the analytic inventions and investigations of long series of ancestors, are not yet realised. There is practically no distinction between things animate and inanimate, since all may be maleficent and must therefore, on occasion, be propitiated. There is no sense of things subter-human, human, and superhuman. Still less, of course, is there any recognition of the difference between things religious and things secular. Grown men face the facts of life as children do, and receive the impressions life conveys to them en masse, without making much effort to sort them out. In our own case, we learn to classify from our elders, and classification, literary, scientific, social, religious, is a large part of what we call education. How does primitive man begin to sort out the facts of life, to remember them in classes, to discriminate between human beings and other animals, to place animals above inanimate things, himself above animals, and, finally, the gods above himself? The history of the evolution of Hinduism throws some light on this evolution as it occurred in India.
Meanwhile, it is worth noticing that the Census returns of 1901 returned the Animists of India at only about 8½ millions, or less than 3 per cent. Those who returned themselves as Hindu or Musalman were so recorded, whatever their degree of mental and social culture. An attempt has been made in the Census of 1911 to distinguish between true Hindus and Animists who call themselves Hindu. How far the attempt was successful, I do not know. I can well believe that it was not welcomed even by educated and intelligent Hindus. Many years ago, I remember a highly educated Hindu in Bengal telling me that there is no distinction between Animists and Hindus; that an Animist is merely a Hindu "in the making" as it were. But perhaps that assertion only amounted to an admission that the Hindu mind is averse from the kind of intellectual evolution by conscious analysis and classification which is dear to Western imaginations. Yet the history of Hinduism and its branches shows that such an evolution has taken place.
Plate VII
A Ghasiya
(Mirzapur district)
I should like to suggest that at the stage of human evolution which we call animistic, man takes the facts of life in the lump, as it were, and does not sort them out into classes. If we are to judge by what we know of the history of Hinduism, the evolution of primitive man from this unclassifying stage is something as follows. Art comes into play. The practice of song and draughtsmanship introduces specialisation. From singing comes verse, from drawing comes some kind of rude writing. The first trains the memory, the second aids memory. Then comes the social classification which results from the breaking up of clans, and contact with other clans and communities. All men are not the same, and the difference is grasped and finds expression in language. The new power of classification is extended to other things. The difference between animate and inanimate things is understood, and their relative powers of helping or hurting the tribal community. When classification has proceeded thus far, the inference is easy that as what is known of the faculties of subter-human beings and things to benefit or hurt humans does not by any means account for the joys and calamities of life, there must be a class of superhuman beings who are to be conciliated. By their supposed deeds they are judged. If they are, on the whole, kindly and easily placated, they will be classified by some title which they will usually share with great and good men. If their action on mankind be harmful, they will bear the names given to malicious or inimical races or individuals. At a subsequent stage of analytical evolution their generic names will be confined to their own class; they will be gods or demons. Many Hindus have hardly gone beyond this stage, and we can hardly be surprised that some objection should be taken to too rigid a distinction between Hindus and Animists. In practice, it is often difficult to say whether a given observance is Animistic or Hindu. Here is one case, out of thousands that occur in India, from my own experience. In the seaport town of Chittagong is the shrine of the famous Muhammadan saint Pir Badr, a holy man often invoked by travellers on sea or river. In a niche in a little pillar in the open air, Christians and Buddhists, Hindus and Musalmans alike place lighted candles by way of propitiation. This, surely, is an observance of the Animistic type. It has no part in any theorised or classified religious system. It is merely the attempt to gratify an influence which may help or harm. Animism is consistent with the most vivid, if childlike, curiosity. All is grist that comes to that primitive mill. But the resulting flour of thought is, as it were, coarse and unsifted. Artistic specialisation, the birth of literature, brings a need of classification. Out of propitiation comes ritual, a belief in the efficacy of sacramental gestures, offerings, formulÆ. But, as time goes on, they are appropriated to the service of highly specialised deities. As man learns the advantage of a division of labour and a specialisation of function, so his gods become "departmental." The classification will not be that of modern times. Among animate things will be reckoned fire, and air, the sun and moon and the twinkling stars. But the process of analysing and sorting will have begun.
(2) The Vedas. The Aryan immigrants seem to have brought a scanty and summary theology with them, or it may be that in different surroundings they forgot their old religious ideas, and, with the help of Dravidian and other aboriginal speculations, evolved new ones. Sir G. Grierson has suggested that the fact that they migrated in two afterwards hostile bodies finds its reflection, in the Vedas, in the fabled antagonism of the rival priests Visvamitra and Vasishta; in the Mahabharata in the famous war between the Kauravas and Pandavas, the Eastern counterpart of the siege of Troy. The Vedas are four collections of ritual hymns, used in connection with the oblation of the intoxicating juice of the Soma, the moon-plant, or with the sacrificial Fire. The Rig-veda (the oldest) and its supplement the Sama-veda are now held to have been composed when the Aryans had reached the junction of the Panjab rivers with the Indus: the Black and White Yajur-veda when they reached the Sutlej and the Jumna; the Atharva-veda, which contains the lower beliefs of aboriginal races, when they had reached Benares. There are gods and goddesses of the sky, the most important being the Sun, and Varuna (the Greek ???a???), afterwards a kind of Hindu Neptune, but in these early days represented as sitting in the vault of heaven, and having the sun and stars as the eyes with which he watches the doings of men. His function was to encourage personal holiness as a human ideal. In the mid-air Indra became pre-eminent on Indian soil, where the dependence of an agricultural people on periodical rains made the rain-god an important deity. On earth the most important deities are Soma and Agni (fire) already mentioned. There was also Yama, the beautiful and stately god of death, who though naturally immortal chose to die, and lead the way for mortal successors to the abodes of the dead. Besides the departmental gods, there is in the Vedas a distinct foreshadowing of Pantheism.
(3) The Brahmanas. When the Aryans reached the "Midland," the upper Gangetic valley, the Vedic hymns were supplemented by new Scriptures, called Brahmanas, which were digests of dicta on matters of ritual for the guidance of priests. These were the beginning of Brahmanism. The elementary Pantheistic theory of the Vedas was developed into a belief in one Spiritual Being or Atman. When manifested and impersonal, this Being was the neuter Brahma; when regarded as the Creator, he was the masculine Brahma; but when manifested in the highest order of intellectual men, he was Brahman, the Brahman priestly class. Following the Brahmanas, was a third order of religious literature, the Upanishads. Dr Hopkins has thus summarised the teaching of these three Scriptures. "In the Vedic hymns, man fears the gods. In the Brahmanas man subdues the gods, and fears God. In the Upanishads man ignores the gods and becomes God." Not that these three kinds of Scripture, these three evolutions of religious speculation, followed one another in chronological order. But this was, roughly, the logical evolution. Finally the doctrine was established that knowledge leads to the supreme bliss of absorption into Brahma, and with this was combined the theory of transmigration.
Even from this extremely crude and simplified statement, it will be evident that the priesthood had secured for themselves an unexampled supremacy, and, in the Midland at least, had placed the administrator and warrior in a state of marked inferiority. But in the surrounding territories, success in arms and government won men the consideration still considered their due among ourselves. In the Midland itself the territory was divided among a number of petty chiefs, who waged perpetual warfare with one another. They were not likely to ignore the prestige won by valour and warlike skill. One of them was Gautama, the Buddha (c. 596-508 B.C.). Another was Vardhamana, his contemporary, the founder of Jainism. This is not the place to tell of Buddhism, which, as a recognised creed, though it has spread far to the north and east, and is the religion of Ceylon and Burma, only survives in India proper in faint influences on the belief and practice of various Hindu sects.
(4) Jainism. The Jain Reform still exists and numbers over a million of followers. Its doctrines have a vague and general resemblance to those of Buddhism, not because either copied the other, but because they sprang from a common origin. In both Nirvana, the "blowing out," as it were, of the lamp of life is the goal aimed at. But to the Buddhist, Nirvana means the peace of extinction; to the Jain, it is final escape from the body after various metamorphoses. Mr Crooke defines the fivefold vow of the Jains as prescribing (1) the sanctity of human life; (2) renunciation of lying, which proceeds from anger, greed, fear or mirth; (3) refusal to take things not given; (4) chastity; (5) renunciation of worldly attachments. The Jain pantheon consists of deified saints who are either Tirthan-kara, "making a passage through the circuit of life," or Jina, "the victorious ones."
(5) Hinduism Proper. These reforms, joined with the spread of the Brahmanical faith into lands where the authority of Aryan priests was not recognised, produced something which, in its way, resembles the Protestant Reformation. The Vedic religion had come to be the monopoly of a limited order of hereditary priests. This ritual supremacy was broken up by two influences. A new national ideal of worship found expression in the Epics, which to this day, in metrical translations, are the layman's scripture all over India. Secondly, the Vedic pantheon was enormously enlarged by the admission of non-Aryan deities and aboriginal modes of worship. Hence arose the body of writings known as the Puranas, or "ancient" books, not all really old in the trace of their composition, but perhaps deserving their title as containing very old beliefs. Of all these books and their teaching other authorities have written recently in various works on the early history and religious poetry of India, and it would therefore be presumptuous for me to say anything about the religious literature of Hinduism. It is sufficient to say that the Epics introduced, in place of the vague and shadowy Vedic gods, heroic incarnations of divine virtue, wisdom and valour, and thus led to the sectarian worship of the two active members of a new supreme triad of gods, Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, and Siva, the destroyer. Most Hindus are now followers of one or other of the two latter in some incarnation. In early times this sectarian rivalry led to wars and persecutions, but Hinduism is singularly tolerant in matters of belief and doctrine. A Saiva is not a disbeliever in the divinity of the incarnations of Vishnu; a Vaishnava recognises the ascetic powers of Siva. But each has his favourite deity and chiefly studies the scriptures relating to him. The principal incarnations of Vishnu are Krishna and Rama, who seem to have been originally deified heroes of the Midland. There were many Vishnuvite reformers, some of whom, it is interesting to note, may have derived suggestions from the early Christianity of Southern India.
The first of these was Ramanuja, who lived in the eleventh century A.D. Fifth in succession to him was Ramananda, who lived in the fourteenth century and was the missionary of popular Vaishnavism in Northern India. To him that tract owes the prevalence of the cult of Rama and his wife Sita, the hero and heroine of the Epic known as the Ramayana. His chief innovation was the admission of low-caste disciples into the communion. His disciple, the famous Kabir (1380-1420 A.D.), went further. He even linked Hinduism with Islam. Himself a humble weaver, he taught the spiritual equality of all men. God is one, he argued, by whatever name men choose to call Him. The accidents of life, social station and caste, happiness and grief, prosperity and misfortune, are all the results of Maya or Illusion. Happiness comes not by formula or sacrifice but by passionate adoration (bhakti) of God. Kabir's chief importance in the history of Hindu evolution is in the fact that his doctrines were the origin of Sikhism.
Another great name in the democratic Vaishnava reformation was that of Chaitanya (1485-1527 A.D.). Mr E. A. Gait writes of him that he was "a Baidik Brahman. He preached mainly in Central Bengal and Orissa, and his doctrine found ready acceptance among large numbers of the people, especially among those who were still, or had only recently ceased to be, Buddhists. This was mainly due to the fact that he drew his followers from all sources, so much so that even Muhammadans followed him. He preached vehemently against the immolation of animals in sacrifice, and the use of animal food and stimulants, and taught that the true road to salvation lay in bhakti, or fervent devotion to God. He recommended Radha worship, and taught that the love felt by her for Krishna was the highest form of devotion. The acceptable offerings were flowers, money, and the like; but the great form of worship was the Sankirtan, or procession of worshippers playing and singing. The peculiarity of Chaitanya's cult is that the post of spiritual guide, or Goshain, is not confined to Brahmans, and several of those best known belong to the Baidya caste[5]."
The Sikhs. As a religious system, the creed of the Sikhs originated from the Hindu teaching of Kabir, and may yet be reabsorbed into Hinduism, though the Census of 1911 shows that it still flourishes as a separate religion. It began as a religious reform and ended by being a political organisation. It was founded by the Guru Nanak (1469-1538 A.D.) in the Panjab. Its formula was the Unity of God and the Brotherhood of Man. Ultimately it became a martial brotherhood, one of whose objects was by training, diet, and self-denial to present a strong front to the encroachments of Muhammadan invaders from across the north-west frontier. Circumstances led the Sikh confederacy to try its fortune in arms in two fiercely fought campaigns with the growing power of our East India Company. Defeat was followed by a loyal acceptance of British supremacy, and the Sikhs rival the Gurkhas as the best soldiers in the Indian army. Their services during the mutiny of 1857 will never be forgotten.
The Saktas. One other great Hindu sect, that of the Saktas, must be briefly mentioned. It worships the active female principle (prakriti) of one or other of the forms of the Consort of Siva—Durga, Kali, or Parvati. This cult arose in Eastern Bengal or Assam about the fifth century, A.D., and has its own scriptures in the Tantras. This sect is probably due to the recrudescence of very ancient aboriginal cults. It is associated with blood-offerings and libidinous rites. It was denounced by the Vaishnava reformers, but still survives, even among educated men. It affected the later forms of Buddhism.
Finally, by omitting all mention of numerous modern Vaishnava sects, we come to the modern Theistic sects. The Brahmo Samaj of Bengal was founded by the celebrated Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1774-1833) who died and was buried at Clifton. His teachings were continued and developed by his successors Maharshi Devendranath Tagore (the father of the poet Rabindranath Tagore), Keshav Chandra Sen, and Pratap Chandra Majumdar. All of these were men of much piety, eloquence, and learning. Sir Alfred Lyall says that "Brahmoism, as propagated by its latest expounders, seems to be unitarianism of a European type, and as far as one can understand its argument, appears to have no logical stability or locus standi between revelation and pure rationalism; it propounds either too much or too little to its hearers." It has, however, been an effectual bar to the spread of Christianity among the educated classes in Bengal. It enables them to remain in touch with Hinduism, from which an adoption of any European creed would effectually divide them. Its services of praise and prayer, with a sermon or discourse, are held on Sundays, and in form resemble those of the Christian free churches. Its creed consists in a belief in the Unity of God, the brotherhood of man, and direct communion with God without the intervention of any mediator. It may fairly be claimed for it that it has satisfied the religious needs of men most of whom lead exemplary and in some cases saintly lives, without compelling them to join what is regarded as a foreign and uncongenial religion. But for Ram Mohan Roy, educated Bengal might well have furnished the nucleus of a Christian Church of India, since, before his time, many distinguished and able converts were made. I need only mention the late Rev. K. M. Bannerjee. The Brahmo Samaj is divided into three sections. The Adi Samaj, as its name indicates, is the original church. It is the most conservative of the three, and takes its inspiration wholly from the Hindu scriptures, and especially from the Upanishads. The Navavidhan Samaj, founded by Keshav Chandra Sen, "the Church of the New Dispensation," is much more eclectic and has borrowed what it considers acceptable, not only from the holy books of Hinduism, but from Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. The Sadharan (or "general") Brahmo Samaj is the most advanced of the three Churches. It rejects caste and the seclusion of women, allows inter-caste marriages, and is seemingly as far from orthodox Hinduism as from orthodox Christianity. It has even allowed one of its lady members to be married to an Englishman by Brahmo rites. If it can hardly be called Hindu in ritual or in belief, it is Hindu in what is probably regarded as the more important sense of being a purely Indian sect and not a direct product of European missionary zeal.
Another new sect, the Arya Samaj, or Aryan Society, has much influence in the Panjab and North-Western India generally. It was founded by Dayanand Saraswati (1827-53). Its only scriptures are the Vedas. It professes pure monotheism, repudiates idol worship, and is much interested in social reform. It has also at times been mixed up, more or less directly, with political agitation. Like the Brahmo Samaj, it is probably due in its inception to the influence of European religious teaching, but, as is perhaps natural, its acceptance of European ethics is marked by a sturdy resistance to European dogma. The great bulk of Hinduism, however, remains still but little removed from the Animistic stage of religious evolution, and one of the results of the spread of British rule into wild and savage tracts has been the extension of the borders of Hinduism in competition with Christianity. In the rougher and wilder races, not yet sufficiently softened and civilised for the acceptance of the Hindu social system, the Christian missionary prevails. He has been most successful among the Gonds of Central India, among such savage tribes as the Nagas, Garos, and Lushais on the Assam border. Elsewhere Hinduism pursues its quietly imperturbable course and admits savage races to its lower castes as it has always admitted them during the last two thousand years.
Islam in India. Since King George V has more Muhammadan subjects than any other ruler on earth—some 75,000,000 in number, it would not be proper to close a little book on the Peoples of India without saying something of those of their number who are Musalmans. The early Muhammadan invasions of the tenth century were mere predatory raids, and were attended neither by settlement nor conversion. But at the end of the twelfth century Muhammad Ghori overthrew the Hindu dynasties of Delhi and Kanauj and thus opened the way to future Muhammadan conquests. In the sixteenth century Moghal rule was established under Babar and his successors. During the preceding five centuries Hindu India suffered much oppression and wrong at the hands of Muhammadan invaders, but Islam had made no attempt to become an Indian religion. The early Moghal emperors were too busy in consolidating their conquests and organising their administration to have much leisure or inclination for proselytising. Their policy depended largely on co-operation with Rajput princes, whose daughters they married. The influence of Rajput empresses and princesses made for kindly tolerance. It was only under the zealot Aurangzeb that any tendency to forcible conversion showed itself.
The final result of some seven hundred years of Muhammadan rule in various parts of the country is that Musalmans are in excess of Hindus only in the Western Panjab, which is in contact with a purely Muhammadan country, and in Eastern Bengal, where the aboriginal low-caste Hindu was glad to get social promotion by accepting Islam, and where he thrives and prospers at the expense of his Hindu brother, partly because his diet is more nutritious, partly because he does not practise infant-marriage and other debilitating customs.
As has been said above, Animism has affected Islam as well as Hinduism. From the old religion of the country Musalmans have borrowed demonology, a belief in witchcraft, and the worship of departed Pirs or saints. The most remarkable instance of the latter is the sect of the Pachpiriyas of Bengal, the worshippers of the Five Saints, a cult which some have traced to the cult of the five Pandava heroes of the Mahabharata. The five Pirs, however, vary in name from district to district. In Eastern Bengal, no one, whether Hindu or Musalman (or, I had almost said, Christian), begins a journey by boat without a loud and hearty invocation of the Ganges, the Wind, the Five Pirs, and Pir Badr before mentioned.
Of the two great sects of Islam, the Sunnis and the Shias, the former are by far the most numerous in India. The Sunnis or Traditionalists accept the Sunnat or collected body of Arabic usage as possessing authority concurrent with that of the Koran, which is the sole scripture of the Shias. Yet in Eastern Bengal the annual procession of the Tazias, or representations of the tombs of the martyred grandsons of the Prophet, is much attended by Sunnis (though for them the practice is unorthodox), and indeed by Hindus also. In other parts of India, the Mohurram festival has often led to serious encounters between Hindus and Musalmans, and even in Calcutta and Bombay has been the cause of dangerous riots.
The sects of Islam in India, unlike the Hindu sects, are not due to the instinct for differentiation, for obvious reasons. They are, in Mr Crooke's words, either puritanical or pietistic. Consequently, followers of them are apt to show a tendency to fanaticism. The Hindu sectarian adores some favourite deity, but does not deny the merits, or the Hinduism, of other deities or their followers. The Musalman sectarian is one who has discovered a higher orthodoxy than others, or a straighter road to religion, and regards those who do not share his views as an enemy of God and the true faith. Of the puritanical sects, the best known is that of the Wahabis, founded by Ibn Abdul Wahab at Nejd in Arabia, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was an attempt to revive primitive Muhammadanship without the corruptions and accretions of later ages and foreign lands. It was brought into India by Sayid Ahmad Shah, who proclaimed a Jihad, or holy war, against the Sikhs in 1826. The Wahabis hold that the doctrine of the Unity of God has been endangered by the excessive reverence paid to the Prophet, to his successors the Imans, and to shrines. At times Wahabis have given trouble to the administration, especially in Bengal. In recent years, however, they call themselves Ahl-i-hadis, or "followers of tradition," and employ themselves chiefly in endeavouring to eradicate modern superstitions.
The pietistic sects tend towards Sufi-ism, a combination of Aryan pantheism with Semitic monotheism, which takes the form of ecstatic devotion. Something of the same kind may be found in the Vaisnav sects of Hinduism, and in both cases ultimate absorption in the divinity is the goal aimed at.
Very interesting local communities of Muhammadans are the Moplahs of the Malabar coast, descendants of Arab settlers; the Bohras or "traders" of Western India; and the Khojas, followers of the "Old Man of the Mountain," whose present representative is H.H. the Agha Khan of Bombay, who has many friends in England.
The Parsis. The word Parsi simply means Persian, and the Parsi religion is the dualistic faith, combined with fire-worship, of the ancient Persians. It is also called Mazdaism from Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), who is in perpetual conflict with Angro Mainyush (Ahriman), the spirit of evil. It is also called Zoroastrianism, from the reformer Zoroaster, the Greek form of the old Iranian Zarathushtra, the modern Persian Zardusht. The religious phraseology of the Parsis shows that their faith must have had a common origin with the Aryan religion of India before the Iranian and Indo-Aryan migrations parted company. By a curious trick of language, the Devas, who in India and Europe are beneficent gods, in Persia become evil spirits. In India by a corresponding inversion, the word Asura, which in the Rig-veda is still a name of gods, was applied to hostile (generally aboriginal) demons. By a further process Asura was regarded as a negative word, and gave birth to a tribe of beneficent Suras. In the earlier times, there were both Ahura and Daeva worshippers, the former being socially superior, cattle-breeders, who, like the Indian Hindus, venerated the cow. It was Zoroaster's mission to fuse these two cults into a dualistic creed, whose main principle was the continuous struggle between the powers of good and evil. Submerged for a time during the Greek occupation, the Mazdaist faith revived under the Sassanids, but was finally overthrown by the advent of Islam, which persecuted and strove to extirpate the worship of fire.
Many of the survivors migrated to India, where they secured the tolerance of Hindu and Muhammadan rulers alike, and increased and multiplied. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, Surat, Nausari, and the neighbouring parts of Gujarat were their home. When, under British rule, Bombay became a great commercial port, large numbers of Parsis migrated thither, and in many cases won great wealth and influence.
In the early days of their dispersion, the weak colonies of Parsis assimilated themselves with the lower classes of Hindus by whom they were surrounded. But fresh accessions from Iran, and a growth of national prosperity and self-confidence brought about a restoration of the ancient faith. On Indian soil, the Parsis now number 94,000. But owing to their intelligence and wealth, due to their remarkable success in trading, the Parsis command a much wider political and social influence than their numbers would seem to show. According to Parsi belief, the soul passes after death to paradise (Bihisht) or a place of punishment (Dozakh) according to a man's conduct in life. Much importance is attached to the performance of rites to the manes of ancestors. Fire, water, the sun, moon, and stars were created by Ahura Mazda, and are venerated, as is Zarathushtra the Prophet. Soshios, his son, will some day be reincarnated as a Messiah, and will convert the world to the true faith. As with other Indian religions, contact with Europeans tends to produce laxity of belief and conduct.
Christianity. It is interesting to remember that there were Christians in India before the Christian faith reached our islands. The tradition that St Thomas was the Apostle of India, and suffered martyrdom there, is indeed discredited. This tradition originated with the Syriac Acta Thomae, and was accepted by Catholic teachers from the middle of the fourth century. The Indian King Gundaphar of the Acta is undoubtedly the historical Gondophares, whose dynasty was Parthian, though his territories were loosely considered to extend to India. A full account of the traditions connecting St Thomas with India (by W. R. Philipps) will be found in vol. XXXII. of the Indian Antiquary, 1903, pp. 1-15, 145-160.
The term "Christians of St Thomas" is often applied to the members of the ancient Christian churches of Southern India which claim him as their first founder, and honour as their second founder a bishop called Thomas, who is said to have come from Jerusalem to Malabar in 345 A.D. According to local tradition, St Thomas went from Malabar to Mylapur, now a suburb of Madras and the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop. Here still exists the shrine of his martyrdom on Mount St Thomas. A miraculous cross is shown with a Pahlavi inscription which is said to be as old as the end of the seventh century. The old churches of the south were certainly of East Syrian origin. They never wholly lost their sense of connection with their mother church, for it is known that they sent deputies in 1490 to the Nestorian patriarch Simeon, who provided them with bishops. Under Musalman rule, they suffered severely, and welcomed the advent of the Portuguese to India. They were, however, recalcitrant to Roman influence, and it was with much difficulty that in 1599 they were induced to submit to a formal union with Rome at the synod of Diamper (Udayamperur in Cochin). During the following century and a half the Thomasine churches were under foreign Jesuit rule, but yielded an unwilling and intermittent obedience. In 1653, there was a great schism, and of about 200,000 Christians of St Thomas only 400 remained loyal to Rome, though some of their churches were soon won back by the Carmelites. The remainder fell under the influence of the Jacobite Mar Gregorius, styled patriarch of Jerusalem, who reached Malabar in 1665 as an emissary from Ignatius patriarch of Antioch. From this time, the independent churches of Southern India have been Jacobite. At the present time, they are on friendly terms with the Anglican church in India, and are loosening their dependence on the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch.
Of missionary work in India I need not speak in a book of this size. There are nearly three millions of Christians in India, of whom two and a half millions are native converts. Seeing that missionary work has been in operation since 1500, a tale of converts amounting to less than one per cent. may seem a discouraging result of over 400 years of contact with European religious thought. But actual conversion has taken place chiefly among the lower classes and least advanced races. Among the educated classes the influence of Christianity has been indirect, and in many cases has produced a transformation in ethical belief and social conduct as complete as could have been wrought by open conversion. The Brahmo Samaj, for instance, remains Hindu in a sense, because it refuses to sever its connection with India, or to acknowledge European authority in matters of religion. But the Brahmo Samaj could not have come into existence but for Ram Mohan Roy's friendly and intimate acquaintance with European Christians and Unitarians. Even in the matter of conversion, the rate of progress is increasing rapidly, partly because missionary effort is being directed to savage tracts hitherto unvisited by civilised men, but partly, also, because the native Christian community is beginning to have sufficient self-confidence and status to proselytise in its turn. The multiplicity of missionary agencies, due to the accidents of European history and development, has been an impediment. Such terms as the Church of England, Church of Scotland, Welsh Baptists, American Baptists, etc., can have little signification for races who cannot be expected to know the historical causes which brought about these local varieties of Christian doctrine and practice. There may yet arise among one of the rival churches in India a Christian Ramanuja or Chaitanya, who may found a great Church of India, with a ritual, and, perhaps, doctrines of its own. The most successful of the Jesuit missionaries, Robert de Nobili[6] for instance, and such men as the AbbÉ Dubois in later times, owed their success to the fact that they assumed the habits, dress, and often the titles of Brahmanic ascetics. They could not assume the dusky skin which, after all, is the first and easiest means of gaining an Indian's confidence. They could not wholly accept caste, they could not wink at polygamy in the case of men whose first wives were infertile, and who had an hereditary sense that the lack of an heir is socially and religiously reprehensible. Perhaps a truly indigenous Church of India may deal with such difficulties more successfully than men who are compelled to teach, not only the elements of the Christian faith, but the ethical traditions belonging to their own race.
In this connection, I may be allowed to conclude my necessarily brief story of Indian races and religions with an anecdote. Just thirty-five years ago I was in charge of a "subdivision" in Bengal which contained a large number of native Christians belonging to the Church of England. There were several churches with parsonages, and the nearest of these to my headquarters was in the charge of a young missionary who was glad to have an occasional chat with a young magistrate. One day my missionary friend told me that he had discovered with dismay that his flock were in the habit of attending the Communion Service in batches, according to their castes, so as not to be obliged to drink out of the cup with men of alien caste. There were Hindu Christians and Muhammadan Christians who could not eat or drink together. He decided that this state of things must be stopped at all costs, as being wholly contrary to Christian teaching. I ventured to suggest that spiritual equality is not the same thing as social equality, but had to admit that caste is not usually recognised as a Christian institution. Apparently the Christians listened to their pastor's admonition, for, a few days after, he rode over to say that, in consequence of ex-scavengers and ex-Brahmans having communicated together, his whole congregation had been put out of caste by their Hindu neighbours. This may not, at first sight, seem a very serious calamity. But it happened that, in the caste specialisation which had survived among the Christians, there were none of the community who were barbers or midwives by caste. Christian men were going about with stubbly chins: worse still, Christian women were in need of help which their Hindu sisters refused to supply. It was a difficult situation for two young bachelors. However, I now confess, after all these years, that I brought a little official pressure to bear on the midwives, and the situation was saved for the moment. In those days, the educational policy of Government was to give grants-in-aid to primary schools, most of which, in this very Christian "subdivision" were either Roman Catholic or Anglican. When next I proceeded to issue my doles according to school-population and other educational results, I was astonished to find that the Roman Catholic grant-in-aid had increased greatly and the Anglican grant-in-aid had proportionally diminished. This was the immediate (and no doubt temporary) result of my missionary friend's zeal. Such survivals of old beliefs are common in all the religions of India. The main social impulse of the people was implanted on their minds at the distant epoch of the Aryan settlement, the sense of social and racial inequality which has now hardened into the caste system. To most Indians a recognition of the importance and value of caste is the first step towards decent and seemly conduct, towards civilised morality. When a semi-savage hill-man begins to recognise his inferiority to his Hindu neighbours and makes tentative approaches with a view to inclusion in civilised society, his first duty is to abjure the diet of pork and rice-beer which his unregenerate appetite loves, since these indulgences stand in the way of sharing a meal with Hindu folk. (In other parts of India, liquor and meat are consumed by low-caste Hindus of aboriginal origin.) In Assam, a Kachari first accepts the sarana or "protection" of a Hindu Goshain. He is then called a Saraniya Koch. His next step is to abandon strong drinks, on which he is promoted to the status of a Modahi Koch. At this stage, he may be fortunate enough to win the hand of a bride of pure Koch family, and, under her guidance, acquires enough of conventional habits and beliefs to be recognised as a Kamtali or Bor Koch, and is a true Hindu, a member of a genuine Hindu caste. Musalmans and Christians have other social conventions, and do not usually regard them as essential to good manners or godliness. But their converts retain their social superstitions and carry them into the new surroundings, where they sometimes come into disagreeable contact with the ethical ideas belonging to imported religions.
The contact of Aryan with Dravidian races, some three thousand years ago, brought about the beginnings of caste, which, from one point of view, may be regarded as a rude form of "race-protection," a primitive system of eugenics. It is still most rigidly enforced in the south, where the semi-Aryan classes are in a great minority. It is most relaxed in the Panjab, where, though caste rules exist, the population is, and probably always has been, as homogeneous as our own race. French travellers in India have sometimes said, half-humorously, that the Anglo-Indian administrators and merchants are practically a caste unto themselves. Bengalis have made the same remark and have said that our Civil Service is composed of Kali Yuger Brahman, "the Brahmans of the Iron Age." There was once some truth in the accusation, if accusation it be. It was not our business to interfere deliberately with caste, since British policy from the first has been one of kindly neutrality and toleration. Whether indirect influences have mitigated the effect of the sentiment of caste is a moot point. Educated Indians who have lived in Europe see its irksomeness, and in some cases denounce it more vigorously than most Europeans will care to denounce a system due to historical causes which are still partly operative. On the other hand, railways and other facilities for travel, though they have necessarily introduced laxity in matters of food and contact, have probably heightened the caste feeling by emphasising the variety of Hindu humanity and of the customs and habits of its many races. Hence the evolution of Indian society remains as interesting and as incalculable as ever.
In a little book of this sort it has been necessary to make many general and sweeping statements which are not always literally true of any given part of India. But perhaps enough has been said to show the interesting and significant differences between the three hundred odd millions of Western Europe and the three hundred odd millions of India. Our business in India has been primarily to keep the peace, to provide a breathing-space after the social and political turmoil that followed on the breaking-up of the Moghal empire. The principal result, so far, has been a notable increase in Hindu self-confidence and ambition, and a growing belief among Hindus that their ancient social system is not incompatible with industrial, commercial, and political advance on European lines. This belief has been much strengthened by the modernisation of Japan, and its results. It has been fostered by the free admission of educated Hindus to the highest and most responsible posts in the King-Emperor's administration. Inasmuch as that statement brings me to the most modern development of Hindu life and thought, I cannot do better than end at this point.
