central body around which all other classes and orders of beings revolve like satellites. Not only are they invested with divine dignity, but they are bound together by the most stringent rules, while the other castes are separated from them and from each other by insurmountable barriers. The doctrine of Manu was that the deity created distinct kinds of men, as he created varieties of animals and plants; and that Brāhmans, soldiers (Kshatriyas), agriculturalists (Vaisyas), and servants (Šūdras) were born and must remain from birth to death as distinct from each other as elephants, lions, oxen, and dogs, wheat, barley, rice, and beans. A Brahman was to pass through four stages of life; 1. Religious student (Brahma-carin); 2. Householder (Grihastha); 3. Anchorite (Vānaprastha); 4. Abandoner of worldly concerns (Sannyasin1). As a householder he could have four wives, and marry a woman belonging to any of the three lower castes. Intermarriage could also take place between members of all the four classes, or, again, between the castes resulting from such intercourse. Hence arose an endless number of mixed castes, every one of which is theoretically restricted to its own occupation and bound by its own rules.

Those Brahmans who assent to the great Vedānta doctrine that the one all-pervading impersonal Spirit Brahmă underlies everything in existence, and that the spirit of man is identical with that Spirit, and are obedient to Brahmanical caste-law and tradition (smṛiti), as laid down by the ancient lawgivers and especially by the great Vedāntist Sankarācārya, are called Smārtas. Perfection is attained by him alone who is a strict observer of the rules of caste and accepts the above doctrine.

1 See note, p. 55, and p. 362. The nominative case is Sannyāsī, which is the form in popular use.

CHAPTER III.

Hinduism.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

We now pass on to the third and by far the most complex stage of Hindu religious thought. And at the very outset we are called upon to take note of a fact illustrated by the whole history of religious thought from the earliest times, namely, that a merely spiritual and impersonal religion is quite incapable of taking hold of the masses of mankind or satisfying their religious requirements. Something more was needed for vast populations naturally craving for personal objects of faith and devotion, than the merely spiritual pantheistic creed of Brahmanism.

The chief point, then, which characterizes Hinduism and distinguishes it from Brāhmanism is that it subordinates the purely spiritual Brahman (nom. Brahmă) with its first manifestation Brahma, to the personal deities Šiva and Vishņu or to some form of these deities; while it admits of numerous sects, each sect exalting its own god to the place of the Supreme. Yet we must guard against the idea that Hinduism has superseded Brahmanism, or that they are mutually antagonistic. The latter system is pantheistic, whereas Hinduism is theistic; but in India forms of pantheism, theism, and polytheism are ever interwoven with each other.

At any rate it is certain that the worship of personal gods was a part of pantheistic Brahmanism long before Šiva and Vishņu became the exclusive favourites of particular sects. Perhaps the best exponent of the Brahmanical system was the great

teacher Sankara (Šankarāćārya), a native of Kerala (Malabar), who lived about the beginning of the eighth century of our era. He was a Sannyāsī (p. 53) and an unmarried Brahman1 under a vow of celibacy, and is often styled Paramahansa-parivrājakācārya. For it is one of the inconsistencies of the Hindū religion, that it enjoins the duty of marriage, yet admits the importance of celibacy as a means of gaining influence for the propagation of religious opinions. Undoubtedly Šankara was the very incarnation of strict Brahmanism; and if it be possible to point to any one real historical concrete personality around which Brahmanical doctrines may be gathered, it is undeniable that we must look to Sankara rather than to the legendary Vyasa, even though the latter be the author of the Vedanta-Sūtra.

Yet so utterly barren is India in both history and biography, that very little is known of the life of perhaps one of the greatest religious leaders she has ever produced.

It is nevertheless a fact that Sankara founded the monastery (matha) of Sringeri (Sringa-giri) in Mysore, as well as three others in Northern, Western, and Eastern India 2; to the Headship over which his chief disciples were appointed by himself. These establishments had a complete ecclesiastical organization, so that the spiritual powers of the first Head were transmitted by a kind of apostolical succession through a line of succeeding Heads, regularly elected.

The most noted successor of Sankara at the Sringeri

But there are

1 A Sannyāsī may have been once a married man. Sannyāsīs (such as the late Dayananda) who have become so without going through the previous stages of Grihastha and Vanaprastha. Equivalent expressions for Sannyasin are Parivrājaka, Bhikshu, Dandin, and Maskarin (Pāṇini VI. 1. 154); but the term Bhikshu is now applied in Western India to those Brahmans who perform religious ceremonies and are not engaged in worldly pursuits. They are clerical Brahmans as opposed to lay.

2 That in the North is at Badrinath in the Himalayas, that in the West at Dvārikā in Kāthiāwār, that in the East at Jagannath-puri.

monastery was Sāyaṇa-Madhava1, the well-known author of the Rig-veda commentary, who lived in the fourteenth century. Sankara himself, though he managed to write a vast number of treatises on the Vedanta philosophy, led an erratic, restless, controversial life, and died early, probably at Kedarnath in the Himalayas, at the age of thirty-two.

He is thought by some to have inculcated the preferential worship of the god Siva 2, of whom some declare him to have been an incarnation. Others maintain that he himself had a preference for Vishņu, the real fact being that he looked on both these gods as equally manifestations of the one Universal Spirit. For, in truth, all orthodox Brahmans are in a general way both Šaivas and Vaishnavas, and any Brāhman may have a preference for the worship of either Šiva or Vishnu without any necessary exclusive devotion to either, and without identifying either with the Supreme Spirit of the Universe, as many Paurāņika sectarians do. It is well known, in fact, that most Smārta Brāhmans in the present day, who are followers of Sankarācārya, have a leaning towards the worship of the one personal deity Siva 3.

On the other hand, very few even of the most ignorant and bigoted Hindus who are exclusive worshippers of the personal deities Šiva, Vishnu, or their consorts, and whose highest spiritual aim is to be a dweller in the heaven of one of those

The identity of Sāyaṇa and Madhava is disputed, but the preponderance of evidence seems to me in favour of the late Dr. A. Burnell's view as expressed in his Vansa-brāhmaṇa.

2 His sanctity was in such repute that he was held to have worked several miracles, amongst others, transferring his own soul for a time into the dead body of a king Amaru, that he might become the husband of the king's widow for a brief period, and so learn by experience how to argue on amatory subjects with the wife of a Brahman named Mandana, who was the only person he had never conquered in argument. This is described in a poem called Amaru-sataka, to which a mystical interpretation is given.

3 Two Smarta Brahmans accompanied me round the temple of Šiva at Tinnevelly. They both had three horizontal lines (tri-puṇḍra) made with Vibhuti on their foreheads, which proved their preference for Šiva.

gods, are uninfluenced by an undercurrent of pantheistic ideas. Nor would it be easy to find any thoughtful Hindu who, if closely questioned, would repudiate as untenable the doctrine of an omnipresent, impersonal, bodiless and passionless (nirguna) spiritual Essence, pervading and animating the Universe. In short, the more closely the theistic phase of the Hindu religion is examined, the more plainly will it be found to rest on a substratum of Brāhmanism. The one system is to a great extent a development of the other, and to draw a line of separation between the two, or to say wherev one ends and the other begins, is impossible.

Nevertheless it must be borne in mind that Hinduism is far more than a mere form of theism resting on Brāhmanism. It presents for our investigation a complex congeries of creeds and doctrines which in its gradual accumulation may be compared to the gathering together of the mighty volume. of the Ganges, swollen by a continual influx of tributary rivers and rivulets, spreading itself over an ever-increasing area of country, and finally resolving itself into an intricate Delta of tortuous streams and jungly marshes.

Nor is it difficult to account for this complexity. The Hindu religion is a reflection of the composite character of the Hindūs, who are not one people but many. It is based on the idea of universal receptivity. It has ever aimed at accommodating itself to circumstances, and has carried on the process of adaptation through more than three thousand years. It has first borne with and then, so to speak, swallowed, digested, and assimilated something from all creeds. Or, like a vast hospitable mansion, it has opened its doors to all comers; it has not refused a welcome to applicants of every grade from the highest to the lowest, if only willing to acknowledge the spiritual Headship of the Brahmans and adopt casterules.

In this manner it has held out the right hand of brotherhood to the Fetish-worshipping aborigines of India; it has stooped