this-that it takes little account of the primordial, impersonal Being Brahmă, and wholly neglects its personal manifestation Brahmā, substituting, in place of both Brahmă and Brahmā, the two popular personal deities Šiva and Vishnu. Be it noted, however, that the employment of the term Hinduism is wholly arbitrary and confessedly unsatisfactory. Unhappily there is no other expression sufficiently comprehensive to embrace that all-receptive system, which, without any one common Founder, was the product of Brahmanism multiplied by contact with its own offspring Buddhism, and with various pre-existing cults. Hinduism is Brāhmanism modified by the creeds and superstitions of Buddhists and Non-Aryan races of all kinds, including Drāviḍians, Kolarians, and perhaps pre-Kolarian aborigines. It has even been modified by ideas imported from the religions of later conquering races, such as Islām and Christianity.

I propose to trace briefly the gradual development of the Hindu religion through these three principal phases which really run into each other. In so doing I shall examine it, as in fairness every religion ought to be examined, not only from the point of view of its best as well as its worst side, but in the light thrown upon it by its own interpreters, as well as by European scholars. And for the sake of clearness, it will be necessary to begin by repeating a few facts which to many educated persons are now a thrice-told tale.

The original home of our progenitors as members of the great Aryan or Indo-European family was probably in the high land surrounding the sources of the Oxus, somewhere to the north of the point connecting the Hindu Kush with the Himalaya range. The highest part of this region is called the Pamir plateau, and, like the table-land of Tibet, with which it is connected by a lofty ridge, it well deserves the title of 'the roof of the world' (bām-i-dunya). The hardy inhabitants of these high-lands were a pastoral and agricultural race, and soon found themselves straitened for room within

the limits of their mountain tracts. With the increase of population they easily spread themselves westwards through the districts sloping towards Balkh, and southwards, through the passes of Afghanistan on the one side and Cashmere on the other, into Northern India.

They were a people gifted with high mental capacities and strong moral feelings. They possessed great powers of appreciating and admiring the magnificent phenomena of nature with which they found themselves surrounded. They were endowed with a deep religious sense-a profound consciousness of their dependence on the invisible forces which regulated the order of the world in which they found themselves placed. They were fitly called 'noble' (ārya), and they spoke a language fitly called 'polished' or 'carefully constructed' (Sanskrita).

To trace the origin of religion among such a people requires no curious metaphysical hypotheses. We have only to ask ourselves what would be the natural working of their devotional instincts, unguided by direct revelation. Their material welfare depended on the influences of sky, air, light, and sun (sometimes fancifully imaged in the mind as emerging out of an antecedent chaotic night); and to these they naturally turned with awe and veneration. Soon all such phenomena were believed to be animated by intelligent wills. At first the relationship between spirit, mind, and matter was imperfectly apprehended. Whatever moved was believed to possess life, and with life was associated power. Hence the phenomena of nature were thought of as mysterious forces, whose favour required propitiation. Next they received homage under the general name of Devas, 'luminous ones.' Then, just as men found themselves obliged to submit to some earthly leader, so they naturally assigned supremacy to one celestial being called the 'light-father' (Dyupitar, Dyaus, Zeùs пaτýρ, Jupiter). Or, again, a kind of preeminence was accorded to the all-investing sky or atmo

sphere (Varuna, Oupavós), the representative of an eternal celestial Presence watching men's actions, and listening to their words by night as well as by day. Of course another principal object of veneration was the orb of the Sun called Mitra, often connected with another aspect of the Sun, Aryaman, whose influences fertilized lands, enriched pastures, and fructified crops.

Then other kindred natural phenomena, such as fire (Agni, Latin Ignis), and the dawn (Ushas, 'Hús, Aurora), and Iḍā or Irā (Iris), were by degrees regarded with varying degrees of veneration. They all had names which still exist under different modifications among different branches of the Aryan stock, leading us to infer that they were among the most ancient objects held sacred in the original abode of the Āryan race, before the several members of the family separated.

There is even ground for conjecturing that triads of natural objects, such as Sky, Atmosphere, and Sun, or three forms of the Sun, called Aryaman, Varuṇa, and Mitra, were associated together and worshipped by the primitive Aryans in the earliest times. It is certain that the Aryan race, from the first development of its religious sense on the soil of India, has shown a tendency to attach a sacred significance to the number three, and to group the objects of its adoration in triple combinations.

Not that the nascent religious ideas of a people naturally devout were regulated or circumscribed in ancient times by any definite rules or precise limitations. The objects and forces of nature received homage in different ways-sometimes singly, as if impelled by separate and independent wills; sometimes in groups, as if operating co-ordinately; sometimes collectively, as if animated and pervaded by one. dominating Spirit, the maintainer of law and order in the Universe.

As to the form of worship, that, too, was a natural process not yet burdened by tedious ceremonial observances. When

men had personified and deified the forces with which they were surrounded, they gave them characters like their own. They attributed to them human tastes, likings, and predilections. They propitiated them by praise and flattery, accompanying their hymns and invocations with such presents and offerings of food and drink as would be deemed acceptable among themselves, and would be needed for the maintenance of their own vigour and vitality.

Perhaps the earliest and commonest offerings were rice and clarified butter. Then the exhilarating juice of the Soma plant, afterwards an essential ingredient in both Aryan and Iranian sacrifices, was used as a libation. But the form of worship, like the creed of the worshipper, was unfettered by precise rule or ritual. Each man satisfied his own religious instincts, according to his own conception of the character of the supernatural being or beings on whose favour his welfare was thought to depend.

CHAPTER I.

Vedism.

So much has been of late years written and spoken about the Veda, that to go minutely into this subject would be, according to a Hindū saying, ' to grind ground corn.'

When the Indian branch of the Aryan family settled down in the land of the seven rivers (Sapta Sindhu, cf. Rig-veda X. 75, Zend Hapta Hendu), now called the Panjab, about the fifteenth century B. C., their religion was still nature-worship. It was still adoration of the forces everywhere in operation around them for production, destruction, and reproduction. But it was physiolatry developing itself more distinctly into forms of Polytheism, Theism, Anthropomorphism, and Pantheism. The phenomena of nature were thought of as something more than radiant beings, and something more than powerful forces. To the generality of worshippers they were more distinctly concrete personalities, and had more personal attributes. They were addressed as kings, fathers, guardians, friends, benefactors, guests. They were invoked in formal hymns and prayers (mantras), in set metres (chandas).

These hymns were composed in an early form of the Sanskrit language, at different times-perhaps during several centuries, from the fifteenth to the tenth B.C.-by men of light and leading (Rishis) among the Indo-Aryan immigrants, who were afterwards held in the highest veneration as patriarchal saints. Eventually the hymns were believed to have been directly revealed to, rather than composed by, these Rishis, and were then called divine knowledge (Veda), or the eternal word heard (Śruti), and transmitted by them.