RELIGIOUS AND THOUGHT LIFE IN INDIA. AN ACCOUNT OF THE RELIGIONS OF THE INDIAN PEOPLES, BASED ON A LIFE'S STUDY OF THEIR IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY. BY MONIER WILLIAMS, M.A., C.I.E., HON. D.C.L. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, HON. LL.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA, HON. MEMBER OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETIES SOCIETY, BODEN PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, ETC. PART I. VEDISM, BRÄHMANISM, AND HINDUISM. Second Edition. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. [ All rights reserved.] PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. My aim in the following pages has been partially stated in the introductory observations. It has been my earnest endeavour to give such an account of a very dry and complex subject as shall not violate scholarlike accuracy, and yet be sufficiently readable to attract general readers. The part now published only deals with one half of the whole programme, but it will be found to constitute a separate and independent work, and to comprise the three most important and difficult phases of Indian religious thought-Vedism, Brahmanism, and Hinduism. That the task, so far completed, has been no easy one will be readily admitted, and I have given the best proof of my sense of its difficulty by not venturing to undertake it without long preparation. It is now exactly forty-three years since I began the study of Sanskrit as an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford; my teacher, at that time, being my illustrious predecessor in the Boden Chair, Horace Hayman Wilson; and it is exactly forty-two years since I addressed myself to Arabic and Persian under the tuition of the Mirza Muhammad Ibrahim, one of the ablest of the Oriental Professors at the East India College, Haileybury-then the only training-ground for the Indian Civil Service probationers. In 1875 I published the first edition of 'Indian Wisdom1;' and it may be well to point out that, as the present volume deals with the principal phases of the Hindu religion, so the object of the former work was to give a trustworthy general idea of the character and contents of the sacred literature on which that religion is founded. Since the publication of 'Indian Wisdom' I have made two journeys to India, and travelled through the length and breadth of the Queen's eastern empire. I felt that for a writer to be competent to give a trustworthy account of the complicated religious systems prevalent among our Indian fellow-subjects, two requisites were needed :-first, that he should have made a life-long study of their literature, and, secondly, that he should have made personal investigations into the creeds and practices of the natives of India in their own country, and, as far as possible, in their own homes. Even the most profound Orientalists who have never come in contact with the Indian mind, except in books, commit themselves to mischievous and mis 1 A very energetic and useful Missionary, the late Rev. James Vaughan, in his work called 'The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross,' copied from 'Indian Wisdom' a large number of my translations from Sanskrit literature, and interspersed them everywhere throughout his account of Hinduism without asking my leave, and without any marks of quotation or references in his foot-notes. It is true he mentions my name eulogistically in his Preface, but as many readers systematically slur over prefatory remarks, and as some of my translations are reproduced in the present volume, it becomes necessary to shelter myself from the charge of literary larceny which might be brought against me by those who know his book but have not read 'Indian Wisdom.' leading statements, when, leaving the region of their book-learning, they venture to dogmatize in regard to the present condition-religious, moral, and intellectual of the inhabitants of India; while, on the other hand, the most meritorious missionaries and others who have passed all their lives in some one Indian province, without acquiring any scholarlike acquaintance with either Sanskrit or Arabic,--the two respective master-keys to the Hindu and Muhammadan religions, are liable to imbibe very false notions in regard to the real scope and meaning of the religious thought and life by which they have been surrounded, and to do serious harm by propagating their misapprehensions. And, as bearing on the duty of studying Indian religions,—I trust I may be allowed to repeat here the substance of what I said at a Meeting of the National Indian Association,' held on December 12, 1877, under the presidency of the Earl of Northbrook, late Viceroy of India : 'I am deeply convinced that the more we learn about the ideas, feelings, drift of thought, religious development, eccentricities, and even errors and superstitions of the natives of India, the less ready shall we be to judge them by our own conventional European standards; the less disposed to regard ourselves as the sole depositaries of all the true knowledge, learning, virtue, and refinement existing on the earth; the less prone to despise, as an inferior race, the men who compiled the Laws of Manu, one of the most remarkable literary productions of the world; who thought out systems of |