Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0080/00809.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 36KB | 551 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00809}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter VI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{civa
god
hindu
vishnu
gods
religious
like
religion
name
worship
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1913}
$Log{See Temple And Mosque*0080901.scf
}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of India
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter VI

     In all Hindu sects the names of the deity are of much importance; Vishnu
has a round thousand, Civa's catalogue exceeds this by eight.  Many of them
are the commonplaces with which men of all tongues and creeds glorify God -
all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful; or by which theologians define him -
infinite, self-existent, all-pervading, and the like; among the more notable
titles of Vishnu are the holy, or the holiest, the true, the pure spirit, the
way, the truth, the life, the healer, the world's medicine.

     Civa has no incarnations like Vishnu; but the various gods who are
identified with him are said to be "forms" of Civa.  He is, like his prototype
the Vedic Rudra, a destructive deity, and is described as a grotesquely
horrible monster, in imagery drawn in part from the Hundred-Rudra litany in
the Yajur-Veda.  In becoming the supreme god of one of the great branches of
Hinduism he has not lost this character; but other sides of his nature have
acquired greater prominence, while the merely malevolent traits have been
passed over to his female worse half. He is the author of life as well as its
destroyer, and personifies the reproductive forces of nature, for which reason
the bull and the phallus (lingam) are his common symbols.  The orgiastic
features of his cult which led Megasthenes to identify him with Dionysos, his
fondness for hunting, drinking, and dancing, are but one side - doubtless the
older side - of his complex character.  On the other he is the ascetic god,
who sits naked, with matted hair and body besmeared with ashes, under the
Pipal-tree, and as the "Great Yogin," by self-mortification and age-long
meditation, has attained supernatural knowledge and power.  Again, he is the
divine philosopher and sage, and is represented as a Brahman skilled in the
Vedas; Panini's grammar is a revelation from Civa.  In fact, the learned
Brahmans seem inclined to acknowledge Civa as Lord rather than Vishnu, but
stand aloof, for the most part, from sectarian Civaism.

     Civaism has not been so prolific in divisions over doctrinal questions as
the rival faith, and of sects which existed in the Middle Ages the greater
part have lost their separate identity.  The most numerous in the south to-day
are the Lingayits (so called from wearing the lingam as an amulet); they
reject the authority of the Vedas and of the Brahmans, recognise no caste
distinctions, and bury their dead instead of burning them.  There are also
many species of Civaite ascetics, commonly called Yogins, distinguished more
by external peculiarities than by beliefs; they are generally filthy beggars
and often otherwise vile.

     The theological affinities of Civaism were originally with the pluralism
of the Sankhya-Yoga system rather than with Vedantic monism; but the theistic
modification of the Vedanta was equally compatible with their religious
conceptions, and doctrines closely similar to those of the Ramanujas are
attributed to Civaite teachers.  An idealistic Civaism, wholly Vedantic, was
developed in Cashmere between the ninth and eleventh centuries by Somananda
and Abhinavagupta: God is the only substance, objects are his ideas; and as he
is identical with ourselves, these objects are really in us.  What we think we
see outside of us we see within.  The individual ego perceives, or rather
reperceives, in itself, as in a mirror, the ideas of the transcendental Ego,
and cognition is only a recognition.  By inner contemplation, and enlightened
by the grace which it has received through faith in Civa, the soul overcomes
the illusion (Maya) which is the source of all diversity, and attains the
consciousness of self in God.  This system is Civaite only in the sense that
the name Civa is given to the theistic-pantheistic deity.

     Of the gods grouped about Civa in the sectarian pantheon the most
important are Ganeca and Skanda.  The former, represented with an elephant's
head, symbolical of his shrewdness, is, as his name imports, the lord of
troops (that is, the troops of good and bad demons that form the train of
Civa), who can restrain them from harassing men or leave them free hand to
work their malign will.  By thwarting their wiles he gives success to men's
plans, and so becomes the bestower of prosperity.  Skanda is the general who
leads the hosts of good demons in the conflict with the powers of evil, and
thus, as the marshal of the divine allies, is the war-god in the epic,
supplanting Indra, with whom he is identified.  To Civa's company belongs also
Kubera, the god of riches.

     The goddesses play a far larger part in Civaism than in the Vedic
religion or in Vishnuism.  They are, in theory, one, the consort of Civa,
worshipped under many names and attributes: Devi, the goddess; Gauri, the
bright one; Sati, the faithful wife; Parvati, the daughter of the mountains;
Durga, the unapproachable; Kali, the black one; Bhairavi, the terrible;
Karala, the horrible.  The last names indicate the predominating character of
the goddesses, to whom the unfriendly features of Civa's nature have in large
measure been handed over.  They are worshipped as deities in their own right,
and bloody sacrifices and cruel rites belong specifically to their cults.
Another large class of female deities are the "Mothers," local tutelary
divinities, of which each village has its own, or functional divinities with
highly specialised spheres of activity - one causes cholera, another averts
it; one keeps away mad dogs, another sends smallpox, and so on.  They are
often propitiated with the blood of fowls or goats.

     A feature original in Civaism, though not confined to it, ^1 is the
worship of female deities as active powers (cakti) of the supreme God. The god
himself abides, as philosophers say he should, in bliss untroubled by the
administration of a universe; while his "energies" in female personification
are the efficient causes of all that comes to pass in the world.  As a matter
of course, these productive energies are identified with Civa's consort,
Mahadevi, "the great goddess," who is at the same time the great illusion
(Mahamaya) of the Vedantist or the primal substance (Prakriti) of the
Sankhyan. Besides the public cultus, which, except for the offering of bloody
sacrifices to Durga or Kali, conforms to the common Hindu type, there are
sects (Caktas of the left hand) whose worship of the powers takes the form of
mysteries.  These sects have scriptures of their own (Tantras), which chiefly
purport to be revelations from Civa, in the form of dialogue with his wife,
Durga.  Like the Puranas, they are supposed to deal with five subjects - the
creation and destruction of the world, the worship of the gods, the attainment
of supernatural powers, union with the Supreme Being. The last two,
particularly the supernatural powers, are the chief objects of pursuit, and
consequently the magical element is prominent in the Tantras.

[Footnote 1: Tantric Buddhism has its Taras, who are the Caktis of Civa under
another name.]

     These Caktas are strictly secret societies, and in such ill repute that
no one with a shadow of respectability would admit connection with them; in
their own circle they call themselves "the perfect," and speak of outsiders as
"beasts." The members are initiated by a teacher, who communicates to them
certain texts or mystic syllables; the utmost precautions are taken to conceal
the teachings and practices of the sect. The mysteries are celebrated by a
circle of men and women seated promiscuously, without regard to caste or
kinship.  In one of their texts Civa says to his wife: "All men have my form
and all women thy form; any one who recognises any distinction of caste in the
mystic circle has a foolish soul." The performances consist of drinking
various kinds of wine and strong drinks, eating of meat, of fish, and of
parched grain, and finally of copulation.  The only salvation, according to
one of their Tantras, is that which results from spirituous liquors, meat, and
cohabitation with women.  These orgies are magical-mystical rites; each pair
is for the hour Civa and Devi, and through the texts which detail these
abominations runs a vein not only of moral reflection but of religious
exaltation. ^1

[Footnote 1: Whether these mysteries are actually celebrated nowadays is
doubtful; at all events they must be infrequent.]

     The rivalry of the religions of Vishnu and Civa has sometimes led to
violent collisions, but in the present they live in the main peaceably side by
side, with some degree of mutual recognition.  The worshipper of Vishnu is
content to regard Civa as a minister of the Most High or as a divine prophet
and doctor doctorum, and the Civaite is similarly accommodating.  The two are
even coupled and adored as one god under the name Hari-Hara, to whom numerous
temples are dedicated, particularly in the south.  Elsewhere the shrines of
the two gods are often close beside each other, sometimes within the same
sacred precincts.

     Beside Vishnu and Civa stands Brahma, ^1 the All-Father - the personal
god whom theistic religion made out of the metaphysical absolute, Brahman
(neuter) - and forms with them a triad (trimurti).  In what may be called the
orthodox, that is, the Brahmanical, form of this triad, Brahman, the Absolute,
manifests himself in three persons of equal rank - Brahma, the creator,
Vishnu, the preserver, and Civa, the destroyer. Kalidasa sings:

     "In those Three Persons the one God was shown -
     Each first in place, each last - not one alone;
     Of Civa, Vishnu, Brahma, each may be
     First, second, third, among the Blessed Three."

The three persons are connected in the Puranic doctrine with the three
qualities, or constituents, of the Sankhya.  When activity prevails, the
supreme being is Brahma, the creator; when goodness, Vishnu, the preserver;
when apathy, Civa, the destroyer.  This theory naturally did not satisfy the
sectaries who worshipped either Vishnu or Civa as in reality the one God, and
they modified it to conform to their own premises, usually identifying their
Lord outright with the Supreme Being and subordinating the two other members
of the triad.  Inasmuch, moreover, as the religions of Vishnu and Civa felt
themselves more closely akin to each other than to the Brahman theology,
Brahma usually gets the last place in the sectarian triad, which is Vishnu,
Civa, Brahma; or Civa, Vishnu, Brahma.  In none of its forms is this triad
very old; the three-headed figure on the island of Elephanta, near Bombay,
formerly interpreted as a Trimurti but now regarded rather as a representation
of Civa, is probably not older than the tenth century of our era.  Nor has the
formula ever had any considerable religious significance: it is a method of
reconciling the claims of rival monotheistic religions with one another and
with a traditional philosophy.  Groups of three gods, or the classification of
gods in three groups, may have suggested the idea, if any suggestion was
needed.  The origin of the formula is thus sufficiently accounted for from
native premises, without the supposition that the Christian Trinity - the
resemblance to which is wholly superficial - stood model for the Hindu
Trimurti, though such a supposition is exposed to no chronological objection:
Christianity had long been established in India before the Trimurti is heard
of.

[Footnote 1: Only a very few temples are dedicated to Brahma, and he has no
exclusive worshippers.]

     The old Vedic religion had, as we have seen, no temples or other
permanent places of religious worship; the spot chosen for sacrifice was
consecrated for the occasion and was sacred only for the duration of the
ceremonies.  Hinduism, however, in both its great branches, has innumerable
temples, some of them of imposing size and splendour, others modest village
shrines.  In contrast again to the older religion, both have material
representations of the gods.  The commonest emblem of Civa is the phallus
(lingam), ordinarily accompanied by the corresponding female organ (yoni),
together symbolising the productive powers of nature. Contrary to a prevailing
impression, neither the conventional form of these objects nor the cultus has
any obscene suggestion.  The other gods are usually represented by idols, many
of which are to our taste grotesquely hideous - a human body with an
elephant's head; tricephalous monsters; heads with a third eye in the middle
of the forehead; human trunks with super-numerary arms and legs, and the like.
It should be remembered, however, that all this ugliness is symbolical; the
supernatural powers of the deity are intended to be expressed by these
unnatural forms.  The Hindu gods are less beautiful than the purely
anthropomorphic gods of Greek art, because of the effort to make them more
manifestly divine.  Besides the idols set up for worship in the temples, great
numbers are made to serve as ex-votos or to be tutelary genii of the
household.  As in other countries, these objects become holy only after a
priest, with appropriate rites, has invited the god to lodge in them.

     The larger temples have a numerous personnel of priests and attendants of
various degrees and functions; many support also a band of musicians and a
troop of dancing-girls for the delectation of gods and men.  The priests who
minister to the idols have to wake them up in the morning, bathe them, paint
their faces, dress them, burn incense and wave lights before them, present
them flowers, drinking water, and cooked food (chiefly rice), which is
afterward consumed by the priests or distributed among the worshippers.  The
usual tendance of Civa's symbol consists in pouring water on the standing
stone and laying bilva leaves upon it; but in some places it is treated like
the idols.  There is no public cultus other than this; even when multitudes
assemble in the temple, each comes about his personal concern.

     To places of high repute for holiness pilgrims come from great distances,
and at high festivals vast numbers congregate from all quarters.  Among the
holy cities of India, Benares takes the foremost place; every pious Hindu
aspires to make at least one pilgrimage thither, and it is common belief that
those who die within the encircling road, whatever crimes they may have been
guilty of, go straight to Civa's heaven; even Christians and Moslems share
this blessing.  To bathe here in the sacred Ganges or in one of the holy tanks
is to be cleansed of every sin.  There are upward of fifteen hundred temples
in the city to a population of some two hundred thousand.  Many other places
draw vast numbers of pilgrims, such, for example, as the shrine of Vishnu at
Jagannath in Orissa.  A pilgrimage by which the highest merit is acquired is
to go afoot from Benares, carrying a jar of the holy Ganges water to pour on
the lingam in the temple of Ramecvara, on an island in the extreme south, a
journey of nearly twelve hundred miles.  Many rivers besides the Ganges are
holy, not because they are sacred to a deity, but because their waters are
pervaded by the divine essence, and have therefore the power to remove all sin
and bestow the immortality of the gods.  Allahabad, where the Ganges and the
Jamna meet and the Sarasvati is believed to join its waters by underground
channels with theirs, is triply holy.  In the south the Godavari, Narbada,
Kistna, and Kaveri have the like power.

     As in the ancient law-books, the whole domestic life of the modern Hindu
is inwoven with religion, from the auspicious naming of the child, through the
boy's investiture with the sacred cord of the twice-born (if he belong to one
of the castes which are capable of this second birth), and his marriage, to
the burning of his dead body.  Similarly in his daily life, from the cleansing
of his teeth and the morning bath - his first business on rising, and very
important religious purifications - to the last waking moment, there are
prescriptions and observances innumerable, especially for the Brahmans, whose
obligations are proportioned to their privileges.  These acts are accompanied
by the proper formulas of devotion, some of them ancient Vedic prayers and
invocations, others found in the Tantras of the sectarian religions.

     In almost every house is a shrine where the inmates or their
representative perform religious worship each morning.  The shrine contains
images of the gods, or, in the south more commonly, five stones supposed to be
instinct with the divine essence; the black Calagrama of Vishnu, the white
stone of Civa, the red of Ganeca, a bit of ore for Devi, and a piece of
crystal representing the sun, differently grouped on a metal plate according
to the precedence the worshipper chooses to give to one or other of them.  To
these, orthodox Brahmans add the ancient Vaicvadeva ceremony with its offering
of cooked food to Agni, the divine fire, and to all the gods, spirits, and
living beings.  The domestic meal itself is surrounded by religious forms.

     Burning of the dead has been for many centuries general, except in the
case of young children and great saints.  If it is possible, the body is
borne, even before death, to the banks of a holy river; otherwise various
precautions are taken to keep the messengers of hell at bay, such as
surrounding the bed with a ring of cow dung, or putting a sacred stone and
plant by its side; or a cow may be brought, that the dying man may seize her
tail and thus be transported across the waters of death.  The burning takes
place on an open pyre; when the body is partly consumed, the top of the skull
is cracked by a blow with a club to make sure that the soul has an open exit.
The bones are subsequently collected in an urn and deposited in the ground,
from which they are again removed after a few days to be thrown into the
Ganges or some other sacred waters.  Offerings of balls of rice and clarified
butter are made in connection with the cremation and the bone-gathering.
Offering and ceremonies for the benefit of the dead (craddha) should be held
within a month after his decease, followed by a feast on the next day for the
Brahmans.  In a simpler form the Craddha should be repeated monthly for a
year, and thereafter on each anniversary of the death.  The daily religious
observances of every householder include an offering of water to the ancestors
generally, which, unlike the homage to the gods, cannot be deputed to another
person.

     The prevailing beliefs about the state of the dead have undergone
considerable change in the course of centuries and under the influence of the
theistic religions.  Salvation means in these religions an immortality of
conscious blessedness in the heaven of Vishnu or Krishna or of Civa, and all
faith and observance exist to insure immediate entrance on this state.  Over
against these heavens stands a whole array of hells, commonly counted
twenty-one or twenty-eight.  Yama, once the ruler of the blessed dead, has
become the infernal judge and executioner; his two messengers bind the soul of
the dead man and hurry him before Yama's judgment seat; there he is confronted
by the recorder with his book, in which all the man's deeds, good and bad, are
set down.  The account of merit and demerit is balanced up to the last moment,
including on the credit side his religious devotion and observances - the
latter taken at an extravagant valuation compared with moral derelictions.
The rites performed by his relatives after his death are also imputed to him
as merit.

     On the thirteenth day, the soul having in the meantime grown a kind of
intermediate body, the minions of Yama conduct it either to heaven or hell.
The road to the latter is eighty-six thousand leagues long, and the hardships
the hapless sinner encounters upon it are a foretaste of the torments to which
he is being hurried.  Plunged at last into the particular hell to which he has
been adjudged, he may find himself in a bolgia full of heated caldrons, or of
red-hot irons, or in a lake of blood or stinking mire, or be driven through a
jungle where the leaves of the plants are sharp knives, or a plain paved with
iron spikes; there is a hell of pincers with which the flesh is torn from the
bones, and many more.  These hells are not places of eternal punishment; the
doctrine of rebirth, the transmigration of souls, maintains its place, and
serves its old use in explaining the inequalities of earthly fortune; but it
no longer casts its pall of terror over all life as it did for the age of the
great heresies, partly, perhaps, because the more vivid imagination of hell
has superseded it, but chiefly because man no longer faces the problem of
saving himself from the succession of rebirths, under the inexorable law of
the deed that cannot be undone, without help from god or man; the gods of
Hinduism are saviours of those who put their trust in them, and that
confidence stills the fear of rebirth as well as of death.

     The pessimism, too, which lies at the root of the Sankhya philosophy and
the great heretical religions, Jainism and Buddhism, was, at least in its
acute despair of the world, a passing phase of Indian thought; on large parts
of the people it doubtless never had much influence, even when theoretically
accepted.  The pantheistic or semi-theistic Vedantism which in latter times
suffused all Indian religions with a gentle mysticism was at bottom
optimistic, and the super-imposition of the Yoga on the atheistic Sankhya
lightened the gloom of even that ultra-pessimistic system.  What is called
Hindu pessimism to-day is rather a tranquil resignation to the evils of this
degenerate age (the Kaliyuga) than a metaphysical doctrine of despair.

     The early Moslem invasions of India had no lasting results, but in the
latter part of the tenth century, under Mahmud of Ghazni, the Mohammedan power
was firmly established, and under various dynasties and with many vicissitudes
maintained itself and extended its domain not only over Hindustan, but from
the fourteenth century in the Deccan also.  At the time of Baber's invasion
(1525) the greater part of the peninsula was under Moslem rule, and in the
northwest Moslems formed a considerable element of the population.  Contact
with the austerer monotheism of Islam led to efforts to reform the native
religions by ridding them of their polytheistic and idolatrous features, or to
form an eclectic theism in which Moslems and Hindus could unite.  The great
emperor Akbar (reigned 1556-1605) addressed himself with much zeal to the
latter task, but his synthetic religion died with him.

     Much more lasting were the results of a reforming movement inaugurated by
Kabir a century or more earlier, whose followers, under the name Kabirpanthis
(those who follow the path of Kabir) are still numerous and influential.  He
is said to have been a disciple of Ramananda, the founder of a Vishnuite sect
(a subdivision of the Ramanujas) in the fourteenth century.  Kabir rejected
the Hindu scriptures and the distinctions of caste and creed; all who love God
and do good are brothers, by whatever name they call God, and whether they be
Hindus or Moslems.  Idolatry and superstitious rites are unsparingly
condemned; the temple should be, like the mosque, a house of prayer.  He
commends unworldliness and the contemplative life, but puts above it moral
integrity, which may be possessed by the man in the world as well as by the
recluse.  Broad as these teachings are, the followers of Kabir are at bottom a
Hindu sect; the authority which they deny to Brahmans or Pandits they ascribe
in the fullest measure to the Guru, or spiritual guide, of the sect, to whom
the disciple is to submit in everything.  Man's welfare depends on his choice
of a guide: "When the master is blind, what is to become of the scholar?  When
the blind leads the blind, both will fall into the well." ^1

[See Temple And Mosque: The temple should be, like the mosque, a house of
prayer.]

[Footnote 1: It may be noted that there are Moslem as well as Hindu precedents
for this unqualified dependence on the spiritual guide.]

     It is, however, not so much through the sect which bears his name as
through the Sikhs, who ultimately derive from him, that Kabir has exerted a
great and lasting power in India.  Nanak, the first Guru (teacher) of the
Sikhs (disciples) was professedly a follower of Kabir, to whose utterances he
frequently appealed.  He was born in 1469, near Lahore, in a region
predominantly Moslem, and in the spirit of his predecessor he endeavoured to
transform the Vishnuism of his countrymen into a simple theism divested of
idolatry and superstition, a religion in which all believers in one God could
unite, without distinction of race or caste. The theology of this religion
was, however, of the Hindu, specifically Vishnuite, type.  God is the supreme
Lord; he may be called Brahma, or Govinda (an epithet of Krishna), or Ram, or
by other titles, but the name preferred by Nanak is Hari (Vishnu).  Works and
ceremonies are meritorious; but the only deliverance from the round of
rebirths is the saving grace of God, which is bestowed on those who call upon
his name (Hari), in a formula (mantra) which can be communicated only by a
teacher who stands in the apostolic succession, and which he bestows only on
those in whom he recognises the marks of election.  The positive aspect of
salvation is reabsorption in the absolute, in which the separate individuality
of the soul is merged, or rather the illusion of its individuality is
dissolved.

     For two or three generations after Nanak's death (1538) the Sikhs were
merely a reforming sect, but as they grew in numbers the unlimited authority
exercised by their religious heads (Gurus) tended to consolidate them more
firmly than is the wont of Hindu sects.  Contrary to the old ascetic ideal in
all its modifications, Nanak bade his disciples seek salvation, not by
withdrawing from the world, but while living in it as householders and
pursuing their ordinary occupations, and this contributed not a little to the
growing strength of the sect; its teachers soon had large worldly resources at
their command.  The fourth in the succession from Nanak was able to build the
famous lake temple at Amritsar, which became the centre of the Sikh community.
He also made the leadership hereditary in his own line, a step which did much
to make the Gurus princes as well as pontiffs.

     His son, Arjun, compiled the Granth (Book, Bible) of the Sikhs, gathering
up the utterances of his predecessors back to Nanak and Kabir, and adding many
of his own; to show that the teachings were not novel he introduced also
numerous verses of older saints (Bhagats).  The earlier heads of the religion
had been supported by voluntary offerings; Arjun established a system of fixed
contributions, collected by his deputies in the several districts, and
surrounded himself with a considerable retinue. Under him the numbers of the
Sikhs increased more rapidly in the Panjab, and this fact, together with the
secular state assumed by the Guru, attracted the notice of the Mohammedan
government at Lahore.  The reports about Arjun's death are conflicting;
intrinsically the most probable account is that he was arrested for offering
prayers in behalf of the emperor's rebellious son.  His successors surrounded
themselves with armed bands, whom they led to battle, now in the service of
the emperors, now against them, now in partisan forays on their own account.

     The religious community rapidly became a veritable church militant,
recruited largely from the warlike Jats of the Panjab.  The emperor Aurangzeb
undertook to crush them; the ninth Guru, Teg Bahadur, fell into his power and
died in prison at Delhi in 1675.  His son, Govind Singh, completed the
transformation of the church into a fanatical host, and laid the foundations
of a nation.  He organised an inner circle, the Khalsa, whose members were
admitted by a sacramental initiation, and received individually the surname
Singh ("lion"); they were always to wear steel upon their persons; to these
companions of the sword God himself was the "All-Iron One"; they were never to
return the salutation of a Hindu, and to kill every Moslem at sight.  Govind
Singh composed a new Granth, fitter to inspire soldiers to heroic deeds than,
like the old Granth, to guide saints to Nirvana.  He had the worse of the
unequal struggle with Aurangzeb, and was fain at last to give it up and take
service under his lifelong foe; he died in 1708 by the hand of a Pathan
assassin.  Before his death he declared that the succession of Gurus was
closed; henceforth the Granth should be the only teacher.

     The long and bitter strife with the Moslems had the natural effect of
making the Sikhs more complacent toward Hinduism; Govind Singh himself paid
homage to Durga, the savage consort of Civa; Banda, who became the leader of
the army, undertook to prohibit the eating of meat and the drinking of
spirituous liquors, but these innovations did not survive him. As in Hinduism
itself, the pantheistic god of the thinkers becomes the personal god of the
masses; and probably the conception of Hari entertained by the ordinary Sikh
does not differ much from that of a Vishnuite.  But the simplicity of worship
has been maintained.  Amritsar is their one holy place; in their temples are
no images nor offerings; the services consist in reciting and singing texts
from the sacred book and the distribution of a sacramental cake made of
butter, flour, and sugar. The religious observances with which Hinduism
surrounds life and death are all forbidden in the Granth, as well as worship
in the Hindu temples. Truthfulness and kindness to the poor are especially
emphasised; falsehood, fraud, theft, slander, and fornication are deadly sins.

     Numerous sects and schisms have at different times arisen among the
Sikhs, some of which have been formally cut off from the church, while others
are recognised as within its pale.  The oldest, the Udasis ("indifferent,"
i.e., to the world) have for their founder a son of Nanak; they are ascetics,
and observe numerous Hindu customs, such as the Craddha.  Of the others it is
sufficient to mention the Akalis (worshippers of the Timeless), said to have
been founded by Govind Singh; they were the zealots of Sikhism, fanatically
resisting all innovations, and a constant cause of apprehension to the Sikh
rulers.  Since the end of the Sikh nation as a political power, they have lost
their importance.

     Another theistic sect, which arose in the seventeenth century, are the
Dadupanthis, whose founder, like Nanak, traced his spiritual lineage through
Kabir to the Ramananda branch of the Vishnuites.  Their religious principles
are in many ways similar to those of the Sikhs, but they have never played a
part on the political stage.  They have no temples nor images, and wear no
sectarian mark on their foreheads; their worship consists chiefly in adoration
of God under the name Rama and the invocation of the sacred name itself.
Unlike the Sikhs, they do not eat flesh, and otherwise strictly observe the
principle of "non-injury." The founder did not demand that the seekers of
salvation should abandon their families or their ordinary occupations; but
those who, like himself, have this vocation may do so.  Besides ascetics and
householders, there were formerly many adherents of this sect who took service
as soldiers under the Hindu princes; the Rajah of Jaypur is said at one time
to have had ten thousand of them in his army.  The extracts from their sacred
books which have been published make a highly favourable impression.  The
stiffening up of Hindu theism by contact with Mohammedanism is very plain;
there is even a certain strain of determinism in the sayings attributed to
Dadu. It does not appear that the veneration for the Guru, or teacher, and the
slavish submission of mind and body to his authority ran to such extravagant
lengths as among the Sikhs and in many other reforming sects. There were
several other reform movements of the same general character in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which cannot here be more particularly
described.

     The theistic reformers of the nineteenth century felt the influence of
Protestant Christianity as well as of Islam.  The first of these was Rammohun
Roy (1774-1833), a Bengali Brahman, the founder of the Brahma-Samaj (Theistic
Society), organised in 1830.  The object of the association, as expressed in
the deed of trust, was the worship of the one eternal, unsearchable, and
immutable Being, the author and preserver of the universe; the promotion of
piety, morality, and charity, and the strengthening of the bonds of union
among men of all religious classes and creeds.  Images and sacrifices were
excluded.  The ritual consisted of readings from the Veda and Upanishads, an
address, and the singing of hymns.  Upon this simple platform and in this
spiritual worship it was thought theists of all opinions could unite.  The
movement thus inaugurated has grown, but its adherents have repeatedly split
upon social, ritual, and theological issues, so that there are now three
Samajes.  After the founder, the most conspicuous names in the history are
those of Debendra Nath Tagore and Keshab Chandra Sen (died 1884).  The members
of the societies have been chiefly drawn from the educated classes, and their
influence through the press and by public speech has been greater than their
numbers, but they can hardly be said to have made any visible impression on
the masses.

     A reforming movement of a more distinctly Hindu type is represented by
the Arya-Samaj, whose founder was Swami Dayanand Sarasvati (1824-83). Like
Rammohun Roy, his watchword was, "back to the Veda," but whereas the
Brahma-Samaj early gave up the infallibility of the Vedas, for Dayanand they
are the sole revelation, the fountainhead not only of religion but of science
for all mankind.  The hymns of the Rig-Veda, as interpreted by Dayanand,
foreshadow the most recent inventions - steam-engines, for example.  The
theology of the Aryas is essentially that of the Sankhya-Yoga.

     Apart from these organised bodies, of which it is impossible to speak
here at greater length, it is evident from many signs that a spirit of revival
is at work in Hinduism, in part at least a concomitant of the rising
race-consciousness.  Those who are animated by this spirit recognise that
revival involves reform; but while the reformers of the last century avowed,
sometimes in sensational utterances, their admiration for Christianity, or at
least for Christ, and regarded the Christianisation of India as its manifest
destiny, the face of the present-day revival is not turned to the West: India
has much to learn from Europe and America in material things, but nothing in
religion, is the prevailing attitude.  Many, indeed, go farther: India is to
be teacher of the Western nations in the higher doctrine and practice of
religion and in the true goal and method of human life.