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402
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
FOCTOBER, 1902.
distrust novelties, to hold the experience of the past as a surer and safer guide than the clearest conclusions of logic, and to maintain with loving reverence the customs, the convictions, and the traditions that have come down from former generations. On the other hand, a restless, impetuous energy, inventing, expanding, pressing forward to the future, drawing wider circles around the doctrines already inculcated, - a mode of thought, which in the balf-educated takes the form of a rash disdain of earlier ages, but in the best and the wisest creates a sense that they would be unworthy sons of their ancestors if they do march with the times. In healthy ages the two tendencies coexist. Shakspeare has wisely said :
So may the outward shows be least themselves,
The world is still deceived with ornament.' Many mere superficial observers, or even observers with a mind prepossessed one way or the other, say that whatever Hinduism may have been in the past, it is now a mere tissue of formalities, utterly devoid of every noble inspiration, utterly incapable of exercising any real spiritual influence upon the lives of its votaries. If a religion is to be judged as a marketable commodity, 48 a commodity which has an exchange value, if it is to be judged merely on the status, social or otherwise, which its votaries occupy, I am afraid that the case must be decided adversely to Hinduism. But if a religion is to be judged on far higher and nobler principles, on the number of real theists it has actually made, on the number of those who sincerely believe that there can be no gloomier form of infidelity than that which questions the moral attributes of that Great Being in Whose hands are the final destinies of us all, on the number of those whose grosser natures are turned by degrees to the soul's essence till all be made immortal, I may boldly say that Hinduism does satisfy the conditions. If we wish to find a spiritual religion indigenous, native of the soil, we must look, not to the members of the educated communities amongst whom such movements have bad their origin, but to the rude Corinthian boor' wholly untainted by any outlandish influences, or by the standard attained by the Parisian society of the eighteenth century. In a place like India, where religion is the bed-rock, the sine quá non of the peoples who inhabit it, every village can proudly point the finger at some of her men and even women, who have risen "fa: above the madding crowd's ignoble strife,' who alone in the stillness of the night hold communion with the Lord of the Universe independent of any dull, stupid paraphernalia. Such people do not thrust home their convictions on others, neither do they hide them, but ventilate them by the peculiar contact of mind with mind and knowledge with knowledge. They are generally known as Brahmaváttas, knowers of the Lord,' and are held in very high reverence by the common folk, and are generally those whose individuality has been lost and confounded in their paramount power as cosmopolites. But there are sham cosmopolites, not conversant with the true Hindu mode of thought, who are led to believe that the Brahmavêttas do not submit to the authority of Brahmans, and these not unfrequently vigorously denounce the priestly pretensions.
As to this authority of the Brahmans. It has been very often said that if the sacerdotal order should ancroach upon the functions of the civil magistrate, it would in our time be a great evil. But what in our age is considered as an evil, may have in a remoter period been a blessing. It is good that mankind should be governed by wise laws well administered and by an enlightened public opinion rather than by priesteraft, but it is better that men should be governed by disinterested priests who have ceased to be enamoured of those brittle and transient joys which the world can neither give nor take away, rather than by brute force. A society ruled by mere physical force has great reason to rejoice when a class of which the influence is intellectual and moral rises to ascendency. Snch a class may doubtless degenerate, but mental power, even when abused, is a still nobler and better power than that which consists merely in corporeal strength. Whatever reproach may at a later period have been justly thrown on the indolence and the luxury of the religious orders, it was surely good that in an age of ignorance and violence there should be quiet cloisters and gardens in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated, in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an
