But when people of the same race profess different creeds, these creeds do influence one another and tend to approximate. This is specially remarkable in India, where Islam, in theory the uncompromising opponent of image worship and polytheism, is sometimes in practice undistinguishable from the lower superstitions of Hinduism. In the middle ages Buddhism and Hinduism converged until they coincided so completely that Buddhism disappeared. In China it often needs an expert to distinguish the manifestations of Taoism and Buddhism: in Japan Buddhism and the old national religion were combined in the mixed worship known as Ryōbu Shintō. In the British Isles an impartial observer would probably notice that Anglicans and English Roman Catholics (not Irish perhaps) have more in common than they think.
There are clearly two sets of causes which may divide a race between religions: internal movements, such as the rise of Buddhism, and external impulses, such as missions or conquest. Conquest pure and simple is best illustrated by the history of Islam, also by the conversion of Mexico and South America to Roman Catholicism. But even when conversion is pacific, it will generally be found that, if it is successful on a large scale, it means the introduction of more than a creed. The religious leader in his own country can trust to his eloquence and power over his hearers. The real support of the missionary, however little he may like the idea, is usually that he represents a superior type of civilization. At one time in their career Buddhism and Christianity were the greatest agencies for spreading civilization in Asia and Europe respectively. They brought with them art and literature: they had the encouragement of the most enlightened princes: those who did not accept them in many cases remained obviously on a lower level. Much the same thing happens in Africa to-day. The natives who accept Mohammedanism or Christianity are moved, not by the arguments of the Koran or Bible, but by the idea that it is a fine thing to be like an Arab or a European. A pagan in Uganda is literally a pagan; an uninstructed rustic from a distant village.
Now if we consider the relations of India with the west, we find on neither side the conditions which usually render propaganda successful. Before the Mohammedan invasions and the Portuguese conquest of Goa, no faith can have presented itself to the Hindus with anything like the prestige which marked the advent of Buddhism in China and Japan. Alexander opened a road to India for Hellenic culture and with it came some religious ideas, but the Greeks had no missionary spirit and if there were any early Christian missions they must have been on a small scale. The same is true of the west: if Asoka's missions reached their destination, they failed to inspire any record of their doings. Still there was traffic by land and sea. The Hindus, if self-complacent, were not averse to new ideas, and before the establishment of Christianity there was not much bigotry in the west, for organized religion was unknown in Europe: practices might be forbidden as immoral or anti-social but such expressions as contrary to the Bible or Koran had no equivalent. Old worships were felt to be unsatisfying: new ones were freely adopted: mysteries were relished. There was no invasion, nothing that suggested foreign conquest or alarmed national jealousy, but the way was open to ideas, though they ran some risk of suffering transformation on their long journey.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, Hinduism and Buddhism are essentially religions of central and eastern, not of western Asia, but they came in contact with the west in several regions and an enquiry into the influence which they exercised or felt can be subdivided. There is the question whether they owe anything to Christianity in their later developments and also the question whether Christianity has borrowed anything from them[1072]. Other questions to be considered are the relations of Indian religions to Zoroastrianism in ancient and to Islam in more recent times, which, if of less general interest than problems involving Christianity, are easier to investigate and of considerable importance.
Let us begin with the influence of Christianity on Indian religion. For earlier periods the record of contact between Hindus and Christians is fragmentary, but the evidence of the last two centuries may give a significant indication as to the effect of early Christian influence. In these two centuries Christianity has been presented to the Hindus in the most favourable circumstances: it has come as the religion of the governing power and associated with European civilization: it has not, like Mohammedanism, been propagated by force or accompanied by any intolerance which could awaken repugnance, but its doctrines have been preached and expounded by private missionaries, if not always with skill and sympathy, at least with zeal and a desire to persuade. The result is that according to the census of 1911 there are now 3,876,000 Christians including Europeans, that is to say, a sect a little stronger than the Sikhs as against more than sixty-six million Mohammedans. Of these 3,876,000 many are drawn from the lowest castes or from tribes that are hardly considered as Hindus. Some religious associations, generally known as Somaj, have been founded under the influence of European philosophy as much as of Christianity: imitation of European civilization (which is quite a different thing from Christianity) is visible in the objects and methods of religious and philanthropic institutions: some curious mixed sects of small numerical strength have been formed by the fusion of Christian with Hindu or Mohammedan elements or of all three together. Yet the religious thought and customs of India in general seem hardly conscious of contact with Christianity: there is no sign that they have felt any fancy for the theology of the Athanasian Creed or the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church which might have interested speculative and ritualistic minds. Similarly, though intellectual intercourse between India and China was long and fairly intimate and though the influence of Indian thought on China was very great, yet the influence of China on Indian thought is negligible. This being so, it would be rash to believe without good evidence that, in the past, doctrines which have penetrated Indian literature during centuries and have found acceptance with untold millions owe their origin to obscure foreign colonists or missions.
Writers who wish to prove that Indian religions are indebted to Christianity often approach their task with a certain misconception. They assume that if at some remote epoch a few stray Christians reached India, they could overcome without difficulty the barriers of language and social usage and further that their doctrine would be accepted as something new and striking which would straightway influence popular superstition and philosophic thought. But Lyall gives a juster perspective in his poem about the Meditations of a Hindu Prince who, grown sceptical in the quest of truth, listens to the "word of the English," and finds it:
"Naught but the world wide story how the earth and the heavens began,
How the gods were glad and angry and a deity once was man."
Many doctrines preached by Christianity such as the love of God, salvation by faith, and the incarnation, had been thought out in India before the Christian era, and when Christian missionaries preached them they probably seemed to thoughtful Hindus a new and not very adequate version of a very old tale. On the other hand the central and peculiar doctrine of dogmatic Christianity is that the world has been saved by the death of Christ. If this doctrine of the atonement or the sacrifice of a divine being had appeared in India as an importation from the west, we might justly talk of the influence of Christianity on Indian religion. But it is unknown in Hinduism and Buddhism or (since it is rash to make absolute statements about these vast and multifarious growths of speculation) it is at any rate exceedingly rare. These facts create a presumption that the resemblances between Christianity and Indian religion are due to coincidence rather than borrowing, unless borrowing can be clearly proved, and this conclusion, though it may seem tame, is surely a source of satisfaction. The divagations of human thought are manifold and its conclusions often contradictory, but if there is anything that can be called truth it is but natural that logic, intuition, philosophy, poetry, learning and saintship should in different countries sometimes attain similar results.
Christianity, like other western ideas, may have reached India both by land and by sea. After the conquests of Alexander had once opened the route to the Indus and established Hellenistic kingdoms in its vicinity, the ideas and art of Greece and Rome journeyed without difficulty to the Panjab, arriving perhaps as somewhat wayworn and cosmopolitan travellers but still clearly European. A certain amount of Christianity may have come along this track, but for any historical investigation clearly the first question is, what is the earliest period at which we have any record of its presence in India? It would appear[1073] that the first allusions to the presence of Christians in Parthia, Bactria and the border lands of India date from the third century and that the oldest account[1074] of Christian communities in southern India is the narrative of Cosmas Indicopleustes (c. 525 A.D.). These latter Christians probably came to India by sea from Persia in consequence of the persecutions which raged there in 343 and 414, exactly as at a later date the Parsees escaped the violence of the Moslims by emigrating to Gujarat and Bombay.
The story that the Apostle Thomas preached in some part of India has often been used as an argument for the early introduction and influence of Christianity, but recent authorities agree in thinking that it is legendary or at best not provable. The tale occurs first in the Acts of St. Thomas[1075], the Syriac text of which is considered to date from about 250. It relates how the apostle was sold as a slave skilled in architecture and coming to the Court of Gundaphar, king of India, undertook to build, a palace but expended the moneys given to him in charity and, when called to account, explained that he was building for the king a palace in heaven, not made with hands. This sounds more like an echo of some Buddhist Jâtaka written in praise of liberality than an embellishment of any real biography. Other legends make southern India the sphere of Thomas's activity, though he can hardly have taught in both Madras and Parthia, and a similar uncertainty is indicated by the tradition that his relics were transported to Edessa, which doubtless means that according to other accounts he died there. Tradition connects Thomas with Parthians quite as much as with Indians, and, if he really contributed to the diffusion of Christianity, it is more likely that he laboured in the western part of Parthia than on its extreme eastern frontiers. The fact that there really was an Indo-Parthian king with a name something like Gondophares no more makes the legend of St. Thomas historical than the fact that there was a Bohemian king with a name something like Wenceslas makes the Christmas carol containing that name historical.