mind is in close contact with such modern religious ideas. The wall built round the garden will not shut out the crows. Indeed, like the ancient Athenian, the modern Hindu takes the keenest interest in new religious ideas.
To comprehend the impression that such new religious ideas are making, we must realise in some measure the background upon which they are cast, both that part of it which the new ideas are superseding and the remainder which constitutes their new setting and gives them their significance. In brief, what is the present position of India in regard to religious belief; and in particular, what are the prevailing beliefs about God?
Indian beliefs about God—Polytheists; Theists; Pantheists.
A rough classification of the theological belief of the Hindus of the present day would be—the multitude are polytheists; the new-educated are monotheists; the brahmanically educated are professed pantheists. Rough as it is, we must keep the classification before us in trying to estimate the influence upon the Indian mind of the Christian idea of God. From that fundamental classification let us try to understand the Hindu position more fully.
No one doctrine is distinctive of Hinduism.
Let it be realised, in the first place, how undefined
is the Hindu's religious position. From the rudest polytheism up to pantheism, and even to an atheistic philosophy, all is within the Hindu pale, like fantastic cloud shapes and vague mist and empty ether, all within the same sky. To the student of Hinduism, then, the first fact that emerges is that there are no distinctive Hindu doctrines. No one doctrine is distinctive of Hinduism. There is no canonical book, nowhere any stated body of doctrine that might be called the Hindu creed. The only common measure of Hindus is that they employ brahmans in their religious ceremonies, and even that does not hold universally. A saying of their own is, "On two main points all sects agree—the sanctity of the cow and the depravity of women." In contrast to Hindus in this respect of the absence of a standard creed, Mahomedans call themselves kitabi or possessing a book, since in the Koran they do possess such a canon. In the words of Mahomed, Christians and Jews likewise are "the peoples of the book," and have a defined theological position. But regarding Hindus, again, we note there is no doctrinal pale, no orthodoxy or heterodoxy. "We Europeans," writes Sir Alfred Lyall regarding Hinduism, "can scarcely comprehend an ancient
religion, still alive and powerful, which is a mere troubled sea without shore or visible horizon."[62] In these days of opportunist denunciation of creeds, the amorphous state of creedless Hinduism may be noted.
The experience of the late Dr. John Henry Barrows, President of the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893, may be quoted in confirmation of the absence of a Hindu creed. After he had won the confidence of India's representatives as their host at Chicago, and had secured for them a unique audience there, being himself desirous to write on Hinduism, he wrote to over a hundred prominent Hindus requesting each to indicate what in his view were some of the leading tenets of Hinduism. He received only one reply.
Pantheism, Maya, and Transmigration may be called Hindu doctrines.