Desire to discover Christian ideas in Hindu Scriptures.
Christ and Krishna set alongside.
Another phase of that same divided mind, acknowledging Christ and resenting Indian discipleship, may be perceived in the willingness to discover Christian ideas in Hindu Scriptures, and Christ-like features in Hindu deities and religious heroes. To express it from the Indian standpoint,—they see Christ and Christianity bringing back much of their own "refined and modernised." In a sense, as a Bengali Christian gentleman put it, Christ and Christianity have become the accepted standards in religion.[100] Again we quote from the same page of the Hindustan Review: "A revival of Hinduism has taken place.... It [Christianity] has given us Christ, and given us noble moral and spiritual lessons, which we have discovered anew in our own Scriptures, and thereby satisfied our self-love and made our very own." We have mentioned how missionaries used to find the doctrine of the atonement in the name of the Indian God Hari; the argument has now in turn been
annexed by Hindus, and employed as an argument in their favour. Within the last twenty years, there has been a great revival of the honouring of Krishna among the educated classes in Bengal and the United Provinces. Krishna has set up distinctly as the Indian Christ, or as the Indian figure to be set up over against Christ. A Krishna story has been disentangled from the gross mythology, and he has become a paragon of virtue,—the work of a distinguished Bengali novelist. I mean no sarcasm. From the sermon of a Hindu preacher in a garden in Calcutta in 1898, I quote: "The same God came into the world as the Krishna of India and the Krishna of Jerusalem." These are his words. From the catalogue of the Neo-Krishnaite literature in Bengal, given by Mr. J.N. Farquhar of the Y.M.C.A., Calcutta, it appears that since 1884 thirteen Lives of Krishna or works on Krishna have appeared in Bengal. Many essays have appeared comparing Krishna with Christ. There have been likewise many editions of the Bhagabat Gita, or Divine Song, the episode in the Mahabharat, in which Krishna figures as religious teacher. It may be called the New Testament of the Neo-Krishnaite. Perhaps the most striking of these Neo-Krishnaite
publications is The Imitation of Sri-Krishna, a daily-text book containing extracts from the Bhagabat Gita and the Bhagabat Puran. The title is, of course, a manifest echo of "The Imitation of Christ," which is a favourite with religious-minded Hindus. The Imitation of Buddha, likewise we may observe, has been published. About "The Imitation of Christ" itself, we quote from a Hindu's advertisement appended to the life of a new Hindu saint, Ramkrishna Paramhansa. "The reader of 'The Imitation of Christ,'" it says, "will find echoed in it hundreds of sayings of our Lord Sri-Krishna in the Bhagabat Gita like the following: 'Give up all religious work and come to me as thy sole refuge, and I will deliver thee from all manner of sin.'" The notice goes on: "The book has found its way into the pockets of many orthodox Hindus."
Christ and Chaitanya of Bengal.
From Krishna we turn to Chaitanya, surname Gauranga, the fair, a religious teacher of Bengal in the fifteenth century, who is also being set up as the Christ of Bengal, in that he preached the equality of men before God and ecstatic devotion to the god Krishna. A Christ-like man, indeed, in many ways, Chaitanya was, and the increased acquaintance of educated Bengal with Jesus Christ naturally brought Chaitanya to the front. The
new cult of Chaitanya and his enthronement over against Jesus Christ are manifest in the titles of two recent publications in Bengal, the first entitled, Lord Gauranga, or Salvation for all, and the other, Chaitanya's Message of Love. Chaitanya and his two chief followers, it should be said, were called the great lords (prabhus) of the sect, but the title "Lord Gauranga" is quite new, an echo of the title of Jesus Christ. With regard to the new power of Christ's personality, it should be noted that the author of Lord Gauranga strongly deprecates the idea that his desire is to demolish Christianity, or other than to extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ. He declares that Jesus Christ is as much a prophet as any avatar of the Hindus, and that Hindus can and ought to accept him as they do Krishna or Chaitanya. This is in accord with the spirit of Hinduism—namely, the fluidity of doctrine, and the free choice of guru or religious teacher, as set forth in a previous chapter—although it is still an advanced position for a Hindu to take up publicly.
Eccentric manifestations of the power of Christ's personality.
Could we observe the course of evolution down which a species of animals or plants has come from some remote ancestry to their present form, with what interest would we note the specific characteristics gathering strength, as from generation to