India is the mother of religions. No other land has been so prolific in religious thought or has founded faiths which have commanded the allegiance of so large a portion of the human race. While the Aryans of the West have been content to borrow their faith from the Hebrews; Indo-Aryans have produced the most wonderful and mighty ethnic religion (Brahmanism) and also one of the three great missionary religions of the world (Buddhism). A third of the human race today cling with devotion to these two products of the fertility of the mind, and the spirituality of the heart, of India.
India's toleration for other religions has been marked. For twelve centuries she has been the asylum of Zoroastrianism. Nearly nine-tenths of the followers of that ancient cult of Persia found and still enjoy a hospitable home in India. There are more of the narrow, bigoted followers of Mohammed among these tolerant people than are found in any other land—even in the wide domains of the Sultan. Christians also have lived, practically unmolested, in this great land almost from Apostolic days.
Thus not a few of the great Faiths of the world are at present represented, and are struggling either for existence or dominance, in the land of the Vedas.
The principal faiths of the land, with their adherents, were as follows, according to census of 1891:
| Hindu | 207,731,727 |
| Sikh | 1,907,838 |
| Jain | 1,416,638 |
| Buddhist[5] | 7,131,361 |
| Parsee | 89,904 |
| Mohammedan | 57,231,164 |
| Jewish | 17,000 |
| Christian[6] | 2,284,000 |
Let us consider these faiths briefly. It will be seen that Christianity has, as its followers, only one per cent. of the whole population of the land.
(a) Judaism.
The Jewish Community in India numbers only 17,000; these are found mostly in Bombay and Poonah. Perhaps the most interesting colony of them is that on the west coast in Cochin. I had the pleasure of visiting them in 1897. There are 1,500 of them divided into two sections—the White, and the Black Jews. There is a marked racial difference between the two. The Blacks were originally the slaves of the Whites as is shown by their historical documents. It is not known when the Whites came to India. Some think that they fled there during the Jewish exile. More likely they came upon the dispersion during the first century of our era. The purity of their blood and the remarkable fairness of their complexion indicate that the settlement has [pg 056] been from time to time reenforced from northwestern countries. They are an exceedingly conservative people; and in their two synagogues, they conduct their worship perhaps more like the Jews of twenty centuries ago than do any other representatives of that race today. The day-school connected with the White Synagogue closely resembles the little school which our Lord attended at Nazareth.