THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME XIII SLICE V
Hinduism to Home, Earls of

Articles in This Slice

HINDUISM, a term generally employed to comprehend the social institutions, past and present, of the Hindus who form the great majority of the people of India; as well as the multitudinous crop of their religious beliefs which has grown up, in the course of many centuries, on the foundation of the Brahmanical scriptures. The actual proportion of the total population of India (294 millions) included under the name of “Hindus” has been computed in the census report for 1901 at something like 70% (206 millions); the remaining 30% being made up partly of the followers of foreign creeds, such as Mahommedans, Parsees, Christians and Jews, partly of the votaries of indigenous forms of belief which have at various times separated from the main stock, and developed into independent systems, such as Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism; and partly of isolated hill and jungle tribes, such as the Santals, Bhils (Bhilla) and Kols, whose crude animistic tendencies have hitherto kept them, either wholly or for the most part, outside the pale of the Brahmanical community. The name “Hindu” itself is of foreign origin, being derived from the Persians, by whom the river Sindhu was called Hindhu, a name subsequently applied to the inhabitants of that frontier district, and gradually extended over the upper and middle reaches of the Gangetic valley, whence this whole tract of country between the Himalaya and the Vindhya mountains, west of Bengal, came to be called by the foreign conquerors “Hindustan,” or the abode of the Hindus; whilst the native writers called it “Aryavarta,” or the abode of the Aryas.

But whilst, in its more comprehensive acceptation, the term Hinduism would thus range over the entire historical development of Brahmanical India, it is also not infrequently used in a narrower sense, as denoting more especially the modern phase of Indian social and religious institutions—from the earlier centuries of the Christian era down to our own days—as distinguished from the period dominated by the authoritative doctrine of pantheistic belief, formulated by the speculative theologians during the centuries immediately succeeding the Vedic period (see [Brahmanism]). In this its more restricted sense the term may thus practically be taken to apply to the later bewildering variety of popular sectarian forms of belief, with its social concomitant, the fully developed caste-system. But, though one may at times find it convenient to speak of “Brahmanism and Hinduism,” it must be clearly understood that the distinction implied in the combination of these terms is an extremely vague one, especially from the chronological point of view. The following considerations will probably make this clear.

The characteristic tenet of orthodox Brahmanism consists in the conception of an absolute, all-embracing spirit, the Brahma (neutr.), being the one and only reality, itself unconditioned, and the original cause and ultimate Connexion with Brahmanism. goal of all individual souls (jīva, i.e. living things). Coupled with this abstract conception are two other doctrines, viz. first, the transmigration of souls (saṃsāra), regarded by Indian thinkers as the necessary complement of a belief in the essential sameness of all the various spiritual units, however contaminated, to a greater or less degree, they may be by their material embodiment; and in their ultimate re-union with the Paramātman, or Supreme Self; and second, the assumption of a triple manifestation of the ceaseless working of that Absolute Spirit as a creative, conservative and destructive principle, represented respectively by the divine personalities of Brahma (masc.), Vishṅu and Śiva, forming the Trimūrti or Triad. As regards this latter, purely exoteric, doctrine, there can be little doubt of its owing its origin to considerations of theological expediency, as being calculated to supply a sufficiently wide formula of belief for general acceptance; and the very fact of this divine triad including the two principal deities of the later sectarian worship, Vishṇu and Śiva, goes far to show that these two gods at all events must have been already in those early days favourite objects of popular adoration to an extent sufficient to preclude their being ignored by a diplomatic priesthood bent upon the formulation of a common creed. Thus, so far from sectarianism being a mere modern development of Brahmanism, it actually goes back to beyond the formulation of the Brahmanical creed. Nay, when, on analysing the functions and attributes of those two divine figures, each of them is found to be but a compound of several previously recognized deities, sectarian worship may well be traced right up to the Vedic age. That the theory of the triple manifestation of the deity was indeed only a compromise between Brahmanical aspirations and popular worship, probably largely influenced by the traditional sanctity of the number three, is sufficiently clear from the fact that, whilst Brahma, the creator, and at the same time the very embodiment of Brahmanical class pride, has practically remained a mere figurehead in the actual worship of the people, Śiva, on the other hand, so far from being merely the destroyer, is also the unmistakable representative of generative and reproductive power in nature. In fact, Brahma, having performed his legitimate part in the mundane evolution by his original creation of the universe, has retired into the background, being, as it were, looked upon as functus officio, like a venerable figure of a former generation, whence in epic poetry he is commonly styled pitāmaha, “the grandsire.” But despite the artificial character of the Trimūrti, it has retained to this day at least its theoretical validity in orthodox Hinduism, whilst it has also undoubtedly exercised considerable influence in shaping sectarian belief, in promoting feelings of toleration towards the claims of rival deities; and in a tendency towards identifying divine figures newly sprung into popular favour with one or other of the principal deities, and thus helping to bring into vogue that notion of avatars, or periodical descents or incarnations of the deity, which has become so prominent a feature of the later sectarian belief.

Under more favourable political conditions,[1] the sacerdotal class might perhaps, in course of time, have succeeded in imposing something like an effective common creed on the heterogeneous medley of races and tribes scattered over the peninsula, just as they certainly did succeed in establishing the social prerogative of their own order over the length and breadth of India. They were, however, fated to fall far short of such a consummation; and at all times orthodox Brahmanism has had to wink at, or ignore, all manner of gross superstitions and repulsive practices, along with the popular worship of countless hosts of godlings, demons, spirits and ghosts, and mystic objects and symbols of every description. Indeed, according to a recent account by a close observer of the religious practices prevalent in southern India, fully four-fifths of the people of the Dravidian race, whilst nominally acknowledging the spiritual guidance of the Brahmans, are to this day practically given over to the worship of their nondescript local village deities (grāma-devatā), usually attended by animal sacrifices frequently involving the slaughter, under revolting circumstances, of thousands of victims. Curiously enough these local deities are nearly all of the female, not the male sex. In the estimation of these people “Siva and Vishnu may be more dignified beings, but the village deity is regarded as a more present help in trouble, and more intimately concerned with the happiness and prosperity of the villagers. The origin of this form of Hinduism is lost in antiquity, but it is probable that it represents a pre-Aryan religion, more or less modified in various parts of south India by Brahmanical influence. At the same time, many of the deities themselves are of quite recent origin, and it is easy to observe a deity in making even at the present day.”[2] It is a significant fact that, whilst in the worship of Siva and Vishnu, at which no animal sacrifices are offered, the officiating priests are almost invariably Brahmans, this is practically never the case at the popular performance of those “gloomy and weird rites for the propitiation of angry deities, or the driving away of evil spirits, when the pujaris (or ministrants) are drawn from all other castes, even from the Pariahs, the out-caste section of Indian society.”

As from the point of view of religious belief, so also from that of social organization no clear line of demarcation can be drawn between Brahmanism and Hinduism. Though it was not till later times that the network of class Caste. divisions and subdivisions attained anything like the degree of intricacy which it shows in these latter days, still in its origin the caste-system is undoubtedly coincident with the rise of Brahmanism, and may even be said to be of the very essence of it.[3] The cardinal principle which underlies the system of caste is the preservation of purity of descent, and purity of religious belief and ceremonial usage. Now, that same principle had been operative from the very dawn of the history of Aryanized India. The social organism of the Aryan tribe did not probably differ essentially from that of most communities at that primitive stage of civilization; whilst the body of the people—the Viś (or aggregate of Vaiśyas)—would be mainly occupied with agricultural and pastoral pursuits, two professional classes—those of the warrior and the priest—had already made good their claim to social distinction. As yet, however, the tribal community would still feel one in race and traditional usage. But when the fair-coloured Aryan immigrants first came in contact with, and drove back or subdued the dark-skinned race that occupied the northern plains—doubtless the ancestors of the modern Dravidian people—the preservation of their racial type and traditionary order of things would naturally become to them a matter of serious concern. In the extreme north-western districts—the Punjab and Rajputana, judging from the fairly uniform physical features of the present population of these parts—they seem to have been signally successful in their endeavour to preserve their racial purity, probably by being able to clear a sufficiently extensive area of the original occupants for themselves with their wives and children to settle upon. The case was, however, very different in the adjoining valley of the Jumna and Ganges, the sacred Madhyadesa or Middle-land of classical India. Here the Aryan immigrants were not allowed to establish themselves without undergoing a considerable admixture of foreign blood. It must remain uncertain whether it was that the thickly-populated character of the land scarcely admitted of complete occupation, but only of a conquest by an army of fighting men, starting from the Aryanized region—who might, however, subsequently draw women of their own kin after them—or whether, as has been suggested, a second Aryan invasion of India took place at that time through the mountainous tracts of the upper Indus and northern Kashmir, where the nature of the road would render it impracticable for the invading bands to be accompanied by women and children. Be this as it may, the physical appearance of the population of this central region of northern India—Hindustan and Behar—clearly points to an intermixture of the tall, fair-coloured, fine-nosed Aryan with the short-sized, dark-skinned, broad-nosed Dravidian; the latter type becoming more pronounced towards the lower strata of the social order.[4] Now, it was precisely in this part of India that mainly arose the body of literature which records the gradual rise of the Brahmanical hierarchy and the early development of the caste-system.

The problem that now lay before the successful invaders was how to deal with the indigenous people, probably vastly outnumbering them, without losing their own racial identity. They dealt with them in the way the white race usually deals with the coloured race—they kept them socially apart. The land being appropriated by the conquerors, husbandry, as the most respectable industrial occupation, became the legitimate calling of the Aryan settler, the Vaiśya; whilst handicrafts, gradually multiplying with advancing civilization and menial service, were assigned to the subject race. The generic name applied to the latter was Śūdra, originally probably the name of one of the subjected tribes. So far the social development proceeded on lines hardly differing from those with which one is familiar in the history of other nations. The Indo-Aryans, however, went a step farther. What they did was not only to keep the native race apart from social intercourse with themselves, but to shut them out from all participation in their own higher aims, and especially in their own religious convictions and ceremonial practices. So far from attempting to raise their standard of spiritual life, or even leaving it to ordinary intercourse to gradually bring about a certain community of intellectual culture and religious sentiment, they deliberately set up artificial barriers in order to prevent their own traditional modes of worship from being contaminated with the obnoxious practices of the servile race. The serf, the Śūdra, was not to worship the gods of the Aryan freemen. The result was the system of four castes (varṇa, i.e. “colour”; or jāti, “gens”). Though the Brahman, who by this time had firmly secured his supremacy over the kshatriya, or noble, in matters spiritual as well as in legislative and administrative functions, would naturally be the prime mover in this regulation of the social order, there seems no reason to believe that the other two upper classes were not equally interested in seeing their hereditary privileges thus perpetuated by divine sanction. Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable in the whole development of the caste-system than the jealous pride which every caste, from the highest to the lowest, takes in its own peculiar occupation and sphere of life. The distinctive badge of a member of the three upper castes was the sacred triple cord or thread (sūtra)—made of cotton, hemp or wool, according to the respective caste—with which he was invested at the upanayana ceremony, or initiation into the use of the sacred sāvitri, or prayer to the sun (also called gāyatrī), constituting his second birth. Whilst the Arya was thus a dvi-ja, or twice-born, the Sudra remained unregenerate during his lifetime, his consolation being the hope that, on the faithful performance of his duties in this life, he might hereafter be born again into a higher grade of life. In later times, the strict adherence to caste duties would naturally receive considerable support from the belief in the transmigration of souls, already prevalent before Buddha’s time, and from the very general acceptance of the doctrine of karma (“deed”), or retribution, according to which a man’s present station and manner of life are the result of the sum-total of his actions and thoughts in his former existence; as his actions here will again, by the same automatic process of retribution, determine his status and condition in his next existence. Though this doctrine is especially insisted upon in Buddhism, and its designation as a specific term (Pali, Kamma) may be due to that creed, the notion itself was doubtless already prevalent in pre-Buddhist times. It would even seem to be necessarily and naturally implied in Brahmanical belief in metempsychosis; whilst in the doctrine of Buddha, who admits no soul, the theory of the net result or fruit of a man’s actions serving hereafter to form or condition the existence of some new individual who will have no conscious identity with himself, seems of a peculiarly artificial and mystic character. But, be this as it may, “the doctrine of karma is certainly one of the firmest beliefs of all classes of Hindus, and the fear that a man shall reap as he has sown is an appreciable element in the average morality ... the idea of forgiveness is absolutely wanting; evil done may indeed be outweighed by meritorious deeds so far as to ensure a better existence in the future, but it is not effaced, and must be atoned for” (Census Report, i. 364).

In spite, however, of the artificial restrictions placed on the intermarrying of the castes, the mingling of the two races seems to have proceeded at a tolerably rapid rate. Indeed, the paucity of women of the Aryan stock would probably render these mixed unions almost a necessity from the very outset; and the vaunted purity of blood which the caste rules were calculated to perpetuate can scarcely have remained of more than a relative degree even in the case of the Brahman caste. Certain it is that mixed castes are found referred to at a comparatively early period; and at the time of Buddha—some five or six centuries before the Christian era—the social organization would seem to have presented an appearance not so very unlike that of modern times. It must be confessed, however, that our information regarding the development of the caste-system is far from complete, especially in its earlier stages. Thus, we are almost entirely left to conjecture on the important point as to the original social organization of the subject race. Though doubtless divided into different tribes scattered over an extensive tract of land, the subjected aborigines were slumped together under the designation of Sudras, whose duty it was to serve the upper classes in all the various departments of manual labour, save those of a downright sordid and degrading character which it was left to vratyas or outcasts to perform. How, then, was the distribution of crafts and habitual occupations of all kinds brought about? Was the process one of spontaneous growth adapting an already existing social organization to a new order of things; or was it originated and perpetuated by regulation from above? Or was it rather that the status and duties of existing offices and trades came to be determined and made hereditary by some such artificial system as that by which the Theodosian Code succeeded for a time in organizing the Roman society in the 5th century of our era? “It is well known” (says Professor Dill) “that the tendency of the later Empire was to stereotype society, by compelling men to follow the occupation of their fathers, and preventing a free circulation among different callings and grades of life. The man who brought the grain from Africa to the public stores at Ostia, the baker who made it into loaves for distribution, the butchers who brought pigs from Samnium, Lucania or Bruttium, the purveyors of wine and oil, the men who fed the furnaces of the public baths, were bound to their callings from one generation to another. It was the principle of rural serfdom applied to social functions. Every avenue of escape was closed. A man was bound to his calling not only by his father’s but also by his mother’s condition. Men were not permitted to marry out of their gild. If the daughter of one of the baker caste married a man not belonging to it, her husband was bound to her father’s calling. Not even a dispensation obtained by some means from the imperial chancery, not even the power of the Church could avail to break the chain of servitude.” It can hardly be gainsaid that these artificial arrangements bear a very striking analogy to those of the Indian caste-system; and if these class restrictions were comparatively short-lived on Italian ground, it was not perhaps so much that so strange a plant found there an ethnic soil less congenial to its permanent growth, but because it was not allowed sufficient time to become firmly rooted; for already great political events were impending which within a few decades were to lay the mighty empire in ruins. In India, on the other hand, the institution of caste—even if artificially contrived and imposed by the Indo-Aryan priest and ruler—had at least ample time allowed it to become firmly established in the social habits, and even in the affections, of the people. At the same time, one could more easily understand how such a system could have found general acceptance all over the Dravidian region of southern India, with its merest sprinkling of Aryan blood, if it were possible to assume that class arrangements of a similar kind must have already been prevalent amongst the aboriginal tribes prior to the advent of the Aryan. Whether a more intimate acquaintance with the manners and customs of those rude tribes that have hitherto kept themselves comparatively free from Hindu influences may yet throw some light on this question, remains to be seen. But, by this as it may, the institution of caste, when once established, certainly appears to have gone on steadily developing; and not even the long period of Buddhist ascendancy, with its uncompromising resistance to the Brahman’s claim to being the sole arbiter in matters of faith, seems to have had any very appreciable retardant effect upon the progress of the movement. It was not only by the formation of ever new endogamous castes and sub-castes that the system gained in extent and intricacy, but even more so by the constant subdivision of the castes into numerous exogamous groups or septs, themselves often involving gradations of social status important enough to seriously affect the possibility of intermarriage, already hampered by various other restrictions. Thus a man wishing to marry his son or daughter had to look for a suitable match outside his sept, but within his caste. But whilst for his son he might choose a wife from a lower sept than his own, for his daughter, on the other hand, the law of hypergamy compelled him, if at all possible, to find a husband in a higher sept. This would naturally lead to an excess of women over men in the higher septs, and would render it difficult for a man to get his daughter respectably married without paying a high price for a suitable bridegroom and incurring other heavy marriage expenses. It can hardly be doubted that this custom has been largely responsible for the crime of female infanticide, formerly so prevalent in India; as it also probably is to some extent for infant marriages, still too common in some parts of India, especially Bengal; and even for the all but universal repugnance to the re-marriage of widows, even when these had been married in early childhood and had never joined their husbands. Yet violations of these rules are jealously watched by the other members of the sept, and are liable—in accordance with the general custom in which communal matters are regulated in India—to be brought before a special council (panchāyat), originally consisting of five (pancha), but now no longer limited to that number, since it is chiefly the greater or less strictness in the observance of caste rules and the orthodox ceremonial generally that determine the status of the sept in the social scale of the caste. Whilst community of occupation was an important factor in the original formation of non-tribal castes, the practical exigencies of life have led to considerable laxity in this respect—not least so in the case of Brahmans who have often had to take to callings which would seem altogether incompatible with the proper spiritual functions of their caste. Thus, “the prejudice against eating cooked food that has been touched by a man of an inferior caste is so strong that, although the Shastras do not prohibit the eating of food cooked by a Kshatriya or Vaiśya, yet the Brahmans, in most parts of the country, would not eat such food. For these reasons, every Hindu household—whether Brahman, Kshatriya or Sudra—that can afford to keep a paid cook generally entertains the services of a Brahman for the performance of its cuisine—the result being that in the larger towns the very name of Brahman has suffered a strange degradation of late, so as to mean only a cook” (Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya, Hindu Castes and Sects). In this caste, however, as in all others, there are certain kinds of occupation to which a member could not turn for a livelihood without incurring serious defilement. In fact, adherence to the traditional ceremonial and respectability of occupation go very much hand-in-hand. Thus, amongst agricultural castes, those engaged in vegetable-growing or market-gardening are inferior to the genuine peasant or yeoman, such as the Jat and Rajput; whilst of these the Jat who practises widow-marriage ranks below the Rajput who prides himself on his tradition of ceremonial orthodoxy—though racially there seems little, if any, difference between the two; and the Rajput, again, is looked down upon by the Babhan of Behar because he does not, like himself, scruple to handle the plough, instead of invariably employing low-caste men for this manual labour. So also when members of the Baidya, or physician, caste of Bengal, ranging next to that of the Brahman, farm land on tenure, “they will on no account hold the plough, or engage in any form of manual labour, and thus necessarily carry on their cultivation by means of hired servants” (H. H. Risley, Census Report).

The scale of social precedence as recognized by native public opinion is concisely reviewed (ib.) as revealing itself “in the facts that particular castes are supposed to be modern representatives of one or other of the original castes of the theoretical Hindu system; that Brahmans will take water from certain castes; that Brahmans of high standing will serve particular castes; that certain castes, though not served by the best Brahmans, have nevertheless got Brahmans of their own whose rank varies according to circumstances; that certain castes are not served by Brahmans at all but have priests of their own; that the status of certain castes has been raised by their taking to infant-marriage or abandoning the re-marriage of widows; that the status of others has been modified by their pursuing some occupations in a special or peculiar way; that some can claim the services of the village barber, the village palanquin-bearer, the village midwife, &c., while others cannot; that some castes may not enter the courtyards of certain temples; that some castes are subject to special taboos, such as that they must not use the village well, or may draw water only with their own vessels, that they must live outside the village or in a separate quarter, that they must leave the road on the approach of a high-caste man and must call out to give warning of their approach.” ... “The first point to observe is the predominance throughout India of the influence of the traditional system of four original castes. In every scheme of grouping the Brahman heads the list. Then come the castes whom popular opinion accepts as the modern representatives of the Kshatriyas; and these are followed by the mercantile groups supposed to be akin to the Vaiśyas. When we leave the higher circles of the twice-born, the difficulty of finding a uniform basis of classification becomes apparent. The ancient designation Sudra finds no great favour in modern times, and we can point to no group that is generally recognized as representing it. The term is used in Bombay, Madras and Bengal to denote a considerable number of castes of moderate respectability, the higher of whom are considered ‘clean’ Sudras, while the precise status of the lower is a question which lends itself to endless controversy.” ... In northern and north-western India, on the other hand, “the grade next below the twice-born rank is occupied by a number of castes from whose hands Brahmans and members of the higher castes will take water and certain kinds of sweetmeats. Below these again is rather an indeterminate group from whom water is taken by some of the higher castes, not by others. Further down, where the test of water no longer applies, the status of the caste depends on the nature of its occupation and its habits in respect of diet. There are castes whose touch defiles the twice-born, but who do not commit the crowning enormity of eating beef.... In western and southern India the idea that the social state of a caste depends on whether Brahmans will take water and sweetmeats from its members is unknown, for the higher castes will as a rule take water only from persons of their own caste and sub-caste. In Madras especially the idea of ceremonial pollution by the proximity of an unclean caste has been developed with much elaboration. Thus the table of social precedence attached to the Cochin report shows that while a Nayar can pollute a man of a higher caste only by touching him, people of the Kammalan group, including masons, blacksmiths, carpenters and workers in leather, pollute at a distance of 24 ft., toddy-drawers at 36 ft., Pulayan or Cheruman cultivators at 48 ft., while in the case of the Paraiyan (Pariahs) who eat beef the range of pollution is no less than 64 ft.”

In this bewildering maze of social grades and class distinctions, the Brahman, as will have been seen, continues to hold the dominant position, being respected and even worshipped by all the others. “The more orthodox Sudras carry their veneration for the priestly class to such a degree that they will not cross the shadow of a Brahman, and it is not unusual for them to be under a vow not to eat any food in the morning, before drinking Bipracharanamrita, i.e. water in which the toe of a Brahman has been dipped. On the other hand, the pride of the Brahmans is such that they do not bow to even the images of the gods worshipped in a Sudra’s house by Brahman priests” (Jog. Nath Bh.). There are, however, not a few classes of Brahmans who, for various reasons, have become degraded from their high station, and formed separate castes with whom respectable Brahmans refuse to intermarry and consort. Chief amongst these are the Brahmans who minister for “unclean” Sudras and lower castes, including the makers and dealers in spirituous liquors; as well as those who officiate at the great public shrines or places of pilgrimage where they might be liable to accept forbidden gifts, and, as a matter of fact, often amass considerable wealth; and those who officiate as paid priests at cremations and funeral rites, when the wearing apparel and bedding of the deceased are not unfrequently claimed by them as their perquisites.

As regards the other two “twice-born” castes, several modern groups do indeed claim to be their direct descendants, and in vindication of their title make it a point to perform the upanayana ceremony and to wear the sacred thread. But though the Brahmans, too, will often acquiesce in the reasonableness of such claims, it is probably only as a matter of policy that they do so, whilst in reality they regard the other two higher castes as having long since disappeared and been merged by miscegenation in the Sudra mass. Hence, in the later classical Sanskrit literature, the term dvija, or twice-born, is used simply as a synonym for a Brahman. As regards the numerous groups included under the term of Sudras, the distinction between “clean” and “unclean” Sudras is of especial importance for the upper classes, inasmuch as only the former—of whom nine distinct castes are usually recognized—are as a rule considered fit for employment in household service.

The picture thus presented by Hindu society—as made up of a confused congeries of social groups of the most varied standing, each held together and kept separate from others by a traditional body of ceremonial rules and by the Theology. notion of social gradations being due to a divinely instituted order of things—finds something like a counterpart in the religious life of the people. As in the social sphere, so also in the sphere of religious belief, we find the whole scale of types represented from the lowest to the highest; and here as there, we meet with the same failure of welding the confused mass into a well-ordered whole. In their theory of a triple manifestation of an impersonal deity, the Brahmanical theologians, as we have seen, had indeed elaborated a doctrine which might have seemed to form a reasonable, authoritative creed for a community already strongly imbued with pantheistic notions; yet, at best, that creed could only appeal to the sympathies of a comparatively limited portion of the people. Indeed, the sacerdotal class themselves had made its universal acceptance an impossibility, seeing that their laws, by which the relations of the classes were to be regulated, aimed at permanently excluding the entire body of aboriginal tribes from the religious life of their Aryan masters. They were to be left for all time coming to their own traditional idolatrous notions and practices. However, the two races could not, in the nature of things, be permanently kept separate from each other. Indeed, even prior to the definite establishment of the caste-system, the mingling of the lower race with the upper classes, especially with the aristocratic landowners and still more so with the yeomanry, had probably been going on to such an extent as to have resulted in two fairly well-defined intermediate types of colour between the priestly order and the servile race and to have facilitated the ultimate division into four “colours” (varna). In course of time the process of intermingling, as we have seen, assumed such proportions that the priestly class, in their pride of blood, felt naturally tempted to recognize, as of old, only two “colours,” the Aryan Brahman and the non-Aryan Sudra. Under these conditions the religious practices of the lower race could hardly have failed in the long run to tell seriously upon the spiritual life of the lay body of the Brahmanical community. To what extent this may have been the case, our limited knowledge of the early phases of the sectarian worship of the people does not enable us to determine. But, on the other hand, the same process of racial intermixture also tended to gradually draw the lower race more or less under the influence of the Brahmanical forms of worship, and thus contributed towards the shaping of the religious system of modern Hinduism. The grossly idolatrous practices, however, still so largely prevalent in the Dravidian South, show how superficial, after all, that influence has been in those parts of India where the admixture of Aryan blood has been so slight as to have practically had no effect on the racial characteristics of the people. These present-day practices, and the attitude of the Brahman towards them, help at all events to explain the aversion with which the strange rites of the subjected tribes were looked upon by the worshippers of the Vedic pantheon. At the same time, in judging the apparently inhuman way in which the Sudras were treated in the caste rules, one has always to bear in mind the fact that the belief in metempsychosis was already universal at the time, and seemed to afford the only rational explanation of the apparent injustice involved in the unequal distribution of the good things in this world; and that, if the Sudra was strictly excluded from the religious rites and beliefs of the superior classes, this exclusion in no way involved the question of his ultimate emancipation and his union with the Infinite Spirit, which were as certain in his case as in that of any other sentient being. What it did make impossible for him was to attain that union immediately on the cessation of his present life, as he would first have to pass through higher and purer stages of mundane existence before reaching that goal; but in this respect he only shared the lot of all but a very few of the saintliest in the higher spheres of life, since the ordinary twice-born would be liable to sink, after his present life, to grades yet lower than that of the Sudra.

To what extent the changes, which the religious belief of the Aryan classes underwent in post-Vedic times, may have been due to aboriginal influences is a question not easily answered, though the later creeds offer only too many features in which one might feel inclined to suspect influences of that kind. The literary documents, both in Sanskrit and Pali, dating from about the time of Buddha onwards—particularly the two epic poems, the Mahabharata and Ramayana—still show us in the main the personnel of the old pantheon; but the character of the gods has changed; they have become anthropomorphized and almost purely mythological figures. A number of the chief gods, sometimes four, but generally eight of them, now appear as lokapalas or world-guardians, having definite quarters or intermediate quarters of the compass assigned to them as their special domains. One of them, Kubera, the god of wealth, is a new figure; whilst another, Varuna, the most spiritual and ethical of Vedic deities—the king of the gods and the universe; the nightly, star-spangled firmament—has become the Indian Neptune, the god of waters. Indra, their chief, is virtually a kind of superior raja, residing in svarga, and as such is on visiting terms with earthly kings, driving about in mid-air with his charioteer Matali. As might happen to any earth-lord, Indra is actually defeated in battle by the son of the demon-king of Lanka (Ceylon), and kept there a prisoner till ransomed by Brahma and the gods conferring immortality on his conqueror. A quaint figure in the pantheon of the heroic age is Hanuman, the deified chief of monkeys—probably meant to represent the aboriginal tribes of southern India—whose wonderful exploits as Rama’s ally on the expedition to Lanka Indian audiences will never weary of hearing recounted. The Gandharvas figure already in the Veda, either as a single divinity, or as a class of genii, conceived of as the body-guard of Soma and as connected with the moon. In the later Vedic times they are represented as being fond of, and dangerous to, women; the Apsaras, apparently originally water-nymphs, being closely associated with them. In the heroic age the Gandharvas have become the heavenly minstrels plying their art at Indra’s court, with the Apsaras as their wives or mistresses. These fair damsels play, however, yet another part, and one far from complimentary to the dignity of the gods. In the epics considerable merit is attached to a life of seclusion and ascetic practices by means of which man is considered capable of acquiring supernatural powers equal or even superior to those of the gods—a notion perhaps not unnaturally springing from the pantheistic conception. Now, in cases of danger being threatened to their own ascendancy by such practices, the gods as a rule proceed to employ the usually successful expedient of despatching some lovely nymph to lure the saintly men back to worldly pleasures. Seeing that the epic poems, as repeated by professional reciters, either in their original Sanskrit text, or in their vernacular versions, as well as dramatic compositions based on them, form to this day the chief source of intellectual enjoyment for most Hindus, the legendary matter contained in these heroic poems, however marvellous and incredible it may appear, still enters largely into the religious convictions of the people. “These popular recitals from the Ramayan are done into Gujarati in easy, flowing narrative verse ... by Premanand, the sweetest of our bards. They are read out by an intelligent Brahman to a mixed audience of all classes and both sexes. It has a perceptible influence on the Hindu character. I believe the remarkable freedom from infidelity which is to be seen in most Hindu families, in spite of their strange gregarious habits, can be traced to that influence; and little wonder” (B. M. Malabari, Gujarat and the Gujaratis). Hence also the universal reverence paid to serpents (naga) since those early days; though whether it simply arose from the superstitious dread inspired by the insidious reptile so fatal to man in India, or whether the verbal coincidence with the name of the once-powerful non-Aryan tribe of Nagas had something to do with it must remain doubtful. Indian myth represents them as a race of demons sprung from Kadru, the wife of the sage Kasyapa, with a jewel in their heads which gives them their sparkling look; and inhabiting one of the seven beautiful worlds below the earth (and above the hells), where they are ruled over by three chiefs or kings, Sesha, Vasuki and Takshaka; their fair daughters often entering into matrimonial alliances with men, like the mermaids of western legend.

In addition to such essentially mythological conceptions, we meet in the religious life of this period with an element of more serious aspect in the two gods, on one or other of whom the religious fervour of the large majority of Hindus has ever since concentrated itself, viz. Vishnu and Siva. Both these divine figures have grown out of Vedic conceptions—the genial Vishnu mainly out of a not very prominent solar deity of the same name; whilst the stern Siva, i.e. the kind or gracious one—doubtless a euphemistic name—has his prototype in the old fierce storm-god Rudra, the “Roarer,” with certain additional features derived from other deities, especially Pushan, the guardian of flocks and bestower of prosperity, worked up therewith. The exact process of the evolution of the two deities and their advance in popular favour are still somewhat obscure. In the epic poems which may be assumed to have taken their final shape in the early centuries before and after the Christian era, their popular character, so strikingly illustrated by their inclusion in the Brahmanical triad, appears in full force; whilst their cult is likewise attested by the coins and inscriptions of the early centuries of our era. The co-ordination of the two gods in the Trimurti does not by any means exclude a certain rivalry between them; but, on the contrary, a supreme position as the true embodiment of the Divine Spirit is claimed for each of them by their respective votaries, without, however, an honourable, if subordinate, place being refused to the rival deity, wherever the latter, as is not infrequently the case, is not actually represented as merely another form of the favoured god. Whilst at times a truly monotheistic fervour manifests itself in the adoration of these two gods, the polytheistic instincts of the people did not fail to extend the pantheon by groups of new deities in connexion with them. Two of such new gods actually pass as the sons of Siva and his consort Parvati, viz. Skanda—also called Kumara (the youth), Karttikeya, or Subrahmanya (in the south)—the six-headed war-lord of the gods; and Ganese, the lord (or leader) of Siva’s troupes of attendants, being at the same time the elephant-headed, paunch-bellied god of wisdom; whilst a third, Kama (Kamadeva) or Kandarpa, the god of love, gets his popular epithet of Ananga, “the bodiless,” from his having once, in frolicsome play, tried the power of his arrows upon Siva, whilst engaged in austere practices, when a single glance from the third (forehead) eye of the angry god reduced the mischievous urchin to ashes. For his chief attendant, the great god (Mahadeva, Maheśvara) has already with him the “holy” Nandi—presumably, though his shape is not specified, identical in form as in name with Siva’s sacred bull of later times, the appropriate symbol of the god’s reproductive power. But, in this respect, we also meet in the epics with the first clear evidence of what in after time became the prominent feature of the worship of Siva and his consort all over India, viz. the feature represented by the linga, or phallic symbol.

As regards Vishnu, the epic poems, including the supplement to the Mahabharata, the Harivamsa, supply practically the entire framework of legendary matter on which the later Vaishnava creeds are based. The theory of Avataras which makes the deity—also variously called Narayana, Purushottama, or Vasudeva—periodically assume some material form in order to rescue the world from some great calamity, is fully developed; the ten universally recognized “descents” being enumerated in the larger poem. Though Siva, too, assumes various forms, the incarnation theory is peculiarly characteristic of Vaishnavism; and the fact that the principal hero of the Ramayana (Rama), and one of the prominent warriors of the Mahabharata (Krishna) become in this way identified with the supreme god, and remain to this day the chief objects of the adoration of Vaishnava sectaries, naturally imparts to these creeds a human interest and sympathetic aspect which is wholly wanting in the worship of Siva. It is, however, unfortunately but too true that in some of these creeds the devotional ardour has developed features of a highly objectionable character.

Even granting the reasonableness of the triple manifestation of the Divine Spirit, how is one to reconcile all these idolatrous practices, this worship of countless gods and godlings, demons and spirits indwelling in every imaginable object round about us, with the pantheistic doctrine of the Ekam Advitiyam, “the One without a Second”? The Indian theosophist would doubtless have little difficulty in answering that question. For him there is only the One Absolute Being, the one reality that is all in all; whilst all the phenomenal existences and occurrences that crowd upon our senses are nothing more than an illusion of the individual soul estranged for a time from its divine source—an illusion only to be dispelled in the end by the soul’s fuller knowledge of its own true nature and its being one with the eternal fountain of blissful being. But to the man of ordinary understanding, unused to the rarefied atmosphere of abstract thought, this conception of a transcendental, impersonal Spirit and the unreality of the phenomenal world can have no meaning: what he requires is a deity that stands in intimate relation to things material and to all that affects man’s life. Hence the exoteric theory of manifestations of the Supreme Spirit; and that not only the manifestations implied in the triad of gods representing the cardinal processes of mundane existence—creation, preservation, and destruction or regeneration—but even such as would tend to supply a rational explanation for superstitious imaginings of every kind. For “the Indian philosophy does not ignore or hold aloof from the religion of the masses: it underlies, supports and interprets their polytheism. This may be accounted the keystone of the fabric of Brahmanism, which accepts and even encourages the rudest forms of idolatry, explaining everything by giving it a higher meaning. It treats all the worships as outward, visible signs of some spiritual truth, and is ready to show how each particular image or rite is the symbol of some aspect of universal divinity. The Hindus, like the pagans of antiquity, adore natural objects and forces—a mountain, a river or an animal. The Brahman holds all nature to be the vesture or cloak of indwelling, divine energy, which inspires everything that produces awe or passes man’s understanding” (Sir Alfred C. Lyall, Brahminism).

During the early centuries of our era, whilst Buddhism, where countenanced by the political rulers, was still holding its own by the side of Brahmanism, sectarian belief in the Hindu gods seems to have made steady progress. The caste-system, Sectarianism. always calculated to favour unity of religious practice within its social groups, must naturally have contributed to the advance of sectarianism. Even greater was the support it received later on from the Puranas, a class of poetical works of a partly legendary, partly discursive and controversial character, mainly composed in the interest of special deities, of which eighteen principal (maha-purana) and as many secondary ones (upa-purana) are recognized, the oldest of which may go back to about the 4th century of our era. It was probably also during this period that the female element was first definitely admitted to a prominent place amongst the divine objects of sectarian worship, in the shape of the wives of the principal gods viewed as their sakti, or female energy, theoretically identified with the Maya, or cosmic Illusion, of the idealistic Vedanta, and the Prakriti, or plastic matter, of the materialistic Sankhya philosophy, as the primary source of mundane things. The connubial relations of the deities may thus be considered “to typify the mystical union of the two eternal principles, spirit and matter, for the production and reproduction of the universe.” But whilst this privilege of divine worship was claimed for the consorts of all the gods, it is principally to Siva’s consort, in one or other of her numerous forms, that adoration on an extensive scale came to be offered by a special sect of votaries, the Saktas.

In the midst of these conflicting tendencies, an attempt was made, about the latter part of the 8th century, by the distinguished Malabar theologian and philosopher Sankara Acharya to restore the Brahmanical creed to Sankara. something like its pristine purity, and thus once more to bring about a uniform system of orthodox Hindu belief. Though himself, like most Brahmans, apparently by predilection a follower of Siva, his aim was the revival of the doctrine of the Brahma as the one self-existent Being and the sole cause of the universe; coupled with the recognition of the practical worship of the orthodox pantheon, especially the gods of the Trimurti, as manifestations of the supreme deity. The practical result of his labours was the foundation of a new sect, the Smartas, i.e. adherents of the smriti or tradition, which has a numerous following amongst southern Brahmans, and, whilst professing Sankara’s doctrines, is usually classed as one of the Saiva sects, its members adopting the horizontal sectarial mark peculiar to Saivas, consisting in their case of a triple line, the tripundra, prepared from the ashes of burnt cow-dung and painted on the forehead. Sankara also founded four Maths, or convents, for Brahmans; the chief one being that of Sringeri in Mysore, the spiritual head (Guru) of which wields considerable power, even that of excommunication, over the Saivas of southern India. In northern India, the professed followers of Sankara are mainly limited to certain classes of mendicants and ascetics, although the tenets of this great Vedanta teacher may be said virtually to constitute the creed of intelligent Brahmans generally.

Whilst Sankara’s chief title to fame rests on his philosophical works, as the upholder of the strict monistic theory of Vedanta, he doubtless played an important part in the partial remodelling of the Hindu system of belief at a time when Buddhism was rapidly losing ground in India. Not that there is any evidence of Buddhists ever having been actually persecuted by the Brahmans, or still less of Sankara himself ever having done so; but the traditional belief in some personal god, as the principal representative of an invisible, all-pervading deity, would doubtless appeal more directly to the minds and hearts of the people than the colourless ethical system promulgated by the Sakya saint. Nor do Buddhist places of worship appear as a rule to have been destroyed by Hindu sectaries, but they seem rather to have been taken over by them for their own religious uses; at any rate there are to this day not a few Hindu shrines, especially in Bengal, dedicated to Dharmaraj, “the prince of righteousness,” as the Buddha is commonly styled. That the tenets and practices of so characteristic a faith as Buddhism, so long prevalent in India, cannot but have left their marks on Hindu life and belief may readily be assumed, though it is not so easy to lay one’s finger on the precise features that might seem to betray such an influence. If the general tenderness towards animals, based on the principle of ahimsa, or inflicting no injury on sentient beings, be due to Buddhist teaching, that influence must have made itself felt at a comparatively early period, seeing that sentiments of a similar nature are repeatedly urged in the Code of Manu. Thus, in v. 46-48, “He who does not willingly cause the pain of confinement and death to living beings, but desires the good of all, obtains endless bliss. He who injures no creature obtains without effort what he thinks of, what he strives for, and what he fixes his mind on. Flesh-meat cannot be procured without injury to animals, and the slaughter of animals is not conducive to heavenly bliss: from flesh-meat, therefore, let man abstain.” Moreover, in view of the fact that Jainism, which originated about the same time as Buddhism, inculcates the same principle, even to an extravagant degree, it seems by no means improbable that the spirit of kindliness towards living beings generally was already widely diffused among the people when these new doctrines were promulgated. To the same tendency doubtless is due the gradual decline and ultimate discontinuance of animal sacrifices by all sects except the extreme branch of Sakti-worshippers. In this respect, the veneration shown to serpents and monkeys has, however, to be viewed in a somewhat different light, as having a mythical background; whilst quite a special significance attaches to the sacred character assigned to the cow by all classes of Hindus, even those who are not prepared to admit the claim of the Brahman to the exalted position of the earthly god usually conceded to him. In the Veda no tendency shows itself as yet towards rendering divine honour to the cow; and though the importance assigned her in an agricultural community is easily understood, still the exact process of her deification and her identification with the mother earth in the time of Manu and the epics requires further elucidation. An idealized type of the useful quadruped—likewise often identified with the earth—presents itself in the mythical Cow of Plenty, or “wish-cow” (Kamadhenu, or Kamadugha, i.e. wish-milker), already appearing in the Atharvaveda, and in epic times assigned to Indra, or identified with Surabhi, “the fragrant,” the sacred cow of the sage Vasishtha. Possibly the growth of the legend of Krishna—his being reared at Gokula (cow-station); his tender relations to the gopis, or cow-herdesses, of Vrindavana; his epithets Gopala, “the cowherd,” and Govinda, “cow-finder,” actually explained as “recoverer of the earth” in the great epic, and the go-loka, or “cow-world,” assigned to him as his heavenly abode—may have some connexion with the sacred character ascribed to the cow from early times.

Since the time of Sankara, or for more than a thousand years, the gods Vishnu and Siva, or Hari and Hara as they are also commonly called—with their wives, especially that of the latter god—have shared between them the Worship. practical worship of the vast majority of Hindus. But, though the people have thus been divided between two different religious camps, sectarian animosity has upon the whole kept within reasonable limits. In fact, the respectable Hindu, whilst owning special allegiance to one of the two gods as his ishṭā devatā (favourite deity), will not withhold his tribute of adoration from the other gods of the pantheon. The high-caste Brahman will probably keep at his home a śālagrām stone, the favourite symbol of Vishnu, as well as the characteristic emblems of Siva and his consort, to both of which he will do reverence in the morning; and when he visits some holy place of pilgrimage, he will not fail to pay his homage at both the Saiva and the Vaishnava shrines there. Indeed, “sectarian bigotry and exclusiveness are to be found chiefly among the professional leaders of the modern brotherhoods and their low-caste followers, who are taught to believe that theirs are the only true gods, and that the rest do not deserve any reverence whatever” (Jog. Nath). The same spirit of toleration shows itself in the celebration of the numerous religious festivals. Whilst some of these—e.g. the Sankranti (called Pongal, i.e. “boiled rice,” in the south), which marks the entrance of the sun into the sign of Capricorn and the beginning of its northward course (uttarāyana) on the 1st day of the month Māgha (c. Jan. 12); the Gaṇeśa-caturthī, or 4th day of the light fortnight of Bhadra (August-September), considered the birthday of Ganesa, the god of wisdom; and the Holi, the Indian Saturnalia in the month of Phālgunḁ (February to March)—have nothing of a sectarian tendency about them; others again, which are of a distinctly sectarian character—such as the Krishna-janmāshṭamī, the birthday of Krishna on the 8th day of the dark half of Bhadra, or (in the south) of Śrāvaṇa (July-August), the Durga-puja and the Dipavali, or lamp feast, celebrating Krishna’s victory over the demon Narakasura, on the last two days of Aśvina (September-October)—are likewise observed and heartily joined in by the whole community irrespective of sect. Widely different, however, as is the character of the two leading gods are also the modes of worship practised by their votaries.

Siva has at all times been the favourite god of the Brahmans,[5] and his worship is accordingly more widely extended than that of his rival, especially in southern India. Indeed there is hardly a village in India which cannot boast of a shrine dedicated to Siva, and containing the emblem of his reproductive power; for almost the only form in which the “Great God” is adored is the Linga, consisting usually of an upright cylindrical block of marble or other stone, mostly resting on a circular perforated slab. The mystic nature of these emblems seems, however, to be but little understood by the common people; and, as H. H. Wilson remarks, “notwithstanding the acknowledged purport of this worship, it is but justice to state that it is unattended in Upper India by any indecent or indelicate ceremonies, and it requires a rather lively imagination to trace any resemblance in its symbols to the objects they are supposed to represent.” In spite, however, of its wide diffusion, and the vast number of shrines dedicated to it, the worship of Siva has never assumed a really popular character, especially in northern India, being attended with scarcely any solemnity or display of emotional spirit. The temple, which usually stands in the middle of a court, is as a rule a building of very moderate dimensions, consisting either of a single square chamber, surmounted by a pyramidal structure, or of a chamber for the linga and a small vestibule. The worshipper, having first circumambulated the shrine as often as he pleases, keeping it at his right-hand side, steps up to the threshold of the sanctum, and presents his offering of flowers or fruit, which the officiating priest receives; he then prostrates himself, or merely lifts his hands—joined so as to leave a hollow space between the palms—to his forehead, muttering a short prayer, and takes his departure. Amongst the many thousands of Lingas, twelve are usually regarded as of especial sanctity, one of which, that of Somnath in Gujarat, where Siva is worshipped as “the lord of Soma,” was, however, shattered by Mahmud of Ghazni; whilst another, representing Siva as Visvesvara, or “Lord of the Universe,” is the chief object of adoration at Benares, the great centre of Siva-worship. The Saivas of southern India, on the other hand, single out as peculiarly sacred five of their temples which are supposed to enshrine as many characteristic aspects (linga) of the god in the form of the five elements, the most holy of these being the shrine of Chidambaram (i.e. “thought-ether”) in S. Arcot, supposed to contain the ether-linga. According to Pandit S. M. Natesa (Hindu Feasts, Fasts and Ceremonies), “the several forms of the god Siva in these sacred shrines are considered to be the bodies or casements of the soul whose natural bases are the five elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether. The apprehension of God in the last of these five as ether is, according to the Saiva school of philosophy, the highest form of worship, for it is not the worship of God in a tangible form, but the worship of what, to ordinary minds, is vacuum, which nevertheless leads to the attainment of a knowledge of the all-pervading without physical accessories in the shape of any linga, which is, after all, an emblem. That this is the case at Chidambaram is known to every Hindu, for if he ever asks the priests to show him the God in the temple he is pointed to an empty space in the holy of holies, which has been termed the Akasa, or ether-linga.” But, however congenial this refined symbolism may be to the worshipper of a speculative turn of mind, it is difficult to see how it could ever satisfy the religious wants of the common man little given to abstract conceptions of this kind.

From early times, detachment from the world and the practice of austerities have been regarded in India as peculiarly conducive to a spirit of godliness, and ultimately to a state of ecstatic communion with the deity. On these Mendicant orders. grounds it was actually laid down as a rule for a man solicitous for his spiritual welfare to pass the last two of the four stages (āśrama) of his life in such conditions of renunciation and self-restraint. Though there is hardly a sect which has not contributed its share to the element of religious mendicancy and asceticism so prevalent in India, it is in connexion with the Siva-cult that these tendencies have been most extensively cultivated. Indeed, the personality of the stern God himself exhibits this feature in a very marked degree, whence the term mahāyogī or “great ascetic” is often applied to him.

Of Saiva mendicant and ascetic orders, the members of which are considered more or less followers of Sankara Acharya, the following may be mentioned: (1) Daṇḍīs, or staff-bearers, who carry a wand with a piece of red cloth, containing the sacred cord, attached to it, and also wear one or more pieces of cloth of the same colour. They worship Siva in his form of Bhairava, the “terrible.” A sub-section of this order are the Dandi Dasnamis, or Dandi of ten names, so called from their assuming one of the names of Sankara’s four disciples, and six of their pupils. (2) Yogis (or popularly, Jogis), i.e. adherents of the Yoga philosophy and the system of ascetic practices enjoined by it with the view of mental abstraction and the supposed attainment of superhuman powers—practices which, when not merely pretended, but rigidly carried out, are only too apt to produce vacuity of mind and wild fits of frenzy. In these degenerate days their supernatural powers consist chiefly in conjuring, sooth-saying, and feats of jugglery, by which they seldom fail in imposing upon a credulous public. (3) Sannyasis, devotees who “renounce” earthly concerns, an order not confined either to the Brahmanical caste or to the Saiva persuasion. Those of the latter are in the habit of smearing their bodies with ashes, and wearing a tiger-skin and a necklace or rosary of rudraksha berries (Elaeocarpus Ganitrus, lit. “Rudra’s eye”), sacred to Siva, and allowing their hair to grow till it becomes matted and filthy. (4) Parama-hamsas, i.e. “supreme geese (or swans),” a term applied to the world-soul with which they claim to be identical. This is the highest order of asceticism, members of which are supposed to be solely engaged in meditating on the Brahma, and to be “equally indifferent to pleasure or pain, insensible of heat or cold, and incapable of satiety or want.” Some of them go about naked, but the majority are clad like the Dandis. (5) Aghora Panthis, a vile and disreputable class of mendicants, now rarely met with. Their filthy habits and disgusting practices of gross promiscuous feeding, even to the extent of eating offal and dead men’s flesh, look almost like a direct repudiation of the strict Brahmanical code of ceremonial purity and cleanliness, and of the rules regulating the matter and manner of eating and drinking; and they certainly make them objects of loathing and terror wherever they are seen.

On the general effect of the manner of life led by Sadhus or “holy men,” a recent observer (J. C. Oman, Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India, p. 273) remarks: “Sadhuism, whether perpetuating the peculiar idea of the efficiency of austerities for the acquisition of far-reaching powers over natural phenomena, or bearing its testimony to the belief in the indispensableness of detachment from the world as a preparation for the ineffable joy of ecstatic communion with the Divine Being, has undoubtedly tended to keep before men’s eyes, as the highest ideal, a life of purity, self-restraint, and contempt of the world and human affairs. It has also necessarily maintained amongst the laity a sense of the righteous claims of the poor upon the charity of the more affluent members of the community. Moreover, sadhuism, by the multiplicity of the independent sects which have arisen in India, has engendered and favoured a spirit of tolerance which cannot escape the notice of the most superficial observer.”

An independent Saiva sect, or, indeed, the only strictly Saiva sect, are the Vīra Śaivas, more commonly called Lingayats (popularly Lingaits) or Lingavats, from their practice of wearing on their person a phallic emblem Lingayats. of Siva, made of copper or silver, and usually enclosed in a case suspended from the neck by a string. Apparently from the movable nature of their badge, their Gurus are called Jangamas (“movable”). This sect counts numerous adherents in southern India; the Census Report of 1901 recording nearly a million and a half, including some 70 or 80 different, mostly endogamous, castes. The reputed founder, or rather reformer, of the sect was Basava (or Basaba), a Brahman of the Belgaum district who seems to have lived in the 11th or 12th century. According to the Basava-purana he early in life renounced his caste and went to reside at Kalyana, then the capital of the Chalukya kingdom, and later on at Sangamesvara near Ratnagiri, where he was initiated into the Vīra Śaiva faith which he subsequently made it his life’s work to propagate. His doctrine, which may be said to constitute a kind of reaction against the severe sacerdotalism of Sankara, has spread over all classes of the southern community, most of the priests of Saiva temples there being adherents of it; whilst in northern India its votaries are only occasionally met with, and then mostly as mendicants, leading about a neatly caparisoned bull as representing Siva’s sacred bull Nandi. Though the Lingayats still show a certain animosity towards the Brahmans, and in the Census lists are accordingly classed as an independent group beside the Hindus, still they can hardly be excluded from the Hindu community, and are sure sooner or later to find their way back to the Brahmanical fold.

Vishnu, whilst less popular with Brahmans than his rival, has from early times proved to the lay mind a more attractive object of adoration on account of the genial and, so to speak, romantic character of his mythical personality. Avatars. It is not, however, so much the original figure of the god himself that enlists the sympathies of his adherents as the additional elements it has received through the theory of periodical “descents” (avatāra) or incarnations applied to this deity. Whilst the Saiva philosophers do not approve of the notion of incarnations, as being derogatory to the dignity of the deity, the Brahmans have nevertheless thought fit to adopt it as apparently a convenient expedient for bringing certain tendencies of popular worship within the pale of their system, and probably also for counteracting the Buddhist doctrines; and for this purpose Vishnu would obviously offer himself as the most attractive figure in the Brahmanical trinity. Whether the incarnation theory started from the original solar nature of the god suggestive of regular visits to the world of men, or in what other way it may have originated, must remain doubtful. Certain, however, it is that at least one of his Avatars is clearly based on the Vedic conception of the sun-god, viz. that of the dwarf who claims as much ground as he can cover by three steps, and then gains the whole universe by his three mighty strides. Of the ten or more Avatars, assumed by different authorities, only two have entered to any considerable extent into the religious worship of the people, viz. those of Rama (or Ramachandra) and Krishna, the favourite heroes of epic romance. That these two figures would appeal far more strongly to the hearts and feelings of the people, especially the warlike Kshatriyas,[6] than the austere Siva is only what might have been expected; and, indeed, since the time of the epics their cult seems never to have lacked numerous adherents. But, on the other hand, the essentially human nature of these two gods would naturally tend to modify the character of the relations between worshipper and worshipped, and to impart to the modes and forms of adoration features of a more popular and more human kind. And accordingly it is exactly in connexion with these two incarnations of Vishnu, especially that of Krishna, that a new spirit was infused into the religious life of the people by the sentiment of fervent devotion to the deity, as it found expression in certain portions of the epic poems, especially the Bhagavadgita, and in the Bhagavata-purana (as against the more orthodox Vaishnava works of this class such as the Vishnu-purana), and was formulated into a regular doctrine of faith in the Sandilya-sutra, and ultimately translated into practice by the Vaishnava reformers.

The first successful Vaishnava reaction against Sankara’s reconstructed creed was led by Ramanuja, a southern Brahman of the 12th century. His followers, the Ramanujas, or Sri-Vaishnavas as they are usually called, worship Ramanujas. Vishnu (Narayana) with his consort Sri or Lakshmi (the goddess of beauty and fortune), or their incarnations Rama with Sita and Krishna with Rukmini. Ramanuja’s doctrine, which is especially directed against the Linga-worship, is essentially based on the tenets of an old Vaishnava sect, the Bhagavatas or Pancharatras, who worshipped the Supreme Being under the name of Vasudeva (subsequently identified with Krishna, as the son of Vasudeva, who indeed is credited by some scholars with the foundation of that monotheistic creed). The sectarial mark of the Ramanujas resembles a capital U (or, in the case of another division, a Y), painted with a white clay called gopi-chandana, between the hair and the root of the nose, with a red or yellow vertical stroke (representing the female element) between the two white lines. They also usually wear, like all Vaishnavas, a necklace of tulasī, or basil wood, and a rosary of seeds of the same shrub or of the lotus. Their most important shrines are those of Srirangam near Trichinopoly, Mailkote in Mysore, Dvaraka (the city of Krishna) on the Kathiawar coast, and Jagannath in Orissa; all of them decorated with Vishnu’s emblems, the tulasi plant and salagram stone. The Ramanuja Brahmans are most punctilious in the preparation of their food and in regard to the privacy of their meals, before taking which they have to bathe and put on woollen or silk garments. Whilst Sankara’s mendicant followers were prohibited to touch fire and had to subsist entirely on the charity of Brahman householders, Ramanuja, on the contrary, not only allowed his followers to use fire, but strictly forbade their eating any food cooked, or even seen, by a stranger. On the speculative side, Ramanuja also met Sankara’s strictly monistic theory by another recognizing Vishnu as identical with Brahma as the Supreme Spirit animating the material world as well as the individual souls which have become estranged from God through unbelief, and can only attain again conscious union with him through devotion or love (bhakti). His tenets are expounded in various works, especially in his commentaries on the Vedanta-sutras and the Bhagavadgita. The followers of Ramanuja have split into two sects, a northern one, recognizing the Vedas as their chief authority, and a southern one, basing their tenets on the Nalayir, a Tamil work of the Upanishad order. In point of doctrine, they differ in their view of the relation between God Vishnu and the human soul; whilst the former sect define it by the ape theory, which makes the soul cling to God as the young ape does to its mother, the latter explain it by the cat theory, by which Vishnu himself seizes and rescues the souls as the mother cat does her young ones.

Madhva Acharya, another distinguished Vedanta teacher and founder of a Vaishnava sect, born in Kanara in A.D. 1199, was less intolerant of the Linga cult than Ramanuja, but seems rather to have aimed at a reconciliation of Madhvas. the Saiva and Vaishnava forms of worship. The Madhvas or Madhvacharis favour Krishna and his consort as their special objects of adoration, whilst images of Siva, Parvati, and their son Ganesa are, however, likewise admitted and worshipped in some of their temples, the most important of which is at Udipi in South Kanara, with eight monasteries connected with it. This shrine contains an image of Krishna which is said to have been rescued from the wreck of a ship which brought it from Dvaraka, where it was supposed to have been set up of old by no other than Krishna’s friend Arjuna, one of the five Pandava princes. Followers of the Madhva creed are but rarely met with in Upper India. Their sectarial mark is like the U of the Sri-Vaishnavas, except that their central line is black instead of red or yellow. Madhva—who after his initiation assumed the name Anandatirtha—composed numerous Sanskrit works, including commentaries on the Brahma sutras (i.e. the Vedanta aphorisms), the Gita, the Rigveda and many Upanishads. His philosophical theory was a dualistic one, postulating distinctness of nature for the divine and the human soul, and hence independent existence, instead of absorption, after the completion of mundane existence.

The Ramanandis or Ramavats (popularly Ramats) are a numerous northern sect of similar tenets to those of the Ramanujas. Indeed its founder, Ramananda, who probably flourished in the latter part of the 14th century, Ramats. according to the traditional account, was originally a Sri-Vaishnava monk, and, having come under the suspicion of laxity in observing the strict rules of food during his peregrinations, and been ordered by his superior (Mahant) to take his meals apart from his brethren, left the monastery in a huff and set up a schismatic math of his own at Benares. The sectarial mark of his sect differs but slightly from that of the parent stock. The distinctive features of their creed consist in their making Rama and Sita, either singly or conjointly, the chief objects of their adoration, instead of Vishnu and Lakshmi, and their attaching little or no importance to the observance of privacy in the cooking and eating of their food. Their mendicant members, usually known as Vairagis, are, like the general body of the sect, drawn from all castes without distinction. Thus, the founder’s twelve chief disciples include, besides Brahmans, a weaver, a currier, a Rajput, a Jat and a barber—for, they argue, seeing that Bhagavan, the Holy One (Vishnu), became incarnate even in animal form, a Bhakta (believer) may be born even in the lowest of castes. Ramananda’s teaching was thus of a distinctly levelling and popular character; and, in accordance therewith, the Bhakta-malā and other authoritative writings of the sect are composed, not in Sanskrit, but in the popular dialects. A follower of this creed was the distinguished poet Tulsidas, the composer of the beautiful Hindi version of the Ramayana and other works which “exercise more influence upon the great body of Hindu population than the whole voluminous series of Sanskrit composition” (H. H. Wilson).

The traditional list of Ramananda’s immediate disciples includes the name of Kabir, the weaver, a remarkable man who would accordingly have lived in the latter part of the 15th century, and who is claimed by both Hindus Kabir. and Moslems as having been born within their fold. The story goes that, having been deeply impressed by Ramananda’s teaching, he sought to attach himself to him; and, one day at Benares, in stepping down the ghat at daybreak to bathe in the Ganges, and putting himself in the way of the teacher, the latter, having inadvertently struck him with his foot, uttered his customary exclamation “Ram Ram,” which, being also the initiatory formula of the sect, was claimed by Kabir as such, making him Ramananda’s disciple. Be this as it may, Kabir’s own reformatory activity lay in the direction of a compromise between the Hindu and the Mahommedan creeds, the religious practices of both of which he criticized with equal severity. His followers, the Kabir Panthis (“those following Kabir’s path”), though neither worshipping the gods of the pantheon, nor observing the rites and ceremonial of the Hindus, are nevertheless in close touch with the Vaishnava sects, especially the Ramavats, and generally worship Rama as the supreme deity, when they do not rather address their homage, in hymns and otherwise, to the founder of their creed himself. Whilst very numerous, particularly amongst the low-caste population, in western, central and northern India, resident adherents of Kabir’s doctrine are rare in Bengal and the south; although “there is hardly a town in India where strolling beggars may not be found singing songs of Kabir in the original or as translated into the local dialects.” The mendicants of this creed, however, never actually solicit alms; and, indeed, “the quaker-like spirit of the sect, their abhorrence of all violence, their regard for truth and the inobtrusiveness of their opinions render them very inoffensive members of the state” (H. H. Wilson). The doctrines of Kabir are taught, mostly in the form of dialogues, in numerous Hindi works, composed by his disciples and adherents, who, however, usually profess to give the teacher’s own words.

The peculiar conciliatory tendencies of Kabir were carried on with even greater zeal from the latter part of the 15th century by one of his followers, Nanak Shah, the promulgator of the creed of the Nanak Shahis or Sikhs—i.e. (Sanskr.) sishya, disciples, whose guru, or teacher, he called himself—a peaceful sect at first until, in consequence of Mahommedan persecution, a martial spirit was infused into it by the tenth, and last, guru, Govind Shah, changing it into a political organization. Whilst originally more akin in its principles to the Moslem faith, the sect seems latterly to have shown tendencies towards drifting back to the Hindu pale.

Of Ramananda’s disciples and successors several others, besides Kabir, have established schismatic divisions of their own, which do not, however, offer any very marked differences of creed. The most important of these, the Dadu Panthi sect, founded by Dadu about the year 1600, has a numerous following in Ajmir and Marwar, one section of whom, the Nagas, engage largely in military service, whilst the others are either householders or mendicants. The followers of this creed wear no distinctive sectarial mark or badge, except a skull-cap; nor do they worship any visible image of any deity, the repetition (japa) of the name of Rama being the only kind of adoration practised by them.

Although the Vaishnava sects hitherto noticed, in their adoration of Vishnu and his incarnations, Krishna and Ramachandra, usually associate with these gods their wives, as their saktis, or female energies, the sexual Eroticism and Krishna worship. element is, as a rule, only just allowed sufficient scope to enhance the emotional character of the rites of worship. In some of the later Vaishnava creeds, on the other hand, this element is far from being kept within the bounds of moderation and decency. The favourite object of adoration with adherents of these sects is Krishna with his mate—but not the devoted friend and counsellor of the Pandavas and deified hero of epic song, nor the ruler of Dvaraka and wedded lord of Rukmini, but the juvenile Krishna, Govinda or Bala Gopala, “the cowherd lad,” the foster son of the cowherd Nanda of Gokula, taken up with his amorous sports with the Gopis, or wives of the cowherds of Vrindavana (Brindaban, near Mathura on the Yamuna), especially his favourite mistress Radha or Radhika. This episode in the legendary life of Krishna has every appearance of being a later accretion. After barely a few allusions to it in the epics, it bursts forth full-blown in the Harivansa, the Vishnu-purana, the Narada-Pancharatra and the Bhagavata-purana, the tenth canto of which, dealing with the life of Krishna, has become, through vernacular versions, especially the Hindi Prem-sagar, or “ocean of love,” a favourite romance all over India, and has doubtless helped largely to popularize the cult of Krishna. Strange to say, however, no mention is as yet made by any of these works of Krishna’s favourite Radha; it is only in another Purana—though scarcely deserving that designation—that she makes her appearance, viz. in the Brahma-vaivarta, in which Krishna’s amours in Nanda’s cow-station are dwelt upon in fulsome and wearisome detail; whilst the poet Jayadeva, in the 12th century, made her love for the gay and inconstant boy the theme of his beautiful, if highly voluptuous, lyrical drama, Gita-govinda.

The earliest of the sects which associate Radha with Krishna in their worship is that of the Nimavats, founded by Nimbaditya or Nimbarka (i.e. “the sun of the Nimba tree”), a teacher of uncertain date, said to have been a Telugu Brahman who subsequently established himself at Mathura (Muttra) on the Yamuna, where the headquarters of his sect have remained ever since. The Mahant of their monastery at Dhruva Kshetra near Mathura, who claims direct descent from Nimbarka, is said to place the foundation of that establishment as far back as the 5th century—doubtless an exaggerated claim; but if Jayadeva, as is alleged, and seems by no means improbable, was really a follower of Nimbarka, this teacher must have flourished, at latest, in the early part of the 12th century. He is indeed taken by some authorities to be identical with the mathematician Bhaskara Acharya, who is known to have completed his chief work in A.D. 1150. It is worthy of remark, in this respect, that—in accordance with Ramanuja’s and Nimbarka’s philosophical theories—Jayadeva’s presentation of Krishna’s fickle love for Radha is usually interpreted in a mystical sense, as allegorically depicting the human soul’s striving, through love, for reunion with God, and its ultimate attainment, after many backslidings, of the longed-for goal. As the chief authority of their tenets, the Nimavats recognize the Bhagavata-purana; though several works, ascribed to Nimbarka—partly of a devotional character and partly expository of Vedanta topics—are still extant. Adherents of this sect are fairly numerous in northern India, their frontal mark consisting of the usual two perpendicular white lines, with, however, a circular black spot between them.

Of greater importance than the sect just noticed, because of their far larger following, are the two sects founded early in the 16th century by Vallabha (Ballabha) Acharya and Chaitanya. In the forms of worship favoured by votaries of these creeds the emotional and erotic elements are allowed yet freer scope than in those that preceded them; and, as an effective auxiliary to these tendencies, the use of the vernacular dialects in prayers and hymns of praise takes an important part in the religious service. The Vallabhacharis, or, as they are usually called, from the title of their spiritual heads, the Gokulastha Gosains, i.e. “the cow-lords (gosvamin) residing in Gokula,” are very numerous in western and central India. Vallabha, the son of a Telinga Brahman, after extensive journeyings all over India, settled at Gokula near Mathura, and set up a shrine with an image of Krishna Gopala. About the year 1673, in consequence of the fanatical persecutions of the Mogul emperor, this image was transferred to Nathdvara in Udaipur (Mewar), where the shrine of Srinatha (“the lord of Sri,” i.e. Vishnu) continues to be the chief centre of worship for adherents of this creed; whilst seven other images, transferred from Mathura at the same time, are located at different places in Rajputana. Vallabha himself went subsequently to reside at Benares, where he died. In the doctrine of this Vaishnava prophet, the adualistic theory of Sankara is resorted to as justifying a joyful and voluptuous cult of the deity. For, if the human soul is identical with God, the practice of austerities must be discarded as directed against God, and it is rather by a free indulgence of the natural appetites and the pleasures of life that man’s love for God will best be shown. The followers of his creed, amongst whom there are many wealthy merchants and bankers, direct their worship chiefly to Gopal Lal, the boyish Krishna of Vrindavana, whose image is sedulously attended like a revered living person eight times a day—from its early rising from its couch up to its retiring to repose at night. The sectarial mark of the adherents consists of two red perpendicular lines, meeting in a semicircle at the root of the nose, and having a round red spot painted between them. Their principal doctrinal authority is the Bhagavata-purana, as commented upon by Vallabha himself, who was also the author of several other Sanskrit works highly esteemed by his followers. In this sect, children are solemnly admitted to full membership at the early age of four, and even two, years of age, when a rosary, or necklace, of 108 beads of basil (tulsi) wood is passed round their necks, and they are taught the use of the octo-syllabic formula Sri-Krishnah saranam mama, “Holy Krishna is my refuge.” Another special feature of this sect is that their spiritual heads, the Gosains, also called Maharajas, so far from submitting themselves to self-discipline and austere practices, adorn themselves in splendid garments, and allow themselves to be habitually regaled by their adherents with choice kinds of food; and being regarded as the living representatives of the “lord of the Gopis” himself, they claim and receive in their own persons all acts of attachment and worship due to the deity, even, it is alleged, to the extent of complete self-surrender. In the final judgment of the famous libel case of the Bombay Maharajas, before the Supreme Court of Bombay, in January 1862, these improprieties were severely commented upon; and though so unsparing a critic of Indian sects as Jogendra Nath seems not to believe in actual immoral practices on the part of the Maharajas, still he admits that “the corrupting influence of a religion, that can make its female votaries address amorous songs to their spiritual guides, must be very great.”

A modern offshoot of Vallabha’s creed, formed with the avowed object of purging it of its objectionable features, was started, in the early years of the 19th century, by Sahajananda, a Brahman of the Oudh country, who subsequently assumed the name of Svami Narayana. Having entered on his missionary labours at Ahmadabad, and afterwards removed to Jetalpur, where he had a meeting with Bishop Heber, he subsequently settled at the village of Wartal, to the north-west of Baroda, and erected a temple to Lakshmi-Narayana, which, with another at Ahmadabad, forms the two chief centres of the sect, each being presided over by a Maharaja. Their worship is addressed to Narayana, i.e. Vishnu, as the Supreme Being, together with Lakshmi, as well as to Krishna and Radha. The sect is said to be gaining ground in Gujarat. Chaitanya, the founder of the great Vaishnava sect of Bengal, was the son of a high-caste Brahman of Nadiya, the famous Bengal seat of Sanskrit learning, where he was born in 1485, two years after the birth of Martin Luther, the German reformer. Having married in due time, and a second time after the death of his first wife, he lived as a “householder” (grihastha) till the age of 24, when he renounced his family ties and set out as a religious mendicant (vairagin), visiting during the next six years the principal places of pilgrimage in northern India, and preaching with remarkable success his doctrine of Bhakti, or passionate devotion to Krishna, as the Supreme Deity. He subsequently made over to his principal disciples the task of consolidating his community, and passed the last twelve years of his life at Puri in Orissa, the great centre of the worship of Vishnu as Jagannatha, or “lord of the world,” which he remodelled in accordance with his doctrine, causing the mystic songs of Jayadeva to be recited before the images in the morning and evening as part of the daily service; and, in fact, as in the other Vaishnava creeds, seeking to humanize divine adoration by bringing it into accord with the experience of human love. To this end, music, dancing, singing-parties (sankirtan), theatricals—in short anything calculated to produce the desired impression—would prove welcome to him. His doctrine of Bhakti distinguishes five grades of devotional feeling in the Bhaktas, or faithful adherents: viz. (santi) calm contemplation of the deity; (dasya) active servitude; (sakhya) friendship or personal regard; (vatsalya) tender affection as between parents and children; (madhurya) love or passionate attachment, like that which the Gopis felt for Krishna. Chaitanya also seems to have done much to promote the celebration on an imposing scale of the great Puri festival of the Ratha-yatra, or “car-procession,” in the month of Ashadha, when, amidst multitudes of pilgrims, the image of Krishna, together with those of his brother Balarama and his sister Subhadra, is drawn along, in a huge car, by the devotees. Just as this festival was, and continues to be, attended by people from all parts of India, without distinction of caste or sex, so also were all classes, even Mahommedans, admitted by Chaitanya as members of his sect. Whilst numerous observances are recommended as more or less meritorious, the ordinary form of worship is a very simple one, consisting as it does mainly of the constant repetition of names of Krishna, or Krishna and Radha, which of itself is considered sufficient to ensure future bliss. The partaking of flesh food and spirituous liquor is strictly prohibited. By the followers of this sect, also, an extravagant degree of reverence is habitually paid to their gurus or spiritual heads. Indeed, Chaitanya himself, as well as his immediate disciples, have come to be regarded as complete or partial incarnations of the deity to whom adoration is due, as to Krishna himself; and their modern successors, the Gosains, share to the fullest extent in the devout attentions of the worshippers. Chaitanya’s movement, being chiefly directed against the vile practices of the Saktas, then very prevalent in Bengal, was doubtless prompted by the best and purest of intentions; but his own doctrine of divine, though all too human, love was, like that of Vallabha, by no means free from corruptive tendencies,—yet, how far these tendencies have worked their way, who would say? On this point, Dr W. W. Hunter—who is of opinion that “the death of the reformer marks the beginning of the spiritual decline of Vishnu-worship,” observes (Orissa, i. 111), “The most deplorable corruption of Vishnu-worship at the present day is that which has covered the temple walls with indecent sculptures, and filled its innermost sanctuaries with licentious rites” ... yet ... “it is difficult for a person not a Hindu to pronounce upon the real extent of the evil. None but a Hindu can enter any of the larger temples, and none but a Hindu priest really knows the truth about their inner mysteries”; whilst the well-known native scholar Babu Rajendralal Mitra points out (Antiquities of Orissa, i. 111) that “such as they are, these sculptures date from centuries before the birth of Chaitanya, and cannot, therefore, be attributed to his doctrines or to his followers. As a Hindu by birth, and a Vaishnava by family religion, I have had the freest access to the innermost sanctuaries and to the most secret of scriptures. I have studied the subject most extensively, and have had opportunities of judging which no European can have, and I have no hesitation in saying that, ‘the mystic songs’ of Jayadeva and the ‘ocean of love’ notwithstanding, there is nothing in the rituals of Jagannatha which can be called licentious.” Whilst in Chaitanya’s creed, Krishna, in his relations to Radha, remains at least theoretically the chief partner, an almost inevitable step was taken by some minor sects in attaching the greater importance to the female element, and making Krishna’s love for his mistress the guiding sentiment of their faith. Of these sects, it will suffice to mention that of the Radha-Vallabhis, started in the latter part of the 16th century, who worship Krishna as Radha-vallabha, “the darling of Radha.” The doctrines and practices of these sects clearly verge upon those obtaining in the third principal division of Indian sectarians which will now be considered.

The Saktas, as we have seen, are worshippers of the sakti, or the female principle as a primary factor in the creation and reproduction of the universe. And as each of the principal gods is supposed to have associated with him his own Saktas particular sakti, as an indispensable complement enabling him to properly perform his cosmic functions, adherents of this persuasion might be expected to be recruited from all sects. To a certain extent this is indeed the case; but though Vaishnavism, and especially the Krishna creed, with its luxuriant growth of erotic legends, might have seemed peculiarly favourable to a development in this direction, it is practically only in connexion with the Saiva system that an independent cult of the female principle has been developed; whilst in other sects—and, indeed, in the ordinary Saiva cult as well—such worship, even where it is at all prominent, is combined with, and subordinated to, that of the male principle. What has made this cult attach itself more especially to the Saiva creed is doubtless the character of Siva as the type of reproductive power, in addition to his function as destroyer which, as we shall see, is likewise reflected in some of the forms of his Sakti. The theory of the god and his Sakti as cosmic principles is perhaps already foreshadowed in the Vedic couple of Heaven and Earth, whilst in the speculative treatises of the later Vedic period, as well as in the post-Vedic Brahmanical writings, the assumption of the self-existent being dividing himself into a male and a female half usually forms the starting-point of cosmic evolution.[7] In the later Saiva mythology this theory finds its artistic representation in Siva’s androgynous form of Ardha-narisa, or “half-woman-lord,” typifying the union of the male and female energies; the male half in this form of the deity occupying the right-hand, and the female the left-hand side. In accordance with this type of productive energy, the Saktas divide themselves into two distinct groups, according to whether they attach the greater importance to the male or to the female principle; viz. the Dakshinacharis, or “right-hand-observers” (also called Dak-shina-margis, or followers “of the right-hand path”), and the Vamacharis, or “left-hand-observers” (or Vama-margis, followers “of the left path”). Though some of the Puranas, the chief repositories of sectarian doctrines, enter largely into Sakta topics, it is only in the numerous Tantras that these are fully and systematically developed. In these works, almost invariably composed in the form of a colloquy, Siva, as a rule, in answer to questions asked by his consort Parvati, unfolds the mysteries of this occult creed.

The principal seat of Sakta worship is the north-eastern part of India—Bengal, Assam and Behar. The great majority of its adherents profess to follow the right-hand practice; and apart from the implied purport and the emblems of the cult, their mode of adoration does not seem to offer any very objectionable features. And even amongst the adherents of the left-hand mode of worship, many of these are said to follow it as a matter of family tradition rather than of religious conviction, and to practise it in a sober and temperate manner; whilst only an extreme section—the so-called Kaulas or Kulinas, who appeal to a spurious Upanishad, the Kaulopanishad, as the divine authority of their tenets—persist in carrying on the mystic and licentious rites taught in many of the Tantras. But strict secrecy being enjoined in the performance of these rites, it is not easy to check any statements made on this point. The Sakta cult is, however, known to be especially prevalent—though apparently not in a very extreme form—amongst members of the very respectable Kayastha or writer caste of Bengal, and as these are largely employed as clerks and accountants in Upper India, there is reason to fear that their vicious practices are gradually being disseminated through them.

The divine object of the adoration of the Saktas, then, is Siva’s wife—the Devi (goddess), Mahadevi (great goddess), or Jagan-mata (mother of the world)—in one or other of her numerous forms, benign or terrible. The forms in which she is worshipped in Bengal are of the latter category, viz. Durga, “the unapproachable,” and Kali, “the black one,” or, as some take it, the wife of Kala, “time,” or death the great dissolver, viz. Siva. In honour of the former, the Durga-puja is celebrated during ten days at the time of the autumnal equinox, in commemoration of her victory over the buffalo-headed demon Mahishasura; when the image of the ten-armed goddess, holding a weapon in each hand, is worshipped for nine days, and cast into the water on the tenth day, called the Dasahara, whence the festival itself is commonly called Dasara in western India. Kali, on the other hand, the most terrible of the goddess’s forms, has a special service performed to her, at the Kali-puja, during the darkest night of the succeeding month; when she is represented as a naked black woman, four-armed, wearing a garland of heads of giants slain by her, and a string of skulls round her neck, dancing on the breast of her husband (Mahakala), with gaping mouth and protruding tongue; and when she has to be propitiated by the slaughter of goats, sheep and buffaloes. On other occasions also Vamacharis commonly offer animal sacrifices, usually one or more kids; the head of the victim, which has to be severed by a single stroke, being always placed in front of the image of the goddess as a blood-offering (bali), with an earthen lamp fed with ghee burning above it, whilst the flesh is cooked and served to the guests attending the ceremony, except that of buffaloes, which is given to the low-caste musicians who perform during the service. Even some adherents of this class have, however, discontinued animal sacrifices, and use certain kinds of fruit, such as coco-nuts or pumpkins, instead. The use of wine, which at one time was very common on these occasions, seems also to have become much more restricted; and only members of the extreme section would still seem to adhere to the practice of the so-called five m’s prescribed by some of the Tantras, viz. mamsa (flesh), matsya (fish), madya (wine), maithuna (sexual union), and mudra (mystical finger signs)—probably the most degrading cult ever practised under the pretext of religious worship.

In connexion with the principal object of this cult, Tantric theory has devised an elaborate system of female figures representing either special forms and personifications or attendants of the “Great Goddess.” They are generally arranged in groups, the most important of which are the Mahavidyas (great sciences), the 8 (or 9) Mataras (mothers) or Mahamataras (great mothers), consisting of the wives of the principal gods; the 8 Nayikas or mistresses; and different classes of sorceresses and ogresses, called Yoginis, Dakinis and Sakinis. A special feature of the Sakti cult is the use of obscure Vedic mantras, often changed so as to be quite meaningless and on that very account deemed the more efficacious for the acquisition of superhuman powers; as well as of mystic letters and syllables called bija (germ), of magic circles (chakra) and diagrams (yantra), and of amulets of various materials inscribed with formulae of fancied mysterious import.

This survey of the Indian sects will have shown how little the character of their divine objects of worship is calculated to exert that elevating and spiritualizing influence, so characteristic of true religious devotion. In all General conclusions. but a few of the minor groups religious fervour is only too apt to degenerate into that very state of sexual excitation which devotional exercises should surely tend to repress. If the worship of Siva, despite the purport of his chief symbol, seems on the whole less liable to produce these undesirable effects than that of the rival deity, it is doubtless due partly to the real nature of that emblem being little realized by the common people, and partly to the somewhat repellent character of the “great god,” more favourable to evoking feelings of awe and terror than a spirit of fervid devotion. All the more are, however, the gross stimulants, connected with the adoration of his consort, calculated to work up the carnal instincts of the devotees to an extreme degree of sensual frenzy. In the Vaishnava camp, on the other hand, the cult of Krishna, and more especially that of the youthful Krishna, can scarcely fail to exert an influence which, if of a subtler and more insinuating, is not on that account of a less demoralizing kind. Indeed, it would be hard to find anything less consonant with godliness and divine perfection than the pranks of this juvenile god; and if poets and thinkers try to explain them away by dint of allegorical interpretation, the plain man will not for all their refinements take these amusing adventures any the less au pied de la lettre. No fault, in this respect, can assuredly be found with the legendary Rama, a very paragon of knightly honour and virtue, even as his consort Sita is the very model of a noble and faithful wife; and yet this cult has perhaps retained even more of the character of mere hero-worship than that of Krishna. Since by the universally accepted doctrine of karman (deed) or karmavipaka (“the maturing of deeds”) man himself—either in his present, or some future, existence—enjoys the fruit of, or has to atone for, his former good and bad actions, there could hardly be room in Hindu pantheism for a belief in the remission of sin by divine grace or vicarious substitution. And accordingly the “descents” or incarnations of the deity have for their object, not so much the spiritual regeneration of man as the deliverance of the world from some material calamity threatening to overwhelm it. The generally recognized principal Avatars do not, however, by any means constitute the only occasions of a direct intercession of the deity in worldly affairs, but—in the same way as to this day the eclipses of the sun and moon are ascribed by the ordinary Hindu to these luminaries being temporarily swallowed by the dragon Rahu (or Graha, “the seizer”)—so any uncommon occurrence would be apt to be set down as a special manifestation of divine power; and any man credited with exceptional merit or achievement, or even remarkable for some strange incident connected with his life or death, might ultimately come to be looked upon as a veritable incarnation of the deity, capable of influencing the destinies of man, and might become an object of local adoration or superstitious awe and propitiatory rites to multitudes of people. That the transmigration theory, which makes the spirit of the departed hover about for a time in quest of a new corporeal abode, would naturally lend itself to superstitious notions of this kind can scarcely be doubted. Of peculiar importance in this respect is the worship of the Pitris (“fathers”) or deceased ancestors, as entering largely into the everyday life and family relations of the Hindus. At stated intervals to offer reverential homage and oblations of food to the forefathers up to the third degree is one of the most sacred duties the devout Hindu has to discharge. The periodical performance of the commemorative rite of obsequies called Sraddha—i.e. an oblation “made in faith” (sraddha, Lat. credo)—is the duty and privilege of the eldest son of the deceased, or, failing him, of the nearest relative who thereby establishes his right as next of kin in respect of inheritance; and those other relatives who have the right to take part in the ceremony are called sapinda, i.e. sharing in the pindas (or balls of cooked rice, constituting along with libations of water the usual offering to the Manes)—such relationship being held a bar to intermarriage. The first Sraddha takes place as soon as possible after the antyeshti (“final offering”) or funeral ceremony proper, usually spread over ten days; being afterwards repeated once a month for a year, and subsequently at every anniversary and otherwise voluntarily on special occasions. Moreover, a simple libation of water should be offered to the Fathers twice daily at the morning and evening devotion called sandhya (“twilight”). It is doubtless a sense of filial obligation coupled with sentiments of piety and reverence that gave rise to this practice of offering gifts of food and drink to the deceased ancestors. Hence also frequent allusion is made by poets to the anxious care caused to the Fathers by the possibility of the living head of the family being afflicted with failure of offspring; this dire prospect compelling them to use but sparingly their little store of provisions, in case the supply should shortly cease altogether. At the same time one also meets with frank avowals of a superstitious fear lest any irregularity in the performance of the obsequial rites should cause the Fathers to haunt their old home and trouble the peace of their undutiful descendant, or even prematurely draw him after them to the Pitri-loka or world of the Fathers, supposed to be located in the southern region. Terminating as it usually does with the feeding and feeing of a greater or less number of Brahmans and the feasting of members of the performers’ own caste, the Sraddha, especially its first performance, is often a matter of very considerable expense; and more than ordinary benefit to the deceased is supposed to accrue from it when it takes place at a spot of recognized sanctity, such as one of the great places of pilgrimage like Prayaga (Allahabad, where the three sacred rivers, Ganga, Yamuna and Sarasvati, meet), Mathura, and especially Gaya and Kasi (Benares). But indeed the tirtha-yatra, or pilgrimage to holy bathing-places, is in itself considered an act of piety conferring religious merit in proportion to the time and trouble expended upon it. The number of such places is legion and is constantly increasing. The banks of the great rivers such as the Ganga (Ganges), the Yamuna (Jumna), the Narbada, the Krishna (Kistna), are studded with them, and the water of these rivers is supposed to be imbued with the essence of sanctity capable of cleansing the pious bather of all sin and moral taint. To follow the entire course of one of the sacred rivers from the mouth to the source on one side and back again on the other in the sun-wise (pradakshina) direction—that is, always keeping the stream on one’s right-hand side—is held to be a highly meritorious undertaking which it requires years to carry through. No wonder that water from these rivers, especially the Ganges, is sent and taken in bottles to all parts of India to be used on occasion as healing medicine or for sacramental purposes. In Vedic times, at the Rajasuya, or inauguration of a king, some water from the holy river Sarasvati was mixed with the sprinkling water used for consecrating the king. Hence also sick persons are frequently conveyed long distances to a sacred river to heal them of their maladies; and for a dying man to breathe his last at the side of the Ganges is devoutly believed to be the surest way of securing for him salvation and eternal bliss.

Such probably was the belief of the ordinary Hindu two thousand years ago, and such it remains to this day. In the light of facts such as these, who could venture to say what the future of Hinduism is likely to be? Is the regeneration of India to be brought about by the modern theistic movements, such as the Brahma-samaj and Arya-samaj, as so close and sympathetic an observer of Hindu life and thought as Sir A. Lyall seems to think? “The Hindu mind,” he remarks, “is essentially speculative and transcendental; it will never consent to be shut up in the prison of sensual experience, for it has grasped and holds firmly the central idea that all things are manifestations of some power outside phenomena. And the tendency of contemporary religious discussion in India, so far as it can be followed from a distance, is towards an ethical reform on the old foundations, towards searching for some method of reconciling their Vedic theology with the practices of religion taken as a rule of conduct and a system of moral government. One can already discern a movement in various quarters towards a recognition of impersonal theism, and towards fixing the teaching of the philosophical schools upon some definitely authorized system of faith and morals, which may satisfy a rising ethical standard, and may thus permanently embody that tendency to substitute spiritual devotion for external forms and caste rules which is the characteristic of the sects that have from time to time dissented from orthodox Brahminism.”

Authorities.—Census of India (1901), vol. i. part i.; India, by H. H. Risley and E. A. Gait; vol. i. Ethnographical Appendices, by H. H. Risley; The Indian Empire, vol. i. (new ed., Oxford, 1907); J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts (2nd ed., 5 vols., London, 1873); Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India (London, 1883); Modern India and the Indians (London, 1878, 3rd ed. 1879); Hinduism (London, 1877); Sir Alfred C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies (2 series, London, 1899); “Hinduism” in Religious Systems of the World (London, 1904); “Brahminism” in Great Religions of the World (New York and London, 1902); W. J. Wilkins, Modern Hinduism (London, 1887); J. C. Oman, Indian Life, Religious and Social (London, 1879); The Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India (London, 1903); The Brahmans, Theists and Muslims of India (London, 1907); S. C. Bose, The Hindus as they are (2nd ed., Calcutta, 1883); J. Robson, Hinduism and Christianity (Edinburgh and London, 3rd ed., 1905); J. Murray Mitchell, Hinduism Past and Present (2nd ed., London, 1897); Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya, Hindu Castes and Sects (Calcutta, 1896); A. Barth, The Religions of India (London, 1882); E. W. Hopkins, The Religions of India (London, 1896).

(J. E.)

[1] “It is, perhaps, by surveying India that we at this day can best represent to ourselves and appreciate the vast external reform worked upon the heathen world by Christianity, as it was organized and executed throughout Europe by the combined authority of the Holy Roman Empire and the Church Apostolic.” Sir Alfred C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies, i. 2.

[2] Henry Whitehead, D. D., bishop of Madras, The Village Deities of Southern India (Madras, 1907).

[3] “The effect of caste is to give all Hindu society a religious basis.” Sir A. C. Lyall, Brahmanism.

[4] Thus, in Berar, “there is a strong non-Aryan leaven in the dregs of the agricultural class, derived from the primitive races which have gradually melted down into settled life, and thus become fused with the general community, while these same races are still distinct tribes in the wild tracts of hill and jungle.” Sir Alfred C. Lyall, As. St., i. 6.

[5] Siva is said to have first appeared in the beginning of the present age as Sveta, the White, for the purpose of benefiting the Brahmans, and he is invariably painted white; whilst Vishnu, when pictured, is always of a dark-blue colour.

[6] As in the case of Siva’s traditional white complexion, it may not be without significance, from a racial point of view, that Vishnu, Rama and Krishna have various darker shades of colour attributed to them, viz. blue, hyacinthine, and dark azure or dark brown respectively. The names of the two heroes meaning simply “black” or “dark,” the blue tint may originally have belonged to Vishnu, who is also called pītavasas, dressed in yellow garment, i.e. the colours of sky and sun combined.

[7] This notion not improbably took its origin in the mystic cosmogonic hymn, Rigv. x. 129, where it is said that—“that one (existent, neutr.) breathed breathless by (or with) its svadha (? inherent power, or nature), beyond that there was nothing whatever ... that one live (germ) which was enclosed in the void was generated by the power of heat (or fervour); desire then first came upon it, which was the first seed of the mind ... fertilizing forces there were, svadha below, prayati (? will) above.”

HINDU KUSH, a range of mountains in Central Asia. Throughout 500 m. of its length, from its roots in the Pamir regions till it fades into the Koh-i-Baba to the west of Kabul, this great range forms the water-divide between the Kabul and the Oxus basins, and, for the first 200 m. reckoning westwards, the southern boundary of Afghanistan. It may be said to spring from the head of the Taghdumbash Pamir, where it unites with the great meridional system of Sarikol stretching northwards, and the yet more impressive mountain barrier of Muztagh, the northern base of which separates China from the semi-independent territory of Kanjut. The Wakhjir pass, crossing the head of the Taghdumbash Pamir into the sources of the river Hunza, almost marks the tri-junction of the three great chains of mountains. As the Hindu Kush strikes westwards, after first rounding the head of an Oxus tributary (the Ab-i-Panja, which Curzon considers to be the true source of the Oxus), it closely overlooks the trough of that glacier-fed stream under its northern spurs, its crest at the nearest point being separated from the river by a distance which cannot much exceed 10 m. As the river is here the northern boundary of Afghanistan, and the crest of the Hindu Kush the southern boundary, this distance represents the width of the Afghan kingdom at that point.

Physiography.—For the first 100 m. of its length the Hindu Kush is a comparatively flat-backed range of considerable width, permitting the formation of small lakes on the crest, and possessing no considerable peaks. It is crossed by many passes, varying in height from 12,500 ft. to 17,500 ft., the lowest and the easiest being the well-known group about Baroghil, which has from time immemorial offered a line of approach from High Asia to Chitral and Jalalabad. As the Hindu Kush gradually recedes from the Ab-i-Panja and turns south-westwards it gains in altitude, and we find prominent peaks on the crest which measure more than 24,000 ft. above sea-level. Even here, however, the main central water-divide, or axis of the chain, is apparently not the line of highest peaks, which must be looked for to the south, where the great square-headed giant called Tirach Mir dominates Chitral from a southern spur. For some 40 or 50 m. of this south-westerly bend, bearing away from the Oxus, where the Hindu Kush overlooks the mountain wilderness of Badakshan to the west, the crest is intersected by many passes, of which the most important is the Dorah group (including the Minjan and the Mandal), which rise to about 15,000 ft., and which are, under favourable conditions, practicable links between the Oxus and Chitral basins.

From the Dorah to the Khawak pass (or group of passes, for it is seldom that one line of approach only is to be found across the Hindu Kush), which is between 11,000 and 12,000 ft. in altitude, the water-divide overlooks Kafiristan and Kafiristan section. Badakshan. Here its exact position is matter of conjecture. It lies amidst a wild, inaccessible region of snowbound crests, and is certainly nowhere less than 15,000 ft. above sea-level. There is a tradition that Timur attempted the passage of the Hindu Kush by one of the unmapped passes hereabouts, and that, having failed, he left a record of his failure engraved on a rock in the pass.

The Khawak, at the head of the Panjshir tributary of the Kabul river, leading straight from Badakshan to Charikar and the city of Kabul, is now an excellent kafila route, the road having been engineered under the amir Abdur Rahman’s direction, Passes. and it is said to be available for traffic throughout the year. From the Khawak to the head of the Ghorband (a river of the Hindu Kush which, rising to the north-west of Kabul, flows north-east to meet the Panjshir near Charikar, whence they run united into the plains of Kohistan) the Hindu Kush is intersected by passes at intervals, all of which were surveyed, and several utilized, during the return of the Russo-Afghan boundary commission from the Oxus to Kabul in 1886. Those utilized were the Kaoshan (the “Hindu Kush” pass par excellence), 14,340 ft.; the Chahardar (13,900 ft.), which is a link in one of the amir of Afghanistan’s high roads to Turkestan; and the Shibar (9800 ft.), which is merely a diversion into the upper Ghorband of that group of passes between Bamian and the Kabul plains which are represented by the Irak, Hajigak, Unai, &c. About this point it is geographically correct to place the southern extremity of the Hindu Kush, for here commences the Koh-i-Baba system into which the Hindu Kush is merged.

The general conformation of the Hindu Kush system south of the Khawak, no less than such fragmentary evidence of its rock composition as at present exists to the north, points to its construction under the same conditions of upheaval General conformation. and subsequent denudation as are common to the western Himalaya and the whole of the trans-Indus borderland. Its upheaval above the great sea which submerged all the north-west of the Indian peninsula long after the Himalaya had massed itself as a formidable mountain chain, belongs to a comparatively recent geologic period, and the same thrust upwards of vast masses of cretaceous limestone has disturbed the overlying recent beds of shale and clays with very similar results to those which have left so marked an impress on the Baluch frontier. Successive flexures or ridges are ranged in more or less parallel lines, and from between the bands of hard, unyielding rock of older formation the soft beds of recent shale have been washed out, to be carried through the enclosing ridges by rifts which break across their axes. The Hindu Kush is, in fact, but the face of a great upheaved mass of plateau-land lying beyond it northwards, just as the Himalaya forms the southern face of the great central tableland of Tibet, and its general physiography, exhibiting long, narrow, lateral valleys and transverse lines of “antecedent” drainage, is similar. There are few passes across the southern section of the Hindu Kush (and this section is, from the politico-geographical point of view, more important to India than the whole Himalayan system) which have not to surmount a succession of crests or ridges as they cross from Afghan Turkestan to Afghanistan. The exceptions are, of course, notable, and have played an important part in the military history of Asia from time immemorial. From a little ice-bound lake called Gaz Kul, or Karambar, which lies on the crest of the Hindu Kush near its northern origin at the head of the Taghdumbash Pamir, two very important river systems (those of Chitral and Hunza) are believed to originate. The lake really lies on the watershed between the two, and is probably a glacial relic. Its contribution to either infant stream appears to depend on conditions of overflow determined by the blocking of ice masses towards one end. It marks the commencement of the water-divide which primarily separates the Gilgit basin from that of the Yashkun, or Chitral, river, and subsequently divides the drainage of Swat and Bajour from that of the Chitral (or Kunar). The Yashkun-Chitral-Kunar river (it is called by all three names) is the longest affluent of the Kabul, and it is in many respects a more important river than the Kabul. Throughout its length it is closely flanked on its left bank by this main water-divide, which is called Moshabar or Shandur in its northern sections, and owns a great variety of names where it divides Bajour from the Kunar valley. It is this range, crowned by peaks of 22,000 ft. altitude and maintaining an average elevation of some 10,000 ft. throughout its length of 250 m., that is the real barrier of the north—not the Hindu Kush itself. Across it, at its head, are the glacial passes which lead to the foot of the Baroghil. Of these Darkot, with a glacial staircase on each side, is typical. (See [Gilgit].) Those passes (the Kilik and Mintaka) from the Pamir regions, which lead into the rocky gorges and defiles of the upper affluents of the Hunza to the east of the Darkot, belong rather to the Muztagh system than to the Hindu Kush. Other passes across this important water-divide are the Shandur (12,250 ft.), between Gilgit and Mastuj; the Lowarai (10,450 ft.), between the Panjkora and Chitral valleys; and farther south certain lower crossings which once formed part of the great highway between Kabul and India.

Deep down in the trough of the Chitral river, about midway between its source and its junction with the Kabul at Jalalabad, is the village and fort of Chitral (q.v.). Facing Chitral, on the right bank of the river, and extending for some 70 m. Chitral. from the Hindu Kush, is the lofty snow-clad spur of the Hindu Kush known as Shawal, across which one or two difficult passes lead into the Bashgol valley of Kafiristan. This spur carries the boundary of Afghanistan southwards to Arnawai (some 50 m. below Chitral), where it crosses the river to the long Shandur watershed. South of Arnawai the Kunar valley becomes a part of Afghanistan (see [Kunar]). The value of Chitral as an outpost of British India may be best gauged by its geographical position. It is about 100 m. (direct map measurement) from the outpost of Russia at Langar Kisht on the river Panja, with the Dorah pass across the Hindu Kush intervening. The Dorah may be said to be about half-way between the two outposts, and the mountain tracks leading to it on either side are rough and difficult. The Dorah, however, is not the only pass which leads into the Chitral valley from the Oxus. The Mandal pass, a few miles south of the Dorah, is the connecting link between the Oxus and the Bashgol valley of Kafiristan; and the Bashgol valley leads directly to the Chitral valley at Arnawai, about 50 m. below Chitral. Nor must we overlook the connexion between north and south of the Hindu Kush which is afforded by the long narrow valley of the Chitral (or Yashkun) itself, leading up to the Baroghil pass. This route was once made use of by the Chinese for purposes of pilgrimage, if not for invasion. Access to Chitral from the north is therefore but a matter of practicable tracks, or passes, in two or three directions, and the measure of practicability under any given conditions can best be reckoned from Chitral itself. By most authorities the possibility of an advance in force from the north, even under the most favourable conditions, is considered to be exceedingly small; but the tracks and passes of the Hindu Kush are only impracticable so long as they are left as nature has made them.

Historical Notices.—Hindu Kush is the Caucasus of Alexander’s historians. It is also included in the Paropamisus, though the latter term embraces more, Caucasus being apparently used only when the alpine barrier is in question. Whether the name was given in mere vanity to the barrier which Alexander passed (as Arrian and others repeatedly allege), or was founded also on some verbal confusion, cannot be stated. It was no doubt regarded (and perhaps not altogether untruly) as a part of a great alpine zone believed to traverse Asia from west to east, whether called Taurus, Caucasus or Imaus. Arrian himself applies Caucasus distinctly to the Himalaya also. The application of the name Tanais to the Syr seems to indicate a real confusion with Colchian Caucasus. Alexander, after building an Alexandria at its foot (probably at Hupian near Charikar), crossed into Bactria, first reaching Drapsaca, or Adrapsa. This has been interpreted as Anderab, in which case he probably crossed the Khawak Pass, but the identity is uncertain. The ancient Zend name is, according to Rawlinson, Paresina, the essential part of Paropamisus; this accounts for the great Asiastic Parnassus of Aristotle, and the Pho-lo-sin-a of Hsüan Tsang.

The name Hindu Kush is used by Ibn Batuta, who crossed (c. 1332) from Anderab, and he gives the explanation of the name which, however doubtful, is still popular, as (Pers.) Hindu-Killer, “because of the number of Indian slaves who perished in passing” its snows. Baber always calls the range Hindu Kush, and the way in which he speaks of it shows clearly that it was a range that was meant, not a solitary pass or peak (according to modern local use, as alleged by Elphinstone and Burnes). Probably, however, the title was confined to the section from Khawak to Koh-i-Baba. The name has by some later Oriental writers been modified into Hindu Koh (mountain), but this is factitious, and throws no more light on the origin of the title. The name seems to have become known to European geographers by the Oriental translations of the two Petis de la Croix, and was taken up by Delisle and D’Anville. Rennell and Elphinstone familiarized it. Burnes first crossed the range (1832). A British force was stationed at Bamian beyond it in 1840, with an outpost at Saighan.

The Hindu Kush, formidable as it seems, and often as it has been the limit between petty states, has hardly ever been the boundary of a considerable power. Greeks, White Huns, Samanidae of Bokhara, Ghaznevides, Mongols, Timur and Timuridae, down to Saddozais and Barakzais, have ruled both sides of this great alpine chain.

Authorities.—Information about the Hindu Kush and Chitral is now comparatively exact. The Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission of 1884 and the Chitral expedition of 1895 opened up a vast area for geographical investigation, and the information collected is to be found in the reports and gazetteers of the Indian government. The following are the chief recent authorities:—Report of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission (1886); Report of Lockhart’s Mission (1886); Report of Asmar Boundary Commission (1895); Report of Pamir Boundary Commission (1896); J. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindu Kush (Calcutta, 1880); W. M’Nair, “Visit to Kafiristan,” vol. vi. R.G.S. Proc., 1884; F. Younghusband, “Journeys on the Pamirs, &c.,” vol. xiv. R.G.S. Proc., 1892; Colonel Durand, Making a Frontier (London, 1899); Sir G. Robertson, Chitral (London, 1899).

(T. H. H.*)

HINDUR, or Nalagarh, one of the Simla hill states, under the government of the Punjab, India. Pop. (1901) 52,551; area, 256 sq. m.; estimated revenue, £8600. The country was overrun by the Gurkhas for some years before 1815, when they were driven out by the British, and the raja was confirmed in possession of the territory. The principal products are grain and opium.

HINGANGHAT, a town of British India in Wardha district, Central Provinces, 21 m. S.W. of Wardha town. Pop (1901) 12,662. It is a main seat of the cotton trade, the cotton here produced in the rich Wardha valley having given its name to one of the best indigenous staples of India. The principal native traders are Marwaris, many of whom have large transactions and export on their own account; but the greater number act as middle-men. There are two cotton-mills and several ginning and pressing factories.

HINGE (in Mid. Eng. henge or heeng, from hengen, to hang), a movable joint, particularly that by which a door or window “hangs” from its side-post, or by which a lid or cover is attached to that which it closes; also any device which allows two parts to be joined together and move upon each other (see [Joinery]). Figuratively the word is used of that on which something depends, a cardinal or turning point, a crisis.

HINGHAM, a township of Plymouth county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., on Massachusetts Bay. Pop (1890) 4564; (1900) 5059 (969 being foreign-born); (1905, state census) 4819; (1910) 4965. Area, about 30 sq. m. The township is traversed by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway, and contains the villages of Hingham, West Hingham, Hingham Center, and South Hingham. Derby Academy, a co-educational school founded and endowed with about £12,000 in 1784 by Sarah Derby (1714-1790), was opened in 1791. Hingham has a public library (1868), with 12,000 volumes in 1908. The Old Meeting House, erected in 1681, is one of the oldest church buildings in the country used continuously. Manufactures were relatively much more important in the 17th and 18th centuries than since. There were settlers here as early as 1633, some of them—notably Edmund Hobart, ancestor of Bishop John Henry Hobart,—being natives of Hingham, Norfolk, England, whence the name; and in 1635 common land called Barecove became the township of Hingham.

See History of the Town of Hingham (4 vols., Hingham, 1893).

HINRICHS, HERMANN FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1794-1861), German philosopher, studied theology at Strassburg, and philosophy at Heidelberg under Hegel (q.v.), who wrote a preface to his Religion im innern Verhältniss zur Wissenschaft (Heidelberg, 1722). He became a Privatdozent in 1819, and held professorships at Breslau (1822) and Halle (1824).

Works.—(1) Philosophical: Grundlinien der Philosophie der Logik (Halle, 1826); Genesis des Wissens (Heidelberg, 1835). (2) On aesthetics: Vorlesungen über Goethes Faust (Halle, 1825); Schillers Dichtungen nach ihrem historischen Zusammenhang (Leipzig, 1837-1839). By these works he became a recognized exponent of orthodox Hegelianism. (3) Historical: Geschichte der Rechts- und Staatsprinzipien seit der Reformation bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1848-1852); Die Könige (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1853).

HINSCHIUS, PAUL (1835-1898), German jurist, was the son of Franz Sales August Hinschius (1807-1877), and was born in Berlin on the 25th of December 1835. His father was not only a scientific jurist, but also a lawyer in large practice in Berlin. After working under his father, Hinschius in 1852 began to study jurisprudence at Heidelberg and Berlin, the teacher who had most influence upon him being Aemilius Ludwig Richter (1808-1864), to whom he afterwards ascribed the great revival of the study of ecclesiastical law in Germany. In 1855 Hinschius took the degree of doctor utriusque juris, and in 1859 was admitted to the juridical faculty of Berlin. In 1863 he went as professor extraordinarius to Halle, returning in the same capacity to Berlin in 1865; and in 1868 became professor ordinarius at the university of Kiel, which he represented in the Prussian Upper House (1870-1871). He also assisted his father in editing the Preussische Anwaltszeitung from 1862 to 1866 and the Zeitschrift für Gesetzgebung und Rechtspflege in Preussen from 1867 to 1871. In 1872 he was appointed professor ordinarius of ecclesiastical law at Berlin. In the same year he took part in the conferences of the ministry of ecclesiastical affairs, which issued in the famous “Falk laws.” In connexion with the developments of the Kulturkampf which resulted from the “Falk laws,” he wrote several treatises: e.g. on “The Attitude of the German State Governments towards the Decrees of the Vatican Council” (1871), on “The Prussian Church Laws of 1873” (1873), “The Prussian Church Laws of the years 1874 and 1875” (1875), and “The Prussian Church Law of 14th July 1880” (1881). He sat in the Reichstag as a National Liberal from 1872 to 1878, and again in 1881 and 1882, and from 1889 onwards he represented the university of Berlin in the Prussian Upper House. He died on the 13th of December 1898.

The two great works by which Hinschius established his fame are the Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et capitula Angilramni (2 parts, Leipzig, 1863) and Das Kirchenrecht der Katholiken und Protestanten in Deutschland, vols, i.-vi. (Berlin, 1869-1877). The first of these, for which during 1860 and 1861 he had gathered materials in Italy, Spain, France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland and Belgium, was the first critical edition of the False Decretals. His most monumental work, however, is the Kirchenrecht, which remains incomplete. The six volumes actually published (System des katholischen Kirchenrechts) cover only book i. of the work as planned; they are devoted to an exhaustive historical and analytical study of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and its government of the church. The work is planned with special reference to Germany; but in fact its scheme embraces the whole of the Roman Catholic organization in its principles and practice. Unfortunately even this part of the work remains incomplete; two chapters of book i. and the whole of book ii., which was to have dealt with “the rights and duties of the members of the hierarchy,” remain unwritten; the most notable omission is that of the ecclesiastical law in relation to the regular orders. Incomplete as it is, however, the Kirchenrecht remains a work of the highest scientific authority. Epoch-making in its application of the modern historical method to the study of ecclesiastical law in its theory and practice, it has become the model for the younger school of canonists.

See the articles s.v. by E. Seckel in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (3rd ed., 1900), and by Ulrich Steitz in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. 50 (Leipzig, 1905).

HINTERLAND (German for “the land behind”), the region lying behind a coast or river line, or a country dependent for trade or commerce on any other region. In the purely physical sense “interior” or “back country” is more commonly used, but the word has gained a distinct political significance. It first came into prominence during 1883-1885, when Germany insisted that she had a right to exercise jurisdiction in the territory behind those parts of the African coast that she had occupied. The “doctrine of the hinterland” was that the possessor of the littoral was entitled to as much of the back country as geographically, economically or politically was dependent upon the coast lands, a doctrine which, in the space of ten years, led to the partition of Africa between various European powers.

HINTON, JAMES (1822-1875), English surgeon and author, son of John Howard Hinton (1791-1873), Baptist minister and author of the History and Topography of the United States and other works, was born at Reading in 1822. He was educated at his grandfather’s school near Oxford, and at the Nonconformist school at Harpenden, and in 1838, on his father’s removal to London, was apprenticed to a woollen-draper in Whitechapel. After retaining this situation about a year he became clerk in an insurance office. His evenings were spent in intense study, and this, joined to the ardour, amounting to morbidness, of his interest in moral problems, so affected his health that in his nineteenth year he resolved to seek refuge from his own thoughts by running away to sea. His intention having, however, been discovered, he was sent, on the advice of the physician who was consulted regarding his health, to St Bartholomew’s Hospital to study for the medical profession. After receiving his diploma in 1847, he was for some time assistant surgeon at Newport, Essex, but the same year he went out to Sierra Leone to take medical charge of the free labourers on their voyage thence to Jamaica, where he stayed some time. He returned to England in 1850, and entered into partnership with a surgeon in London, where he soon had his interest awakened specially in aural surgery, and gave also much of his attention to physiology. He made his first appearance as an author in 1856 by contributing papers on physiological and ethical subjects to the Christian Spectator; and in 1859 he published Man and his Dwelling-place. A series of papers entitled “Physiological Riddles,” in the Cornhill Magazine, afterwards published as Life in Nature (1862), as well as another series entitled Thoughts on Health (1871), proved his aptitude for popular scientific exposition. After being appointed aural surgeon to Guy’s Hospital in 1863, he speedily acquired a reputation as the most skilful aural surgeon of his day, which was fully borne out by his works, An Atlas of Diseases of the membrana tympani (1874), and Questions of Aural Surgery (1874). But his health broke down, and in 1874 he gave up practice; and he died at the Azores of acute inflammation of the brain on the 16th of December 1875. In addition to the works already mentioned, he was the author of The Mystery of Pain (1866) and The Place of the Physician (1874). On account of their fresh and vigorous discussion of many of the important moral and social problems of the time, his writings had a wide circulation on both sides of the Atlantic.

His Life and Letters, edited by Ellice Hopkins, with an introduction by Sir W. W. Gull, appeared in 1878.

HIOGO [Hyogo], a town of Japan in the province of Settsu, Nippon, on the western shore of the bay of Osaka, adjoining the foreign settlement of Kobe, 21 m. W. of Osaka by rail. The growth of its prosperity has been very remarkable. Its population, including that of Kobe, was 135,639 in 1891, and 285,002 in 1903. From 1884 to the close of the century its trade increased nearly eightfold, and the increase was not confined to a few staples of commerce, but was spread over almost the whole trade, in which silk and cotton fabrics, floor-mats, straw-plaits, matches, and cotton yarns are specially important. Kobe owes much of its prosperity to the fact of serving largely as the shipping port of Osaka, the chief manufacturing town in Japan. The foreign community, exclusive of Chinese, exceeds 1000 persons. Kobe is considered the brightest and healthiest of all the places assigned as foreign settlements in Japan, its pure, dry air and granite subsoil constituting special advantages. It is in railway communication with all parts of the country, and wharves admit of steamers of large size loading and discharging cargo without the aid of lighters. The area originally appropriated for a foreign settlement soon proved too restricted, and foreigners received permission to lease lands and houses direct from Japanese owners beyond the treaty limits, a privilege which, together with that of building villas on the hills behind the town, ultimately involved some diplomatic complications. Kobe has a shipbuilding yard, and docks in its immediate neighbourhood.

Hiogo has several temples of interest, one of which has near it a huge bronze statue of Buddha, while by the Minatogawa, which flows into the sea between Hiogo and Kobe, a temple commemorates the spot where Kusunoki Masashige, the mirror of Japanese loyalty, met his death in battle in 1336. The temple of Ikuta was erected on the site of the ancient fane built by Jingo on her return from Korea in the 3rd century.

Hiogo’s original name was Bako. Its position near the entrance of the Inland Sea gave it some maritime importance from a very early period, but it did not become really prominent until the 12th century, when Kiyomori, chief of the Taira clan, transferred the capital from Kioto to Fukuhara, in Hiogo’s immediate neighbourhood, and undertook various public works for improving the place. The change of capital was very brief, but Hiogo benefited permanently from the distinction.

HIP. (1) (From O. Eng. hype, a word common in various forms to many Teutonic languages; cf. Dutch heup, and Ger. Hüfte), the projecting part of the body formed by the top of the thighbone and the side of the pelvis, in quadrupeds generally known as the haunch (see [Joints]). (2)(O. Eng. héope, from same root as M. H. Ger. hiefe, a thorn-bush), the fruit of the dog-rose (Rosa canina); “hips” are usually joined with “haws,” the fruit of the hawthorn.

HIP-KNOB, in architecture, the finial on the hip of a roof, between the barge-boards of a gable.

HIPPARCHUS (fl. 146-126 B.C.), Greek astronomer, was born at Nicaea in Bithynia early in the 2nd century B.C. He observed in the island of Rhodes probably from 161, certainly from 146 until about 126 B.C., and made the capital discovery of the precession of the equinoxes in 130 (see [Astronomy]: History). The outburst of a new star in 134 B.C. is stated by Pliny (Hist. nat. ii. 26) to have prompted the preparation of his catalogue of 1080 stars, substantially embodied in Ptolemy’s Almagest. Hipparchus founded trigonometry, and compiled the first table of chords. Scientific geography originated with his invention of the method of fixing terrestrial positions by circles of latitude and longitude. There can be little doubt that the fundamental part of his astronomical knowledge was derived from Chaldaea. None of his many works has survived except a Commentary on the Phaenomena of Aratus and Eudoxus, published by P. Victorius at Florence in 1567, and included by D. Petavius in his Uranologium (Paris, 1630). A new edition was published by Carolus Manitius (Leipzig, 1894).

See J. B. J. Delambre, Histoire de l’astronomie ancienne, i. 173; P. Tannery, Recherches sur l’histoire de l’astr. ancienne, p. 130; A. Berry, Hist. of Astronomy, pp. 40-61; M. Marie, Hist. des sciences, i. 207; G. Cornewall Lewis, Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 207; R. Grant, Hist. of Phys. Astronomy, pp. 318, 437; F. Boll, Sphaera, p. 61 (Leipzig, 1903); R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 45; J. F. Montucla, Hist. des mathématiques, t. i. p. 257; J. A. Schmidt, Variorum philosophicorum decas, cap. i. (Jenae, 1691).

(A. M. C.)

HIPPASUS OF METAPONTUM, Pythagorean philosopher, was one of the earliest of the disciples of Pythagoras. He is mentioned both by Diogenes Laërtius and by Iamblichus, but nothing is known of his life. Diogenes says that he left no writings, but other authorities make him the author of a μυστικὸς λόγος directed against the Pythagoreans. According to Aristotle (Metaphysica, i. 3), he was an adherent of the Heraclitean fire-doctrine, whereas the Pythagoreans maintained the theory that number is the principle of everything. He seems to have regarded the soul as composed of igneous matter, and so approximates the orthodox Pythagorean doctrine of the central fire, or Hestia, to the more detailed theories of Heraclitus. In spite of this divergence, Hippasus is always regarded as a Pythagorean.

See Diogenes viii. 84; Brandis, History of Greek and Roman Philosophy; also [Pythagoras].

HIPPEASTRUM, in botany, a genus of the natural order Amaryllidaceae, containing about 50 species of bulbous plants, natives of tropical and sub-tropical South America. In cultivation they are generally known as Amaryllis. The handsome funnel-shaped flowers are borne in a cluster of two to many, at the end of a short hollow scape. The species and the numerous hybrids which have been obtained artificially, show a great variety in size and colour of the flower, including the richest deep crimson and blood-red, white, or with striped, mottled or blended colours. They are of easy culture, and free-blooming habit. Like other bulbs they are increased by offsets, which should be carefully removed when the plants are at rest, and should be allowed to attain a fair size before removal. These young bulbs should be potted singly in February or March, in mellow loamy soil with a moderate quantity of sand, about two-thirds of the bulb being kept above the level of the soil, which should be made quite solid. They should be removed to a temperature of 60° by night and 70° by day, very carefully watered until the roots have begun to grow freely, after which the soil should be kept moderately moist. As they advance the temperature should be raised to 70° at night, and to 80° or higher with sun heat by day. They do not need shading, but should have plenty of air, and be syringed daily in the afternoon. When growing they require a good supply of water. After the decay of the flowers they should be returned to a brisk moist temperature of from 70° to 80° by day during summer to perfect their leaves, and then be ripened off in autumn. Through the winter they should have less water, but must not be kept entirely dry. The minimum temperature should now be about 55°, to be increased 10° or 15° in spring. As the bulbs get large they will occasionally need shifting into larger pots. Propagation is also readily effected by seeds for raising new varieties. Seeds are sown when ripe in well drained pans of sandy loam at a temperature of about 65°. The seedlings when large enough to handle are placed either singly in very small pots or several in a pot or shallow pan, and put in a bottom heat, in a moist atmosphere with a temperature from 60° to 70°. H. Ackermanni, with large, handsome, crimson flowers—itself a hybrid—is the parent of many of the large-flowered forms; H. equestre (Barbados lily), with yellowish-green flowers tipped with scarlet, has also given rise to several handsome forms; H. aulicum (flowers crimson and green), H. pardinum (flowers creamy-white spotted with crimson), and H. vittatum (flowers white with red stripes, a beautiful species and the parent of many varieties), are stove or warm greenhouse plants. These kinds, however, are now only regarded as botanical curiosities, and are rarely grown in private or commercial establishments. They have been ousted by the more gorgeous looking hybrids, which have been evolved during the past 100 years. H. Johnsoni is named after a Lancashire watchmaker who raised it in 1799 by crossing H. Reginae with H. vittatum. Since that time other species have been used for hybridizing, notably H. reticulatum, H. aulicum, H. solandriflorum, and sometimes H. equestre and H. psittacinum. The finest forms since 1880 have been evolved from H. Leopoldi and H. pardinum.

(J. Ws.)

HIPPED ROOF, the name given in architecture to a roof which slopes down on all four sides instead of terminating on two sides against a vertical gable. Sometimes a compromise is made between the two, half the roof being hipped and half resting on the vertical wall; this gives much more room inside the roof, and externally a most picturesque effect, which is one of the great attractions of domestic architecture in the south of England, and is rarely found in other countries.

HIPPEL, THEODOR GOTTLIEB VON (1741-1796), German satirical and humorous writer, was born on the 31st of January 1741, at Gerdauen in East Prussia, where his father was rector of a school. He enjoyed an excellent education at home, and in his sixteenth year he entered Königsberg university as a student of theology. Interrupting his studies, he went, on the invitation of a friend, to St Petersburg, where he was introduced at the brilliant court of the empress Catherine II. Returning to Königsberg he became a tutor in a private family; but, falling in love with a young lady of high position, his ambition was aroused, and giving up his tutorship he devoted himself with enthusiasm to legal studies. He was successful in his profession, and in 1780 was appointed chief burgomaster in Königsberg, and in 1786 privy councillor of war and president of the town. As he rose in the world, however, his inclination for matrimony vanished, and the lady who had stimulated his ambition was forgotten. He died at Königsberg on the 23rd of April 1796, leaving a considerable fortune. Hippel had extraordinary talents, rich in wit and fancy; but his was a character full of contrasts and contradictions. Cautiousness and ardent passion, dry pedantry and piety, morality and sensuality; simplicity and ostentation composed his nature; and, hence, his literary productions never attained artistic finish. In his Lebensläufe nach aufsteigender Linie (1778-1781) he intended to describe the lives of his father and grandfather, but he eventually confined himself to his own. It is an autobiography, in which persons well known to him are introduced, together with a mass of heterogeneous reflections on life and philosophy. Kreuz- und Querzüge des Ritters A bis Z (1793-1794) is a satire levelled against the follies of the age—ancestral pride and the thirst for orders, decoration and the like. Among others of his better known works are Über die Ehe (1774) and Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (1792). Hippel has been called the fore-runner of Jean Paul Richter, and has some resemblance to this author, in his constant digressions and in the interweaving of scientific matter in his narrative. Like Richter he was strongly influenced by Laurence Sterne.

In 1827-1838 a collected edition of Hippel’s works in 14 vols., was issued at Berlin. Über die Ehe has been edited by E. Brenning (Leipzig, 1872), and the Lebensläufe nach aufsteigender Linie has in a modernized edition by A. von Öttingen (1878), gone through several editions. See J. Czerny, Sterne, Hippel und Jean Paul (Berlin, 1904).

HIPPIAS OF ELIS, Greek sophist, was born about the middle of the 5th century B.C. and was thus a younger contemporary of Protagoras and Socrates. He was a man of great versatility and won the respect of his fellow-citizens to such an extent that he was sent to various towns on important embassies. At Athens he made the acquaintance of Socrates and other leading thinkers. With an assurance characteristic of the later sophists, he claimed to be regarded as an authority on all subjects, and lectured, at all events with financial success, on poetry, grammar, history, politics, archaeology, mathematics and astronomy. He boasted that he was more popular than Protagoras, and was prepared at any moment to deliver an extempore address on any subject to the assembly at Olympia. Of his ability there is no question, but it is equally certain that he was superficial. His aim was not to give knowledge, but to provide his pupils with the weapons of argument, to make them fertile in discussion on all subjects alike. It is said that he boasted of wearing nothing which he had not made with his own hands. Plato’s two dialogues, the Hippias major and minor, contain an exposé of his methods, exaggerated no doubt for purposes of argument but written with full knowledge of the man and the class which he represented. Ast denies their authenticity, but they must have been written by a contemporary writer (as they are mentioned in the literature of the 4th century), and undoubtedly represent the attitude of serious thinkers to the growing influence of the professional Sophists. There is, however, no question that Hippias did a real service to Greek literature by insisting on the meaning of words, the value of rhythm and literary style. He is credited with an excellent work on Homer, collections of Greek and foreign literature, and archaeological treatises, but nothing remains except the barest notes. He forms the connecting link between the first great sophists, Protagoras and Prodicus, and the innumerable eristics who brought their name into disrepute.

For the general atmosphere in which Hippias moved see [Sophists]; also histories of Philosophy (e.g. Windelband, Eng. trans. by Tufts, pt. 1, c. 2, §§ 7 and 8).

HIPPO, a Greek philosopher and natural scientist, classed with the Ionian or physical school. He was probably a contemporary of Archelaus and lived chiefly in Athens. Aristotle declared that he was unworthy of the name of philosopher, and, while comparing him with Thales in his main doctrine, adds that his intellect was too shallow for serious consideration. He held that the principle of all things is moisture (τὸ ὑγρόν); that fire develops from water, and from fire the material universe. Further he denied all existence save that of material things as known through the senses, and was, therefore, classed among the “Atheists.” The gods are merely great men canonized by popular tradition. It is said that he composed his own epitaph, wherein he claims for himself a place in this company.

HIPPOCRAS, an old medicinal drink or cordial, made of wine mixed with spices—such as cinnamon, ginger and sugar—and strained through woollen cloths. The early spelling usual in English was ipocras, or ypocras. The word is an adaptation of the Med. Lat. Vinum Hippocraticum, or wine of Hippocrates, so called, not because it was supposed to be a receipt of the physician, but from an apothecary’s name for a strainer or sieve, “Hippocrates’ sleeve” (see W. W. Skeat, Chaucer, note to the Merchant’s Tale).

HIPPOCRATES, Greek philosopher and writer, termed the “Father of Medicine,” was born, according to Soranus, in Cos, in the first year of the 80th Olympiad, i.e. in 460 B.C. He was a member of the family of the Asclepiadae, and was believed to be either the nineteenth or seventeenth in direct descent from Aesculapius. It is also claimed for him that he was descended from Hercules through his mother, Phaenarete. He studied medicine under Heraclides, his father, and Herodicus of Selymbria; in philosophy Gorgias of Leontini and Democritus of Abdera were his masters. His earlier studies were prosecuted in the famous Asclepion of Cos, and probably also at Cnidos. He travelled extensively, and taught and practised his profession at Athens, probably also in Thrace, Thessaly, Delos and his native island. He died at Larissa in Thessaly, his age being variously stated as 85, 90, 104 and 109. The incidents of his life are shrouded by uncertain traditions, which naturally sprang up in the absence of any authentic record; the earliest biography was by one of the Sorani, probably Soranus the younger of Ephesus, in the 2nd century; Suidas, the lexicographer, wrote of him in the 11th, and Tzetzes in the 12th century. In all these biographies there is internal evidence of confusion; many of the incidents related are elsewhere told of other persons, and certain of them are quite irreconcilable with his character, so far as it can be judged of from his writings and from the opinions expressed of him by his contemporaries; we may safely reject, for instance, the legends that he set fire to the library of the Temple of Health at Cnidos, in order to destroy the evidence of plagiarism, and that he refused to visit Persia at the request of Artaxerxes Longimanus, during a pestilential epidemic, on the ground that he would in so doing be assisting an enemy. He is referred to by Plato (Protag. p. 283; Phaedr. p. 211) as an eminent medical authority, and his opinion is also quoted by Aristotle. The veneration in which he was held by the Athenians serves to dissipate the calumnies which have been thrown on his character by Andreas, and the whole tone of his writings bespeaks a man of the highest integrity and purest morality.

Born of a family of priest-physicians, and inheriting all its traditions and prejudices, Hippocrates was the first to cast superstition aside, and to base the practice of medicine on the principles of inductive philosophy. It is impossible to trace directly the influence exercised upon him by the great men of his time, but one cannot fail to connect his emancipation of medicine from superstition with the widespread power exercised over Greek life and thought by the living work of Socrates, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus and Thucydides. It was a period of great intellectual development, and it only needed a powerful mind such as his to bring to bear upon medicine the same influences which were at work in other sciences. It must be remembered that his training was not altogether bad, although superstition entered so largely into it. He had a great master in Democritus, the originator of the doctrine of atoms, and there is every reason to believe that the various “asclepia” were very carefully conducted hospitals for the sick, possessing a curious system of case-books, in the form of votive tablets, left by the patients, on which were recorded the symptoms, treatment and result of each case. He had these records at his command; and he had the opportunity of observing the system of training and the treatment of injuries in the gymnasia. One of his great merits is that he was the first to dissociate medicine from priest-craft, and to direct exclusive attention to the natural history of disease. How strongly his mind revolted against the use of charms, amulets, incantations and such devices appears from his writings; and he has expressly recorded, as underlying all his practice, the conviction that, however diseases may be regarded from the religious point of view, they must all be scientifically treated as subject to natural laws (De aëre, 29). Nor was he anxious to maintain the connexion between philosophy and medicine which had for long existed in a confused and confusing fashion.[1] His knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathology was necessarily defective, the respect in which the dead body was held by the Greeks precluding him from practising dissection; thus we find him writing of the tissues without distinguishing between the various textures of the body, confusing arteries, veins and nerves, and speaking vaguely of the muscles as “flesh.” But when we come to study his observations on the natural history of disease as presented in the living subject, we recognize at once the presence of a great clinical physician. Hippocrates based his principles and practice on the theory of the existence of a spiritual restoring essence or principle, φύσις, the vis medicatrix naturae, in the management of which the art of the physician consisted. This art could, he held, be only obtained by the application of experience, not only to disease at large, but to disease in the individual. He strongly deprecated blind empiricism; the aphorism “ἡ πεῖρα σφαλερή, ἡ κρίσις χαλεπή” (whether it be his or not), tersely illustrates his position. Holding firmly to the principle, νούσων φύσιες ἰητροί, he did not allow himself to remain inactive in the presence of disease; he was not a merely “expectant” physician; as Sydenham puts it, his practice was “the support of enfeebled and the coercion of outrageous nature.” He largely employed powerful medicines and blood-letting both ordinary and by cupping. He advises, however, great caution in their application. He placed great dependence on diet and regimen, and here, quaint as many of his directions may now sound, not only in themselves, but in the reasons given, there is much which is still adhered to at the present day. His treatise Περὶ ἀέρων, ὑδάτων, καὶ τόπων (Airs, Waters, and Places) contains the first enunciation of the principles of public health. Although the treatises Περὶ κρισίμων cannot be accepted as authentic, we find in the Προγνωστικόν evidence of the acuteness of observation in the manner in which the occurrence of critical days in disease is enunciated. His method of reporting cases is most interesting and instructive; in them we can read how thoroughly he had separated himself from the priest-physician. Laennec, to whom we are indebted for the practice of auscultation, freely admits that the idea was suggested to him by study of Hippocrates, who, treating of the presence of morbid fluids in the thorax, gives very particular directions, by means of succussion, for arriving at an opinion regarding their nature. Laennec says, “Hippocrate avait tenté l’auscultation immédiate.” Although the treatise Περὶ νούσων is doubtfully from the pen of Hippocrates, it contains strong evidence of having been the work of his grandson, representing the views of the Father of Medicine. Although not accurate in the conclusions reached at the time, the value of the method of diagnosis is shown by the retention in modern medicine of the name and the practice of “Hippocratic succussion.” The power of graphic description of phenomena in the Hippocratic writings is illustrated by the retention of the term “facies Hippocratica,” applied to the appearance of a moribund person, pictured in the Prognostics. In surgery his writings are important and interesting, but they do not bear the same character of caution as the treatises on medicine; for instance, in the essay On Injuries of the Head, he advocates the operation “of trephining” more strongly and in wider classes of cases than would be warranted by the experience of later times.

The Hippocratic Collection consists of eighty-seven treatises, of which a part only can be accepted as genuine. The collection has been submitted to the closest criticism in ancient and modern times by a large number of commentators (for full list of the early commentators, see Adams’s Genuine Works of Hippocrates, Sydenham Society, i. 27, 28). The treatises have been classified according to (1) the direct evidence of ancient writers, (2) peculiarities of style and method, and (3) the presence of anachronisms and of opinions opposed to the general Hippocratic teaching—greatest weight being attached to the opinions of Erotian and Galen. The general estimate of commentators is thus stated by Adams: “The peculiar style and method of Hippocrates are held to be conciseness of expression, great condensation of matter, and disposition to regard all professional subjects in a practical point of view, to eschew subtle hypotheses and modes of treatment based on vague abstractions.” The treatises have been grouped in the four following sections: (1) genuine; (2) those consisting of notes taken by students and collected after the death of Hippocrates; (3) essays by disciples; (4) those utterly spurious. Littré accepts the following thirteen as absolutely genuine: (1) On Ancient Medicine (Περὶ ἀρχαίης ἰητρικῆς); (2) The Prognostics (Προγνωστικόν); (3) The Aphorisms (Ἀφορισμοί); (4) The Epidemics, i. and iii. (Ἐπιδημιῶν α′ καὶ γ′); (5) On Regimen in Acute Diseases (Περὶ διαίτης ὀξέων); (6) On Airs, Waters, and Places (Περὶ ἀέρων, ὑδάτων, καὶ τόπων); (7) On the Articulations (Περὶ ἄρθρων); (8) On Fractures (Περὶ ἀγμῶν); (9) The Instruments of Reduction (Μοχλικός); (10) The Physician’s Establishment, or Surgery (Κατ᾽ ἰητρεῖον); (11) On Injuries of the Head (Περὶ τῶν ἐν κεφαλῇ τρωμάτων); (12) The Oath (Ὅρκος); (13) The Law (Νόμος). Of these Adams accepts as certainly genuine the 2nd, 6th, 5th, 3rd (7 books), 4th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 12th, and as “pretty confidently acknowledged as genuine, although the evidence in their favour is not so strong,” the 1st, 10th and 13th, and, in addition, (14) On Ulcers (Περὶ ἑλκῶν); (15) On Fistulae (Περὶ συρίγγων); (16) On Hemorrhoids (Περὶ αἱμοῤῥοΐδων); (17) On the Sacred Disease (Περὶ ἱερῆς νούσου). According to the sceptical and somewhat subjective criticism of Ermerins, the whole collection is to be regarded as spurious except Epidemics, books i. and iii. (with a few interpolations), On Airs, Waters, and Places, On Injuries of the Head (“insigne fragmentum libri Hippocratei”), the former portion of the treatise On Regimen in Acute Diseases, and the “obviously Hippocratic” fragments of the Coan Prognostics. Perhaps also the Oath may be accepted as genuine; its comparative antiquity is not denied. The Aphorisms are certainly later and inferior. In the other non-Hippocratic writings Ermerins thinks he can distinguish the hands of no fewer than nineteen different authors, most of them anonymous, and some of them very late.

The earliest Greek edition of the Hippocratic writings is that which was published by Aldus and Asulanus at Venice in 1526 (folio); it was speedily followed by that of Frobenius, which is much more accurate and complete (fol., Basel, 1538). Of the numerous subsequent editions, probably the best was that of Foesius (Frankfort, 1595, 1621, Geneva, 1657), until the publication of the great works of Littré, Œuvres complètes d’Hippocrate, traduction nouvelle avec le texte grec en regard, collationnée sur les manuscrits et toutes les éditions, accompagnée d’une introduction, de commentaires médicaux, de variantes, et de notes philologiques (10 vols., Paris, 1839-1861), and of F. Z. Ermerins, Hippocratis et aliorum medicorum veterum reliquiae (3 vols., Utrecht, 1859-1864). See also Adams (as cited above), and Reinhold’s Hippocrates (2 vols., Athens, 1864-1867). Daremberg’s edition of the Œuvres choisies (2nd ed., Paris, 1855) includes the Oath, the Law, the Prorrhetics, book i., the Prognostics, On Airs, Waters, and Places, Epidemics, books i. and iii., Regimen, and Aphorisms. Of the separate works attributed to Hippocrates the editions and translations are almost innumerable; of the Prognostics, for example, seventy editions are known, while of the Aphorisms there are said to exist as many as three hundred. For some notice of the Arabic, Syriac and Hebrew translations of works professedly by Hippocrates (Ibukrat or Bukrat), the number of which greatly exceeds that of the extant Greek originals, reference may be made to Flügel’s contribution to the article “Hippokrates” in the Encyklopädie of Ersch and Gruber. They have been partially catalogued by Fabricius in his Bibliotheca Graeca.

(J. B. T.)

[1] “Hippocrates Cous, primus quidem ex omnibus memoria dignus, ab studio sapientiae disciplinam hanc separavit, vir et arte et facundia insignis” (Celsus, De medicina).

HIPPOCRENE (the “fountain of the horse,” ἡ ἵππου κρήνη), the spring on Mt Helicon, in Boeotia, which, like the other spring there, Aganippe, was sacred to the Muses and Apollo, and hence taken as the source of poetic inspiration. The spring, surrounded by an ancient wall, is now known as Kryopegadi or the cold spring. According to the legend, it was produced by the stamping of the hoof of Bellerophon’s horse Pegasus. The same story accounts for the Hippocrene in Troezen and the spring Peirene at Corinth.

HIPPODAMUS, of Miletus, a Greek architect of the 5th century B.C. It was he who introduced order and regularity into the planning of cities, in place of the previous intricacy and confusion. For Pericles he planned the arrangement of the harbour-town Peiraeus at Athens. When the Athenians founded Thurii in Italy he accompanied the colony as architect, and afterwards, in 408 B.C., he superintended the building of the new city of Rhodes. His schemes consisted of series of broad, straight streets, cutting one another at right angles.

HIPPODROME (Gr. ἱππόδρομος, from ἵππος, horse, and δρόμος, racecourse), the course provided by the Greeks for horse and chariot racing; it corresponded to the Roman circus, except that in the latter only four chariots ran at a time, whereas ten or more contended in the Greek games, so that the width was far greater, being about 400 ft., the course being 600 to 700 ft. long. The Greek hippodrome was usually set out on the slope of a hill, and the ground taken from one side served to form the embankment on the other side. One end of the hippodrome was semicircular, and the other end square with an extensive portico, in front of which, at a lower level, were the stalls for the horses and chariots. The modern hippodrome is more for equestrian and other displays than for horse racing. The Hippodrome in Paris somewhat resembles the Roman amphitheatre, being open in the centre to the sky, with seats round on rising levels.

HIPPOLYTUS, in Greek legend, son of Theseus and Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons (or of her sister Antiope), a famous hunter and charioteer and favourite of Artemis. His stepmother Phaedra became enamoured of him, but, finding her advances rejected, she hanged herself, leaving a letter in which she accused Hippolytus of an attempt upon her virtue. Theseus thereupon drove his son from his presence with curses and called upon his father Poseidon to destroy him. While Hippolytus was driving along the shore at Troezen (the scene of the Hippolytus of Euripides), a sea-monster (a bull or phoca) sent by Poseidon emerged from the waves; the horses were scared, Hippolytus was thrown out of the chariot, and was dragged along, entangled in the reins, until he died. According to a tradition of Epidaurus, Asclepius restored him to life at the request of Artemis, who removed him to Italy (see [Virbius]). At Troezen, where he had a special sanctuary and priest, and was worshipped with divine honours, the story of his death was denied. He was said to have been rescued by the gods at the critical moment, and to have been placed amongst the stars as the Charioteer (Auriga). It was also the custom of the Troezenian maidens to cut off a lock of their hair and to dedicate it to Hippolytus before marriage (see Frazer on Pausanias ii. 32. 1). Well-known classical parallels to the main theme are Bellerophon and Antea (or Stheneboea) and Peleus and Astydamia. The story was the subject of two plays by Euripides (the later of which is extant), of a tragedy by Seneca and of Racine’s Phèdre. A trace of it has survived in the legendary death of the apocryphal martyr Hippolytus, a Roman officer who was torn to pieces by wild horses as a convert to Christianity (see J. J. Döllinger, Hippolytus and Callistus, Eng. tr. by A. Plummer, 1876, pp. 28-39, 51-60).

According to the older explanations, Hippolytus represented the sun, which sets in the sea (cf. the scene of his death and the story of Phaëthon), and Phaedra the moon, which travels behind the sun, but is unable to overtake it. It is more probable, however, that he was a local hero famous for his chastity, perhaps originally a priest of Artemis, worshipped as a god at Troezen, where he was closely connected and sometimes confounded with Asclepius. It is noteworthy that, in a speech put into the mouth of Theseus by Euripides, the father, who of course believes his wife’s story and regards Hippolytus as a hypocrite, throws his son’s pretended misogyny and asceticism (Orphism) in his teeth. This seems to point to a struggle between a new ritual and that of Poseidon, the chief deity of Troezen, in which the representative of the intruding religion meets his death through the agency of the offended god, as Orpheus (q.v.) was torn to pieces by the votaries of the jealous Dionysus. According to S. Reinach (Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, x., 1907, p. 47), the Troezenian Hippolytus was a horse, the hypostasis of an equestrian divinity periodically torn to pieces by the faithful, who called themselves, and believed themselves to be, horses. Death was followed by resuscitation, as in the similar myths of Adonis (the sacred boar), Orpheus (the fox), Pentheus (the fawn), Phaëthon (the white sun-horse).

See Wilamowitz-Möllendorff’s Introduction to his German translation of Euripides’ Hippolytus (1891); A. Kalkmann, De Hippolytis Euripideis (Bonn, 1882); and (for representations in art) “Über Darstellung der Hippolytussage” in Archäologische Zeitung (xli. 1883); J. E. Harrison, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens (1890), cl.

HIPPOLYTUS, a writer of the early Church. The mystery which enveloped the person and writings of Hippolytus,[1] one of the most prolific ecclesiastical writers of early times, had some light thrown upon it for the first time about the middle of the 19th century by the discovery of the so-called Philosophumena (see below). Assuming this writing to be the work of Hippolytus, the information given in it as to the author and his times can be combined with other traditional dates to form a tolerably clear picture. Hippolytus must have been born in the second half of the 2nd century, probably in Rome. Photius describes him in his Bibliotheca (cod. 121) as a disciple of Irenaeus, and from the context of this passage it is supposed that we may conclude that Hippolytus himself so styled himself. But this is not certain, and even if it were, it does not necessarily imply that Hippolytus enjoyed the personal teaching of the celebrated Gallic bishop; it may perhaps merely refer to that relation of his theological system to that of Irenaeus which can easily be traced in his writings. As a presbyter of the church at Rome under Bishop Zephyrinus (199-217), Hippolytus was distinguished for his learning and eloquence. It was at this time that Origen, then a young man, heard him preach (Hieron. Vir. ill. 61; cp. Euseb. H.E. vi. 14, 10). It was probably not long before questions of theology and church discipline brought him into direct conflict with Zephyrinus, or at any rate with his successor Calixtus I. (q.v.). He accused the bishop of favouring the Christological heresies of the Monarchians, and, further, of subverting the discipline of the Church by his lax action in receiving back into the Church those guilty of gross offences. The result was a schism, and for perhaps over ten years Hippolytus stood as bishop at the head of a separate church. Then came the persecution under Maximinus the Thracian. Hippolytus and Pontius, who was then bishop, were transported in 235 to Sardinia, where it would seem that both of them died. From the so-called chronograph of the year 354 (Catalogus Liberianus) we learn that on the 13th of August, probably in 236, the bodies of the exiles were interred in Rome and that of Hippolytus in the cemetery on the Via Tiburtina. So we must suppose that before his death the schismatic was received again into the bosom of the Church, and this is confirmed by the fact that his memory was henceforth celebrated in the Church as that of a holy martyr. Pope Damasus I. dedicated to him one of his famous epigrams, and Prudentius (Peristephanon, 11) drew a highly coloured picture of his gruesome death, the details of which are certainly purely legendary: the myth of Hippolytus the son of Theseus was transferred to the Christian martyr. Of the historical Hippolytus little remained in the memory of after ages. Neither Eusebius (H.E. vi. 20, 2) nor Jerome (Vir. ill. 61) knew that the author so much read in the East and the Roman saint were one and the same person. The notice in the Chronicon Paschale preserves one slight reminiscence of the historical facts, namely, that Hippolytus’s episcopal see was situated at Portus near Rome. In 1551 a marble statue of a seated man was found in the cemetery of the Via Tiburtina: on the sides of the seat were carved a paschal cycle, and on the back the titles of numerous writings. It was the statue of Hippolytus, a work at any rate of the 3rd century; at the time of Pius IX. it was placed in the Lateran Museum, a record in stone of a lost tradition.

Hippolytus’s voluminous writings, which for variety of subject can be compared with those of Origen, embrace the spheres of exegesis, homiletics, apologetics and polemic, chronography and ecclesiastical law. His works have unfortunately come down to us in such a fragmentary condition that it is difficult to obtain from them any very exact notion of his intellectual and literary importance. Of his exegetical works the best preserved are the Commentary on the Prophet Daniel and the Commentary on the Song of Songs. In spite of many instances of a want of taste in his typology, they are distinguished by a certain sobriety and sense of proportion in his exegesis. We are unable to form an opinion of Hippolytus as a preacher, for the Homilies on the Feast of Epiphany which go under his name are wrongly attributed to him. He wrote polemical words directed against the pagans, the Jews and heretics. The most important of these polemical treatises is the Refutation of all Heresies, which has come to be known by the inappropriate title of the Philosophumena. Of its ten books, the second and third are lost; Book i. was for a long time printed (with the title Philosophumena) among the works of Origen; Books iv.-x. were found in 1842 by the Greek Minoides Mynas, without the name of the author, in a MS. at Mount Athos. It is nowadays universally admitted that Hippolytus was the author, and that Books i. and iv.-x. belong to the same work. The importance of the work has, however, been much overrated; a close examination of the sources for the exposition of the Gnostic system which is contained in it has proved that the information it gives is not always trustworthy. Of the dogmatic works, that on Christ and Antichrist survives in a complete state. Among other things it includes a vivid account of the events preceding the end of the world, and it was probably written at the time of the persecution under Septimius Severus, i.e. about 202. The influence of Hippolytus was felt chiefly through his works on chronographic and ecclesiastical law. His chronicle of the world, a compilation embracing the whole period from the creation of the world up to the year 234, formed a basis for many chronographical works both in the East and West. In the great compilations of ecclesiastical law which arose in the East since the 4th century (see below: also [Apostolic Constitutions]) much of the material was taken from the writings of Hippolytus; how much of this is genuinely his, how much of it worked over, and how much of it wrongly attributed to him, can no longer be determined beyond dispute even by the most learned investigation.

Bibliography.—The edition of J. A. Fabricius, Hippolyti opera graece et latine (2 vols., Hamburg, 1716-1718, reprinted in Gallandi, Bibliotheca veterum patrum (vol. ii., 1766), and Migne, Cursus patrol. ser. Graeca, vol. x.) is out of date. The preparation of a complete critical edition has been undertaken by the Prussian Academy of Sciences. The task is one of extraordinary difficulty, for the textual problems of the various writings are complex and confused: the Greek original is extant in a few cases only (the Commentary on Daniel, the Refutation, on Antichrist, parts of the Chronicle, and some fragments); for the rest we are dependent on fragments of translations, chiefly Slavonic, all of which are not even published. Of the Academy’s edition one volume was published at Berlin in 1897, containing the Commentaries on Daniel and on the Song of Songs, the treatise on Antichrist, and the Lesser Exegetical and Homiletic Works, edited by Nathanael Bonwetsch and Hans Achelis. The Commentary on the Song of Songs has also been published by Bonwetsch (Leipzig, 1902) in a German translation based on a Russian translation by N. Marr of the Grusian (Georgian) text, and he added to it (Leipzig, 1904) a translation of various small exegetical pieces, which are preserved in a Georgian version only (The Blessing of Jacob, The Blessing of Moses, The Narrative of David and Goliath). A great part of the original of the Chronicle has been published by Adolf Bauer (Leipzig, 1905) from the Codex Matritensis Graecus, 221. For the Refutation we are still dependent on the editions of Miller (Oxford, 1851), Duncker and Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1859), and Cruice (Paris, 1860). An English translation is to be found in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library (Edinburgh, 1868-1869).

See Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Age (1852, 2nd ed., 1854; Ger. ed., 1853); Döllinger, Hippolytus und Kallistus (Regensb. 1853; Eng. transl., Edinb., 1876); Gerhard Ficker, Studien zur Hippolytfrage (Leipzig, 1893); Hans Achelis, Hippolytstudien (Leipzig, 1897); Karl Johannes Neumann, Hippolytus von Rom in seiner Stellung zu Staat und Welt, part i. (Leipzig, 1902); Adhémar d’Alès, La Théologie de Saint Hippolyte (Paris, 1906).

(G. K.)

[1] According to the legend St Hippolytus was a Roman soldier who was converted by St Lawrence.

HIPPOLYTUS, THE CANONS OF. This book stands at the head of a series of Church Orders, which contain instructions in regard to the choice and ordination of Christian ministers, regulations as to widows and virgins, conditions of reception of converts from heathenism, preparation for and administration of baptism, rules for the celebration of the eucharist, for fasting, daily prayers, charity suppers, memorial meals, first-fruits, &c. We shall give (1) a description of the book as we have it at present; (2) a brief statement of its relation to allied documents; (3) some remarks on the evidence for its date and authorship.

1. We possess the Canons of Hippolytus only in an Arabic version, itself made from a Coptic version of the original Greek. Attention was called to the book by Wansleben and Ludolf towards the end of the 17th century, but it was only in 1870 that it was edited by Haneberg, who added a Latin translation, and so made it generally accessible. In 1891 H. Achelis reproduced this translation in a revised form, embodying it in a synopsis of allied documents. He suspected much interpolation and derangement of order, and consequently rearranged its contents with a free hand. In 1900 a German translation was made by H. Riedel, based on fresh MSS. These showed that the book, as hitherto edited, had been thrown into disorder by the displacement of two pages near the end; they also removed other difficulties upon which the theory of interpolation had been based. Further discoveries, to be spoken of presently, have added to our materials for the study of the book.

The book is attributed to “Hippolytus, the chief of the bishops of Rome,” and is divided into thirty-eight canons, to which short headings are prefixed. This division is certainly not original, but it is convenient for purposes of reference. Canon 1 is prefatory; it contains a brief confession of faith in the Trinity, and especially in the Word, the Son of God; and it speaks of the expulsion of heretics from the Church. Canons 2-5 give regulations for the selection and ordination of bishops, presbyters and deacons. The bishop is chosen by the whole congregation: “one of the bishops and presbyters” is to lay hands upon him and say a prayer which follows (3): he is at once to proceed with “the offering,” taking up the eucharistic service at the point where the sursum corda comes in. A presbyter (4) is to be ordained with the same prayer as a bishop, “with the exception of the word bishop”; but he is given no power of ordination (this appears to be inconsistent with c. 2). The duties of a deacon are described, and the prayer of his ordination follows (5). Canons 6-9 deal with various classes in the Church. One who has suffered punishment for the faith (6) is to be counted a presbyter without ordination: “his confession is his ordination.” Readers and sub-deacons (7) are given the Gospel, but are not ordained by laying-on of hands. A claim to ordination on the ground of gifts of healing (8) is to be admitted, if the facts are clear and the healing is from God. Widows are not ordained (9): “ordination is for men only.” Canons 10-15 describe conditions for the admission of converts. Certain occupations are incompatible with Christian life: only under compulsion may a Christian be a soldier. Canons 16-18 deal chiefly with regulations concerning women. Canon 19 is a long one dealing with catechumens, preparation for baptism, administration of that sacrament, and of the eucharist for the newly baptized. The candidate is twice anointed: first, with the oil of exorcism, after he has said, with his face westward, “I renounce thee, O devil, and all thy following”; and, again, immediately after the baptism. As he stands in the water, he declares his faith in response to an interrogatory creed; and after each of the three clauses he is immersed. After the second anointing the bishop gives thanks “for that Thou hast made them worthy that they should be born again, and hast poured out Thy Holy Ghost upon them, so that they may belong, each one of them, to the body of the Church”: he signs them with the cross on their foreheads, and kisses them. The eucharist then proceeds: “the bishop gives them of the body of Christ and says, This is the body of Christ, and they answer Amen”; and similarly for the cup. Milk and honey are then given to them as being “born a second time as little children.” A warning is added against eating anything before communicating. Canons 20-22 deal with fast-days, daily services in church, and the fast of the passover-week. Canon 23 seems as if it closed the series, speaking, as it does, of “our brethren the bishops” who in their cities have made regulations “according to the commands of our fathers the apostles”: “let none of our successors alter them; because it saith that the teaching is greater than the sea, and hath no end.” We pass on, however, to regulations about the sick (24) who are to be visited by the bishop, “because it is a great thing for the sick that the high-priest should visit them (for the shadow of Peter healed the sick).” Canons 25-27 deal again with prayers and church-services. The “seven hours” are specified, with reasons for their observance (25): attendance at sermons is urged (26), “for the Lord is in the place where his lordship is proclaimed” (comp. Didachè 4, part of the Two Ways). When there are no prayers in church, reading at home is enjoined (27): “let the sun each morning see the book upon thy knees” (comp. Ath. Ad virg., § 12, “Let the sun when he ariseth see the book in thy hands”). Prayer must be preceded by the washing of the hands. “No believer must take food before communicating, especially on fast-days”: only believers may communicate (28). The sacred elements must be guarded, “lest anything fall into the cup, and it be a sin unto death for the presbyters.” No crumb must be dropped, “lest an evil spirit get possession of it.” Canons 30-35 contain various rules, and specially deal with suppers for the poor (i.e. agapae) and memorial feasts. Then we have a prayer for the offering of first-fruits (36); a direction that ministers shall wear fair garments at “the mysteries” (37); and a command to watch during the night of the resurrection (38). The last canon hereupon passes into a general exhortation to right living, which forms a sixth part of the whole book. In Riedel’s translation we read this for the first time as a connected whole. It falls into two parts, and describes, first, the true life of ordinary Christians, warning them against an empty profession, and laying down many precepts of morality; and then it addresses itself to the “ascete” who “wishes to belong to the rank of the angels,” and who lives a life of solitude and poverty. He is encouraged by an exposition, on somewhat strange lines, of the temptations of our Lord, and is specially warned against spiritual pride and contempt of other men. The book closes with an appeal for love and mutual service, based on the parables in St Matthew xxv.

2. It is impossible to estimate the position of the Canons of Hippolytus without some reference to allied documents (see [Apostolical Constitutions]). (a) The most important of these is what is now commonly called the Egyptian Church Order. This is preserved to us in Coptic and Aethiopic versions, of which Achelis, in his synopsis, gives German translations. The subject-matter and arrangement of these canons correspond generally to those of Hippolytus; but many of the details are modified to bring them into accord with a later practice. A new light was thrown on the criticism of this work by Hauler’s discovery (1900) of a Latin version (of which, unfortunately, about half is missing) in the Verona palimpsest, from which he has also given us large Latin fragments of the Didascalia (which underlies books i.-vi. of the Apostolic Constitutions, and which hitherto we have only known from the Syriac). The Latin of the Egyptian Church Order is somewhat more primitive than the Coptic, and approaches more nearly, at some points, to the Canons of Hippolytus. It has a preface which refers to a treatise Concerning Spiritual Gifts, as having immediately preceded it; but neither this nor the Coptic-Aethiopic form has either the introduction or concluding exhortation which is found in the Canons of Hippolytus. (b) The Testament of the Lord is a document in Syriac, of which the opening part had been published by Lagarde, and of which Rahmani (1899) has given us the whole. It professes to contain instructions given by our Lord to the apostles after the resurrection. After an introduction containing apocalyptical matter, it passes on to give elaborate directions for the ordering of the Church, embodying, in a much-expanded form, the Egyptian Church Order, and showing a knowledge of the preface to that document which appears in the Latin version. It cannot be placed with probability earlier than the latter part of the 4th century. (c) The Apostolic Constitutions is a composite document, which probably belongs to the end of the 4th century. Its first six books are an expanded edition of a Didascalia which we have already mentioned: its seventh book similarly expands and modifies the Didachè its eighth book begins by treating of “spiritual gifts,” and then in c. 3 passes on to expand in like manner the Egyptian Church Order. The hand which has wrought up all these documents has been shown to be that of the interpolator of the Ignatian Epistles in the longer Greek recension. (d) The Canons of Basil is the title of an Arabic work, of which a German translation has been given us by Riedel, who thinks that they have come through Coptic from an original Greek book. They embody, in a modified form, considerable portions of the Canons of Hippolytus.

3. We now approach the difficult questions of date and authorship. Much of the material has been quite recently brought to light, and criticism has not had time to investigate and pronounce upon it. Some provisional remarks, therefore, are all that can prudently be made. It seems plain that we have two lines of tradition: (1) The Canons of Hippolytus, followed by the Canons of Basil; (2) the Egyptian Church Order, itself represented (a) by the Latin version, the Testament of the Lord, and the Apostolic Constitutions, which are linked together by the same preface (or portions of it); (b) by the Coptic and Aethiopic versions. Now, the preface of the Latin version points to a time when the canons were embodied in a corpus of similar materials, or, at the least, were preceded by a work on “Spiritual Gifts.” The Canons of Hippolytus have a wholly different preface, and also a long exhortation at the close. The question which criticism must endeavour to answer is, whether the Canons of Hippolytus are the original from which the Egyptian Church Order is derived, or whether an earlier body of canons lies behind them both. At present it is probably wise to assume that the latter is the true explanation. For the Canons of Hippolytus appear to contain contradictory regulations (e.g. cc. 2 and 4 of the presbyters), and also suggest that they have received a considerable supplement (after c. 23). There is, however, no doubt that they present us with a more primitive stage of Church life than we find in the Egyptian Church Order. The mention of sub-deacons (which, after Riedel’s fresh manuscript evidence, cannot now be dismissed as due to interpolation) makes it difficult to assign a date much earlier than the middle of the 3rd century.

The Puritan severity of the canons well accords with the temper of the writer to whom the Arabic title attributes them; and it is to be noted that the exhortation at the close contains a quotation from 2 Peter actually attributed to the apostle, and Hippolytus is perhaps the earliest author who can with certainty be said to have used this epistle. But the general style of Hippolytus, which is simple, straight-forward and strong, is in marked contrast with that of the closing passage of the canons; moreover, his mind, as presented to us in his extant writings, appears to be a much larger one than that of the writer of these canons; it is as difficult to think of Hippolytus as it would be to think of Origen in such a connexion. How, then, are we to account for the attribution? There is evidence to show that Hippolytus was highly reverenced throughout the East: his writings, which were in Greek, were known, but his history was entirely unknown. He was supposed to be “a pupil (γνώριμος) of apostles” (Palladius, 4th century), and the Arabic title calls him “chief of the bishops of Rome,” i.e. archbishop of Rome. It is hard to trust this attribution more than the attribution of a Coptic discourse on the Dormitio Mariae to “Evodius, archbishop of the great city Rome, who was the second after Peter the apostle” (Texts and Studies, iv. 2-44)—Evodius being by tradition first bishop of Antioch. A whole group of books on Church Order bears the name of Clement of Rome; and the attribution of our canons to Hippolytus may be only an example of the same tendency. The fact that Hippolytus wrote a treatise Concerning Spiritual Gifts, and that some such treatise is not only referred to in the Latin preface to the Egyptian Church Order, but is actually found at the beginning of book viii. of the Apostolic Constitutions, introduces an interesting complication; but we cannot here pursue the matter further. Dom Morin’s ingenious attribution of the canons to Dionysius of Alexandria (on the ground of Eusebius, H.E. vi. 46., 5) cannot be accepted in view of the broader church policy which that writer represents. If the Hippolytean authorship be given up, it is probable that Egypt will make the strongest claim to be the locality in which the canons were compiled in their present form.

The authorities of chief practical importance are H. Achelis, Texte u. Unters. vi. 4 (1891); Rahmani, Testamentum Domini (1899); Hauler, Didascaliae Apostolorum (1900); Riedel, Kirchenrechtsquellen des Patriarchats Alexandrien (1900).

(J. A. R.)

HIPPONAX, of Ephesus, Greek iambic poet. Expelled from Ephesus in 540 B.C. by the tyrant Athenagoras, he took refuge in Clazomenae, where he spent the rest of his life in poverty. His deformed figure and malicious disposition exposed him to the caricature of the Chian sculptors Bupalus and Athenis, upon whom he revenged himself by issuing against them a series of satires. They are said to have hanged themselves like Lycambes and his daughters when assailed by Archilochus, the model and predecessor of Hipponax. His coarseness of thought and feeling, his rude vocabulary, his want of grace and taste, and his numerous allusions to matters of merely local interest prevented his becoming a favourite in Attica. He was considered the inventor of parody and of a peculiar metre, the scazon or choliambus, which substitutes a spondee for the final iambus of an iambic senarius, and is an appropriate form for the burlesque character of his poems.

Fragments in Bergk, Poëtae lyrici Graeci; see also B. J. Peltzer, De parodica Graecorum poèsi (1855), containing an account of Hipponax and the fragments.

HIPPOPOTAMUS (“river-horse,” Gr. ἵππος, horse and ποταμός, river), the name of the largest representative of the non-ruminating artiodactyle ungulate mammals, and its living and extinct relatives. The common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), which formerly inhabited all the great rivers of Africa but whose range has now been much restricted, is most likely the behemoth of Scripture, and may very probably in Biblical times have been found in the Jordan valley, since at a still earlier (Pleistocene) epoch it ranged over a large part of Europe. It typifies not only a genus, but likewise a family, Hippopotamidae, distinguished from its relatives the pigs and peccaries, or Suidae, by the following assemblage of characters: Muzzle very broad and rounded. Feet short and broad, with four subequal toes, bearing short rounded hoofs, and all reaching the ground in walking. Incisors not rooted but continuously growing; those of the upper jaw curved and directed downwards; those of the lower straight and procumbent. Canines very large, curved, continuously growing; upper ones directed downwards. Premolars 4⁄4; molars 3⁄3. Stomach complex. No caecum.

In form the hippopotamus is a huge, unwieldy creature, measuring in the largest specimens fully 14 ft. from the extremity of the upper lip to the tip of the tail, while it ordinarily attains a length of 12 ft., with a height of 5 ft. at the shoulders, and a girth round the thickest part of the body almost equal to its length. The small ears are exceedingly flexible, and kept in constant motion when the animal is seeking to catch a distant sound; the eyes are placed high up on the head, but little below the level of the ears; while the gape is wide, and the upper lip thick and bulging so as to cover over even its large tusks when the mouth is closed. The molars, which show trefoil-shaped grinding-surfaces are well adapted for masticating vegetable substances, while the formidable array of long spear-like incisors and curved chisel-edged canines or tusks root up rank grass like an agricultural implement. The legs are short, so that the body is but little elevated above the ground; and the feet, which are small in proportion to the size of the animal, terminate in four short toes each bearing a small hoof. With the exception of a few tufts of hair on the lips, on the sides of the head and neck, and at the extremity of the short robust tail, the skin of the hippopotamus, some portions of which are 2 in. in thickness, is destitute of covering. Hippopotamuses are gregarious animals, living in herds of from 20 to 40 individuals on the banks and in the beds of rivers, in the neighbourhood of which they most readily find appropriate food. This consists chiefly of grass and of aquatic plants, of which these animals consume enormous quantities, the stomach being capable of containing from 5 to 6 bushels. They feed principally by night, remaining in the water during the day, although in districts where they are little disturbed they are less exclusively aquatic. In such remote quarters, they put their heads boldly out of the water to blow, but when rendered suspicious they become exceedingly cautious in this respect, only exposing their nostrils above the water, and even this they prefer doing amid the shelter of water plants. In spite of their enormous size and uncouth form, they are expert swimmers and divers, and can remain easily under the water from five to eight minutes. They walk on the bottoms of rivers, beneath at least 1 ft. of water. At nightfall they come on land to feed; and when, as often happens on the banks of the Nile, they reach cultivated ground, they do immense damage to growing crops, destroying by their ponderous tread even more than they devour. To scare away these unwelcome visitors the natives in such districts are in the habit of kindling fires at night. Although hippopotamuses do not willingly go far from the water on which their existence depends, they occasionally travel long distances by night in search of food, and in spite of their clumsy appearance are able to climb steep banks and precipitous ravines with ease. Of a wounded hippopotamus which Sir S. Baker saw leaving the water and galloping inland, he writes: “I never could have imagined that so unwieldy an animal could have exhibited such speed. No man could have had a chance of escape.” The hippopotamus does not confine itself to rivers and lakes, but has been known to prefer the waters of the ocean as its home during the day. Of a mild and inoffensive disposition, it seeks to avoid collision with man; when wounded, however, or in defence of its young, it exhibits great ferocity, and native canoes are capsized and occasionally demolished by its infuriated attacks; the bellowing grunt then becoming loud enough to be heard a mile away. As among elephants, so also among hippopotamuses there are “rogues”—old bulls which have become soured in solitude, and are at all times dangerous. Assuming the offensive on every occasion, they attack all and sundry without shadow of provocation; and the natives avoid their haunts, which are usually well known.

The only other living species is the pygmy hippopotamus, H. (Choeropsis) liberiensis, of West Africa, an animal not larger than a clumsily made pig of full dimensions, and characterized by having generally one (in place of two) pair of incisors. It is much less aquatic than its giant relative, having, in fact, the habits of a pig.

A small extinct species (H. lemerlei) inhabited Madagascar at a comparatively recent date; while other dwarf kinds were natives of Crete (H. minutus) and Malta and Sicily (H. pentlandi) during the Pleistocene. A large form of the ordinary species (H. amphibius major) was distributed over Europe as far north as Yorkshire at the same epoch; while an allied species (H. palaeindicus) inhabited Pleistocene India. Contemporary with the latter was, however, a species (H. namadicus) with three pairs of incisors; and “hexaprotodont” hippopotamuses are also characteristic of the Pliocene of India and Burma (H. sivalensis and H. iravadicus), and of Algeria, Egypt and southern Europe (H. hipponensis).

For the ancestral genera of the hippopotamus line, see [Artiodactyla].

(R. L.*)

HIPPURIC ACID (Gr. ἵππος, horse, οὖρον, urine), benzoyl glycocoll or benzoyl amidoacetic acid, C9H9NO3 or C6H5CO·NH·CH2·CO2H, an organic acid found in the urine of horses and other herbivorae. It is excreted when many aromatic compounds, such as benzoic acid and toluene, are taken internally. J. v. Liebig in 1829 showed that it differed from benzoic acid, and in 1839 determined its constitution, while in 1853 V. Dessaignes (Ann. 87, p. 325) synthesized it by acting with benzoyl chloride on zinc glycocollide. It is also formed by heating benzoic anhydride with glycocoll (Th. Curtius, Ber., 1884, 17, p. 1662), and by heating benzamide with monochloracetic acid. It crystallizes in rhombic prisms which are readily soluble in hot water, melt at 187° C. and decompose at about 240° C. It is readily hydrolysed by hot caustic alkalis to benzoic acid and glycocoll. Nitrous acid converts it into benzoyl glycollic acid, C6H5CO·O·CH2·CO2H. Its ethyl ester reacts with hydrazine to form hippuryl hydrazine, C6H5CO·NH·CH2·CO·NH·NH2, which was used by Curtius for the preparation of azoimide (q.v.).

HIPURNIAS, a tribe of South American Indians, 2000 or 3000 in number, living on the river Purus, western Brazil. Their houses are long, low and narrow: the side walls and roof are one, poles being fixed in the ground and then bent together so as to meet and form a pointed arch for the cross-sections. They use small bark canoes. Their chief weapons are poisoned arrows. They have a native god called Guintiniri.

HIRA, the capital of an Arabian kingdom, founded in the 2nd century A.D., on the western edge of Irak, was situated at 32° N., 44° 20′ E., about 4 m. S.E. of modern Nejef, by the Sa’ade canal, on the shore of the Bahr Nejef or Assyrium Stagnum. Its kings governed the western shore of the lower Euphrates and of the Persian Gulf, their kingdom extending inland to the confines of the Nejd. This Lakhmid kingdom was more or less dependent, during the four centuries of its existence, on the Sassanian empire, to which it formed a sort of buffer state towards Arabia. After the battle of Kadesiya and the founding of Kufa by the Arabs, Hira lost its importance and fell into decay. The ruin mounds covering the ancient site, while extensive, are insignificant in appearance and give no indications of the existence of important buildings.

HIRADO, an island belonging to Japan, 19½ m. long and 6 m. wide, lying off the west coast of the province of Hizen, Kiushiu, in 33° 15′ N. and 129° 25′ E. It is celebrated as the site of the original Dutch factory—often erroneously written Firando—and as the place where one of the finest blue-and-white porcelains of Japan (Hiradoyaki) was produced in the 17th and 18th centuries. The kilns are still active.

HIRE-PURCHASE AGREEMENT, in the law of contract, a form of bailment of goods, on credit, which has extended very considerably of late years. Originally applied to the sale of the more expensive kinds of goods, such as pianos and articles of furniture, the hire-purchase agreement has now been extended to almost every description. The agreement is usually in writing, with a stipulation that the payments to purchase shall be by weekly, monthly or other instalments. The agreement is virtually one to purchase, but in order that the vendor may be able to recover the goods at any time on non-payment of an instalment, it is treated as an agreement to let and hire, with a provision that when the last instalment has been paid the goods shall become the property of the hirer. A clause provides that in case of default of any instalment, or breach of any part of the agreement, all previous payments shall be forfeited to the lender, who can forcibly recover the goods. Such agreements, therefore, do not pass the property in the goods, which remains in the lender until all the instalments have been paid. But the terms of the agreement may sometimes purposely obscure the nature of the transaction between the parties, where, for example, the hire-purchase is merely to create a security for money. In such a case a judge will look to the true nature of the transaction. If it is not a real letting and hiring, the agreement will require registration under the Bills of Sale Acts. If the agreement contains words to the effect that a person has “bought or agreed to buy” goods, the transaction comes under the Factors Act 1889, and the person in possession of the goods may dispose of them and give a good title. The doctrine of reputed ownership, by which a bankrupt is deemed the reputed owner of goods in his apparent possession, has been somewhat modified by trade customs, in accordance with which property is frequently let out on the hire-purchase system (see [Bankruptcy]).

HIRING (from O. Eng. hýrian, a word common to many Teutonic languages cf. Ger. heuern, Dutch huren, &c.), in law, a contract by which one man grants the use of a thing to another in return for a certain price. It corresponds to the locatio-conductio of Roman law. That contract was either a letting of a thing (locatio-conductio rei) or of labour (locatio operarum). The distinguishing feature of the contract was the price. Thus the contracts of mutuum, commodatum, depositum and mandatum, which are all gratuitous contracts, become, if a price is fixed, cases of locatio-conductio. In modern English law the term can scarcely be said to be used in a strictly technical sense. The contracts which the Roman law grouped together under the head of locatio-conductio—such as those of landlord and tenant, master and servant, &c.—are not in English law treated as cases of hiring but as independent varieties of contract. Neither in law books nor in ordinary discourse could a tenant farmer be said to hire his land. Hiring would generally be applied to contracts in which the services of a man or the use of a thing are engaged for a short time.

Hiring Fairs, or Statute Fairs, still held in Wales and some parts of England, were formerly an annual fixture in every important country town. These fairs served to bring together masters and servants. The men and maids seeking work stood in rows, the males together and the females together, while masters and mistresses walked down the lines and selected those who suited them. Originally these hiring-fairs were always held on Martinmas Day (11th of November). Now they are held on different dates in different towns, usually in October or November. In Cumberland the men seeking work stood with straws in their mouths. In Lincolnshire the bargain between employer and employed was closed by the giving of the “fasten-penny,” the earnest money, usually a shilling, which “fastened” the contract for a twelvemonth. Some few days after the Statute Fair it was customary to hold a second called a Mop Fair or Runaway Mop. “Mop” (from Lat. mappa, napkin, or small cloth) meant in Old English a tuft or tassel, and the fair was so called, it is suggested, in allusion to tufts or badges worn by those seeking employment. Thus the carter wore whipcord on his hat, the cowherd a tuft of cow’s hair, and so on. Another possible explanation would be to take the word “mop” in its old provincial slang sense of “a fool,” mop fair being the fools’ fair, a sort of last chance offered to those who were too dull or slovenly-looking to be hired at the statute fair. Perhaps “runaway” suggests the idea of those absent through drunkenness, or those who simply feared to face the ordeal of the larger hiring and so ran away.

HIROSAKI, a town of Japan in the province of Michmoku or Rikuchiu, north Nippon, 22 m. S.W. of Aomori by rail. Pop. about 37,000. The fine isolated cone of Iwakisan, a mountain of pilgrimage, rises to the west. Hirosaki is a very old place, formerly residence of a great daimio (or daimyo) and capital of a vast principality, and still the seat of a high court with jurisdiction over the surrounding districts of Aomori and Akita. Like most places in north Nippon, it is built with continuous verandas extending from house to house, and affording a promenade completely sheltered from the snows of winter. Apples of fine flavour grow in the district, which also enjoys some reputation for its peculiar green lacquer-ware.

HIROSHIGE (1797-1858), Japanese artist, was one of the principal members of that branch of the Ukiyo-ye or Popular School of Painting in Japan, a school which chiefly made colour-prints. His family name was Andō Tokitarō; that under which he is known having been, in accordance with Japanese practice, adopted by him in recognition of the fact that he was a pupil of Toyohiro. The earliest reference to him is in the account given by an inhabitant of the Lu-chu islands of a visit to Japan; where a sketch of a procession drawn with great skill by Hiroshige at the age of ten years only is mentioned as one of the remarkable sights seen. At the age of fifteen he applied unsuccessfully to be admitted to the studio of the elder Toyokuni; but was eventually received by Toyohiro. On the death of the latter in 1828, he began to practise on his own account, but finding small encouragement at Yedo (Tōkyō) he removed to Kiōto, where he published a set of landscapes. He soon returned to Yedo, where his work soon became popular, and was imitated by other artists. He died in that city on the 6th day of the 9th month of the year, Ansei 5th, at the age of sixty-two, and was buried at Asakusa. One of his pupils, Hironobu, received from him the name of Hiroshige II. and another, Ando Tokubei, that of Hiroshige III. All three were closely associated with the work signed with the name of the master. Hiroshige II. some time after the year 1863 fell into disgrace and was compelled to leave Yedo for Nagasaki, where he died; Hiroshige III. then called himself Hiroshige II. He died in 1896. The earlier prints by these artists, whose work can hardly be separated, are of extraordinary merit. They applied the process of colour block printing to the purposes of depicting landscape, with a breadth, skill and suitability of convention that has been equalled only by Hokusai in Japan, and by no European. Most of their subjects were derived from the neighbourhood of Yedo, or were scenes on the old high road—the Tokaidō—that ran from that city to Kiōto. The two elder of the name were competent painters, and pictures and drawings by them are occasionally to be met with.

See E. F. Strange, “Japanese Colour-prints” (Victoria and Albert Museum Handbook, 1904).

(E. F. S.)

HIROSHIMA, a city and seaport of Japan, capital of the government of its name in central Nippon. Pop. (1903) 113,545. It is very beautifully situated on a small plain surrounded by hills, the bay being studded with islands. In its general aspect it resembles Osaka, from which it is 190 m. W. by rail, and next to that place and Hiogo it is the most important commercial centre on the Inland Sea. The government has an area of about 3000 sq. m., with a population of about 1,500,000. Hiroshima is famous all over Japan owing to its association with the neighbouring islet of Itaku-Shima, “Island of Light,” which is dedicated to the goddess Bentin and regarded as one of the three wonders of Japan. The chief temple dates from the year 587, and the island, which is inhabited largely by priests and their attendants, is annually visited by thousands of pilgrims. But the hallowed soil is never tilled, so that all provisions have to be brought from the surrounding districts.

HIRPINI (from an Oscan or Sabine stem hirpo-, “wolf”), an inland Samnite tribe in the south of Italy, whose territory was bounded by that of the Lucani on the S., the Campani on the S.W., the Appuli (Apuli) and Frentani on the E. and N.E. On the N. we find them, politically speaking, identified with the Pentri and Caracēni, and with them constituting the Samnite alliance in the wars of the 4th century B.C. (see [Samnites]). The Roman policy of separation cut them off from these allies by the foundation of Beneventum in 268 B.C., and henceforward they are a separate unit; they joined Hannibal in 216 B.C., and retained their independence until, after joining in the Social war, which in their part of Italy can hardly be said to have ceased till the final defeat of the Samnites by Sulla in 83 B.C., they received the Roman franchise. Of their Oscan speech, besides the evidence of their place-names, only a few fragments survive (R. S. Conway, The Italic Dialects, pp. 170 ff.; and for hirpo-, ib. p. 200). In the ethnology of Italy the Hirpini appear from one point of view as the purest type of Safine stock, namely, that in which the proportion of ethnica formed with the suffix -no- is highest, thirty-three out of thirty-six tribal or municipal epithets being formed thereby (e.g. Caudini, Compsani) and only one with the suffix -ti- (Abellinates), where it is clearly secondary. On the significance of this see [Sabini].

(R. S. C.)

HIRSAU (formerly Hirschau), a village of Germany, in the kingdom of Württemberg, on the Nagold and the Pforzheim-Horb railway, 2 m. N. of Calw. Pop. 800. Hirsau has some small manufactures, but it owes its origin and historical interest to its former Benedictine monastery, Monasterium Hirsaugiense, at one period one of the most famous in Europe. Its picturesque ruins, of which only the chapel with the library hall are still in good preservation, testify to the pristine grandeur of the establishment. It was founded about 830 by Count Erlafried of Calw, at the instigation of his son, Bishop Notting of Vercelli, who enriched it with, among other treasures, the body of St Aurelius. Its first occupants (838) were a colony of fifteen monks from Fulda, disciples of Hrabanus Maurus and Walafrid Strabo, headed by the abbot Liudebert. During about a century and a half, under the fostering care of the counts of Calw, it enjoyed great prosperity, and became an important seat of learning; but towards the end of the 10th century the ravages of the pestilence combined with the rapacity of its patrons, and the selfishness and immorality of its inmates, to bring it to the lowest ebb. After it had been desolate and in ruins for upwards of sixty years it was rebuilt in 1059, and under Abbot William—Wilhelm von Hirsau—abbot from 1069 to 1091, it more than regained its former splendour. By his Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, a new religious order, the Ordo Hirsaugiensis, was formed, the rule of which was afterwards adopted by many monastic establishments throughout Germany, such as those of Blaubeuren, Erfurt and Schaffhausen. The friend and correspondent of Pope Gregory VII., and of Anselm of Canterbury, Abbot William took active part in the politico-ecclesiastical controversies of his time; while a treatise from his pen, De musica et tonis, as well as the Philosophicarum et astronomicarum institutionum libri iii., bears witness to his interest in science and philosophy. About the end of the 12th century the material and moral welfare of Hirsau was again very perceptibly on the decline; and it never afterwards again rose into importance. In consequence of the Reformation it was secularized in 1558; in 1692 it was laid in ruins by the French. The Chronicon Hirsaugiense, or, as in the later edition it is called, Annales Hirsaugienses of Abbot Trithemius (Basel, 1559; St Gall, 1690), is, although containing much that is merely legendary, an important source of information, not only on the affairs of this monastery, but also on the early history of Germany. The Codex Hirsaugiensis was edited by A. F. Gfrörer and printed at Stuttgart in 1843.

See Steck, Das Kloster Hirschau (1844); Helmsdörfer, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Abts Wilhelm von Hirschau (Göttingen, 1874); Weizsäcker, Führer durch die Geschichte des Klosters Hirschau (Stuttgart, 1898); Süssmann, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Klosters Hirschau (Halle, 1903); Giseke, Die Hirschauer während des Investiturstreits (Gotha, 1883); C. H. Klaiber, Das Kloster Hirschau (Tübingen, 1886); and Baer, Die Hirsauer Bauschule (Freiburg, 1897).

HIRSCH, MAURICE DE, Baron Hirsch auf Gereuth, in the baronage of Bavaria (1831-1896), capitalist and philanthropist (German by birth, Austro-Hungarian by domicile), was born at Munich, 9th December 1831. His grandfather, the first Jewish landowner in Bavaria, was ennobled with the prädikat “auf Gereuth” in 1818; his father, who was banker to the Bavarian king, was created a baron in 1869. The family for generations has occupied a prominent position in the German Jewish community. At the age of thirteen young Hirsch was sent to Brussels to school, but when seventeen years old he went into business. In 1855 he became associated with the banking house of Bischoffsheim & Goldschmidt, of Brussels, London and Paris. He amassed a large fortune, which he increased by purchasing and working railway concessions in Austria, Turkey and the Balkans, and by speculations in sugar and copper. While living in great splendour in Paris and London and on his estates in Hungary, he devoted much of his time to schemes for the relief of his Hebrew co-religionists in lands where they were persecuted and oppressed. He took a deep interest in the educational work of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and on two occasions presented the society with gifts of a million francs. For some years he regularly paid the deficits in the accounts of the Alliance, amounting to several thousand pounds a year. In 1889 he capitalized his donations and presented the society with securities producing an annual income of £16,000. On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the emperor Francis Joseph’s accession to the Austrian throne he gave £500,000 for the establishment of primary and technical schools in Galicia and the Bukowina. The greatest charitable enterprise on which he embarked was in connexion with the persecution of the Jews in Russia (see [Anti-Semitism]). He gave £10,000 to the funds raised for the repatriation of the refugees in 1882, but, feeling that this was a very lame conclusion to the efforts made in western Europe for the relief of the Russian Jews, he offered the Russian Government £2,000,000 for the endowment of a system of secular education to be established in the Jewish pale of settlement. The Russian Government was willing to accept the money, but declined to allow any foreigner to be concerned in its control or administration. Thereupon Baron de Hirsch resolved to devote the money to an emigration and colonization scheme which should afford the persecuted Jews opportunities of establishing themselves in agricultural colonies outside Russia. He founded the Jewish Colonization Association as an English society, with a capital of £2,000,000, and in 1892 he presented to it a further sum of £7,000,000. On the death of his wife in 1899 the capital was increased to £11,000,000, of which £1,250,000 went to the Treasury, after some litigation, in death duties. This enormous fund, which is probably the greatest charitable trust in the world, is now managed by delegates of certain Jewish societies, chiefly the Anglo-Jewish Association of London and the Alliance Israélite Universelle of Paris, among whom the shares in the association have been divided. The association, which is prohibited from working for profit, possesses large colonies in South America, Canada and Asia Minor. In addition to its vast agricultural work it has a gigantic and complex machinery for dealing with the whole problem of Jewish persecution, including emigration and distributing agencies, technical schools, co-operative factories, savings and loan banks and model dwellings in the congested Russian jewries. It also subventions and assists a large number of societies all over the world whose work is connected with the relief and rehabilitation of Jewish refugees. Besides this great organization, Baron de Hirsch founded in 1891 a benevolent trust in the United States for the benefit of Jewish immigrants, which he endowed with £493,000. His minor charities were on a princely scale, and during his residence in London he distributed over £100,000 among the local hospitals. It was in this manner that he disposed of the whole gross proceeds derived from his successes on the English turf, of which he was a lavish patron. He raced, as he said himself, “for the London hospitals,” and in 1892, when his filly, La Flêche, won the Oaks, St Leger and One Thousand Guineas, his donations from this source amounted to about £40,000. Baron de Hirsch married on 28th June 1855 Clara, daughter of Senator Bischoffsheim of Brussels (b. 1833), by whom he had a son and daughter, both of whom predeceased him. He died at Ogyalla, near Komorn, in Hungary, 21st April 1896. The baroness, who seconded her husband’s charitable work with great munificence—their total benefactions have been estimated at £18,000,000,—died at Paris on the 1st of April 1899.

For details of Baron de Hirsch’s chief charities see the annual reports of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and of the “Administration Centrale” of the Jewish Colonization Association.

(L. W.)

HIRSCH, SAMSON RAPHAEL (1808-1888), Jewish theologian, was born in Hamburg in 1808 and died at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1888. He opposed the reform tendency of Geiger (q.v.), and presented Jewish orthodoxy in a new and attractive light. His philosophical conception of tradition, associated as it was with conservatism in ritual practice, created what is often known as the Frankfort “Neo-Orthodoxy.” Hirsch exercised a profound influence on the Synagogue and undoubtedly stemmed the tide of liberalism. His famous Nineteen Letters (1836), with which the Neo-Orthodoxy began, were translated into English by Drachmann (New York, 1899). Other works by Hirsch were Horeb, and commentaries on the Pentateuch and Psalms. These are marked by much originality, but their exegesis is fanciful. Three volumes of his essays have been published (1902-1908); these were collected as Gesammelte Schriften from his periodical Jeschurun.

For Hirsch’s religious philosophy see S. A. Hirsch, A Book of Essays (London, 1905).

(I. A.)

HIRSCHBERG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia, beautifully situated at the confluence of the Bober and Zacken, 1120 ft. above the sea-level, 48 m. S.E. of Görlitz, on the railway to Glatz, with branches to Grünthal and Schmiedeberg. Pop. (1905) 19,317. It is surrounded by pleasant promenades occupying the site of its former fortifications. It possesses an Evangelical church, the church of the Holy Cross, one of the six Gnaden Kirchen for the Silesian Protestants stipulated for in the agreement at Altranstädt between Charles XII. of Sweden and the emperor Joseph I. in 1707, four Roman Catholic churches, one of which dates from the 14th century, a synagogue, several schools, an orphanage and an asylum. The town is the principal emporium of commerce in the Silesian mountains, and its industries include the carding and spinning of wool, and the manufacture of linen and cotton fabrics, yarn, artificial flowers, paper, cement, porcelain, sealing-wax, blacking, chemicals and cider. There is also a lively trade in corn, wine and agricultural produce. The town is celebrated for its romantic surroundings, including the Cavalierberg, from which there is a splendid view, the Hausberg, the Helicon, crowned by a small Doric temple, the Kreuzberg, with walks commanding beautiful views, and the Sattler ravine, over which there is a railway viaduct. Hirschberg was in existence in the 11th century, and obtained town rights in 1108 from Duke Boleslaus of Poland. It withstood a siege by the Hussites in 1427, and an attack of the imperial troops in 1640. The foundation of its prosperity was laid in the 16th century by the introduction of the manufacture of linen and veils.

Hirschberg is also the name of a town of Thuringia on the Saale with manufactures of leather and knives. Pop. 2000.

HIRSON, a town of northern France in the department of Aisne, 35 m. by rail N.E. of Laon, on the Oise. Pop. (1906) 8335. It occupies an important strategic position close to the point of intersection of several railway lines, and not far from the Belgian frontier. For its defence there are a permanent fort and two batteries, near the railway junction. The town carries on the manufacture of glass bottles, tiles, iron and tin goods, wool-spinning and brewing.

HIRTIUS, AULUS (c. 90-43 B.C.), Roman historian and statesman. He was with Julius Caesar as legate in Gaul, but after the civil war broke out in 49 he seems to have remained in Rome to protect Caesar’s interests. He was also a personal friend of Cicero. He was nominated with C. Vibius Pansa by Caesar for the consulship of 43; and after the dictator’s assassination in March 44, he and his colleague supported the senatorial party against M. Antonius, with whom Hirtius had at first sided. The consuls set out for Mutina, where Antonius was besieging Decimus Brutus. On the 15th of April, Pansa was attacked by Antonius at Forum Gallorum, about 8 m. from Mutina, and lost his life in the engagement. Hirtius, however, compelled Antonius to retire on Mutina, where another battle took place on the 25th (or 27th) of April, in which Hirtius was slain. Of the continuations of Caesar’s Commentaries—the eighth book of the Gallic war, the history of the Alexandrian, African and Spanish wars—the first is generally allowed to be by Hirtius; the Alexandrian war is perhaps by him (or Oppius); the last two are supposed to have been written at his request, by persons who had taken part in the events described, with a view to subsequent revision and incorporation in his proposed work on military commanders. The language of Hirtius is good, but his style is monotonous and lacks vigour.

Hirtius and the other continuators of Caesar are discussed in M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Literatur, i.; also R. Schneider, Bellum Africanum (1905). For the history of the period see under [Antonius]; Cicero’s Letters (ed. Tyrrell and Purser); G. Boissier, Cicero and his Friends (Eng. trans., 1897).

HISHĀM IBN AL-KALBĪ [Abū-l Mundhir Hishām ibn Maḥommed ibn us-Sā’b ul-Kalb] (d. c. 819), Arabic historian, was born in Kufa, but spent much of his life in Bagdad. Like his father, on whose authority he relied largely, he collected information about the genealogies and history of the ancient Arabs. According to the Fihrist (see [Nadīm]) he wrote 140 works. As independent works they have almost entirely ceased to exist, but his account of the genealogies of the Arabs is continually quoted in the Kitāb ul-Aghāni.

Large extracts from another of his works, the Kitāb ul-Asnām, are contained in the Khizānat ul-Adab (iii. 242-246) and in the geography of Yāqūt (q.v.). These latter have been translated with comments by J. Wellhausen in his Reste des arabischen Heidentums (2nd ed., Berlin, 1897).

(G. W. T.)

HISPELLUM (mod. Spello, q.v.), an ancient town of Umbria, Italy, 3 m. N. of Fulginiae, on the road between it and Perusia, 1030 ft. above sea-level. It does not appear to be mentioned before the time of Augustus, who founded a colony there (Colonia Iulia Hispellum) and extended its territory to the springs of the Clitumnus, which had originally belonged to the territory of Mevania. It received the name of Flavia Constans by a rescript of the emperor Constantine, a copy of which on a marble tablet is still preserved at Spello. The gate by which the town is entered is ancient and has three portrait statues above it; two other gates and a part of the city wall, built of rectangular blocks of local limestone, may still be seen, as also the ruins of what is possibly a triumphal arch (attributed to Augustus) and an amphitheatre, and perhaps of a theatre, close to the modern high-road, outside the town.

(T. As.)

HISSAR, a district in Central Asia, lying between 66° 30′ and 70° E. and 39° 15′ and 37° N. and dependent on the amir of Bokhara. It forms that part of the basin of the Amu-darya or Oxus which lies on the north side of the river, opposite the Afghan province of Balkh. The western prolongation of the Tian-shan, which divides the basin of the Zarafshan from that of the upper Amu, after rising to a height of 12,300 ft., bifurcates in 67° 45′ E. The main chain, the southern arm of this bifurcation, designated the Hissar range, but sometimes called also Koh-i-tau, forms the N. and N.W. boundaries of Hissar. On the W. it is wholly bounded by the desert; the Amu limits it on the S. and S.E.; and Karateghin and Darvaz complete the boundary on the E. Until 1875 it was one of the least known tracts of Central Asia. Hissar is traversed from north to south by four tributaries of the Amu, viz. the Surkhab or Vakhsh, Kafirnihan, Surkhan and Shirabad-darya, which descend from the snowy mountains to the north and form a series of fertile valleys, disposed in a fan-shape, within which lie the principal towns. In the N.W. boundary range between Khuzar and Derbent is situated the defile formerly called the Iron Gate (Caspian Gates, Bāb-al-Hadīd, Dar Ahanīn and in Chinese T’ie-mēn-kuan) but now styled Buzghol-khana or the Goat-house. It was also called Kohluga, said to be a Mongol word meaning barrier. This pass is described as a deep but narrow chasm in a transverse range, whose rocks overhang and threaten to choke the tortuous and gloomy corridor (in places but five paces wide) which affords the only exit from the valley. In ancient times it was a vantage point of much importance and commanded one of the chief routes between Turkestan and India. Hsüan Tsang, the Chinese traveller, who passed through it in the 7th century, states that there were then two folding doors or gates, cased with iron and hung with bells, placed across the pass. Clavijo, the Spanish ambassador to the court of Timur, heard of this when he passed through the defile nearly 800 years later, but the gates had then disappeared.

The Surkhan valley is highly cultivated, especially in its upper portion. It supplies Bokhara with corn and sheep, but its chief products are rice and flax. The town of Hissar (pop. 15,000) commands the entrance into the fertile valleys of the Surkhan and Kafirnihan, just as Kabadian at the southern end of the latter defends them from the south. Hissar was long famous for its damascened swords and its silk goods. Kulab produces wheat in abundance, and gold is brought thither from the surrounding districts. Kabadian is a large, silk-producing town, and is surrounded with rice-fields.

The population consists principally of Uzbegs and Tajiks, the former predominating and gradually pushing the Tajiks into the hills. On the banks of the Amu there are Turkomans who work the ferries, drive sheep and accompany caravans. Lyuli (gipsies), Jews, Hindus and Afghans are other elements of the population. The climate of the valleys of Hissar and Kulab is pleasant, as they are protected by mountains to the north and open towards the south. They produce all the cereals and garden plants indigenous to Central Asia. Cotton is grown in the district of Shirabad; and cotton, wheat, flax, sheep and rock-salt are all exported.

History.—This country was anciently part of the Persian empire of the Achaemenidae, and probably afterwards of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom, and then subject to the invading Asiatic tribes who broke up that kingdom, e.g. the Yue-chi. It was afterwards conquered by the Ephthalites or White Huns, who were subdued by the Turks in the early part of the 7th century. It then became subject successively to the Mahommedan invaders from Persia, and after to the Mongol dynasty of Jenghiz Khan, and to Timur and his successors. It subsequently became a cluster of Uzbeg states and was annexed by the amir of Bokhara (q.v.) in 1869-1870, soon after the Russian occupation of Samarkand.

(J. T. Be.; C. El.)

HISSAR, a town and district of British India, in the Delhi division of the Punjab. The town is situated on the Rajputana railway and the Western Jumna canal, 102 m. W.N.W. of Delhi. Pop. (1901) 17,647. It was founded in 1356 by the emperor Feroz Shah, who constructed the canal to supply it with water; but this fell into decay during the 18th century, owing to the constant inroads of marauders. Hissar was almost completely depopulated during the famine of 1783, but was afterwards occupied by the famous Irish adventurer George Thomas, who built a fort and collected inhabitants. It is now chiefly known for its cattle and horse fairs, and has a cotton factory.

The District comprises an area of 5217 sq. m. It forms the western border district of the great Bikanir desert, and consists for the most part of sandy plains dotted with shrub and brushwood, and broken by undulations towards the south, which rise into hills of rock like islands out of a sea of sand. The Ghaggar is its only river, whose supply is uncertain, depending much on the fall of rain in the lower Himalayas; its overflow in times of heavy rain is caught by jhils, which dry up in the hot season. The Western Jumna canal crosses the district from east to west, irrigating many villages. The soil is in places hard and clayey, and difficult to till; but when sufficiently irrigated it is highly productive. Old mosques and other buildings exist in parts of the district. Hissar produces a breed of large milk-white oxen, which are in great request for the carriages of natives. The district has always been subject to famine. The first calamity of this kind of which there is authentic record was in 1783; and Hissar has suffered severely in more recent famines. Its population in 1901 was 781,717, showing practically no increase in the decade, whereas in the previous decade there had been an increase of 15%. The climate is very dry, hot westerly winds blowing from the middle of March till July. Cotton weaving, ginning and pressing are carried on. The district is served by the Rajputana-Malwa, the Southern Punjab and the Jodhpur-Bikanir railways. The chief trading centres are Bhiwani, Hansi, Hissar and Sirsa.

Before the Mahommedan conquest, the semi-desert tract of which Hissar district now forms part was the retreat of Chauhan Rajputs. Towards the end of the 18th century the Bhattis of Bhattiana gained ascendancy after bloody struggles. To complete the ruin brought on by these conflicts, nature lent her aid in the great famine of 1783. Hissar passed nominally to the British in 1803, but they could not enforce order till 1810. Early in the mutiny of 1857 Hissar was wholly lost for a time to British rule, and all Europeans were either murdered or compelled to fly. The Bhattis rose under their hereditary chiefs, and the majority of the Mahommedan population followed their example. Before Delhi had been recovered, the rebels were utterly routed.

HISTIAEUS (d. 494 B.C.), tyrant of Miletus under the Persian king Darius Hystaspis. According to Herodotus he rendered great service to Darius while he was campaigning in Scythia by persuading his fellow-despots not to destroy the bridge over the Danube by which the Persians must return. Choosing his own reward for this service, he became possessor of territory near Myrcinus (afterwards Amphipolis), rich in timber and minerals. The success of his enterprise led to his being invited to Susa, where in the midst of every kind of honour he was virtually a prisoner of Darius, who had reason to dread his growing power in Ionia. During this period the Greek cities were left under native despots supported by Persia, Aristagoras, son-in-law of Histiaeus, being ruler of Miletus in his stead. This prince, having failed against Naxos in a joint expedition with the satrap Artaphernes, began to stir up the Ionians to revolt, and this result was brought to pass, according to Herodotus, by a secret message from Histiaeus. The revolt assumed a formidable character and Histiaeus persuaded Darius that he alone could quell it. He was allowed to leave Susa, but on his arrival at the coast found himself suspected by the satrap, and was ultimately driven to establish himself (Herodotus says as a pirate; more probably in charge of the Bosporus route) at Byzantium. After the total failure of the revolt at the battle of Lade, he made various attempts to re-establish himself, but was captured by the Persian Harpagus and crucified by Artaphernes at Sardis. His head was embalmed and sent to Darius, who gave it honourable burial. The theory of Herodotus that the Ionian revolt was caused by the single message of Histiaeus is incredible; there is evidence to show that the Ionians had been meditating since about 512 a patriotic revolt against the Persian domination and the “tyrants” on whom it rested (see Grote, Hist. of Greece, ed. 1907, especially p. 122 note; art. [Ionia], and authorities; also S. Heinlein in Klio, 1909, pp. 341-351).

HISTOLOGY (Gr. ἱστός, web, tissue, properly the web-beam of the loom, from ἱστάναι, to make to stand), the science which deals with the structure of the tissues of plants and animals (see [Cytology]).

HISTORY. The word “history” is used in two senses. It may mean either the record of events, or events themselves. Originally (see below) limited to inquiry and statement, it was only in comparatively modern times that the meaning of the word was extended to include the phenomena which form or might form their subject. It was perhaps by a somewhat careless transference of ideas that this extension was brought about. Now indeed it is the commoner meaning. We speak of the “history of England” without reference to any literary narrative. We term kings and statesmen the “makers of history,” and sometimes say that the historian only records the history which they make. History in this connexion is obviously not the record, but the thing to be recorded. It is unfortunate that such a double meaning of the word should have grown up, for it is productive of not a little confusion of thought.

History in the wider sense is all that has happened, not merely all the phenomena of human life, but those of the natural world as well. It includes everything that undergoes change; and as modern science has shown that there is nothing absolutely static, therefore the whole universe, and every part of it, has its history. The discovery of ether brought with it a reconstruction of our ideas of the physical universe, transferring the emphasis from the mathematical expression of static relationships to a dynamic conception of a universe in constant transformation; matter in equipoise became energy in gradual readjustment. Solids are solids no longer. The universe is in motion in every particle of every part; rock and metal merely a transition stage between crystallization and dissolution. This idea of universal activity has in a sense made physics itself a branch of history. It is the same with the other sciences—especially the biological division, where the doctrine of evolution has induced an attitude of mind which is distinctly historical.

But the tendency to look at things historically is not merely the attitude of men of science. Our outlook upon life differs in just this particular from that of preceding ages. We recognize the unstable nature of our whole social fabric, and are therefore more and more capable of transforming it. Our institutions are no longer held to be inevitable and immutable creations. We do not attempt to fit them to absolute formulae, but continually adapt them to a changing environment. Even modern architecture, notably in America, reflects the consciousness of change. The permanent character of ancient or medieval buildings was fitted only to a society dominated by static ideals. Now the architect builds, not for all time, but for a set of conditions which will inevitably cease in the not distant future. Thus our whole society not only bears the marks of its evolution, but shows its growing consciousness of the fact in the most evident of its arts. In literature, philosophy and political science, there is the same historical trend. Criticism no longer judges by absolute standards; it applies the standards of the author’s own environment. We no longer condemn Shakespeare for having violated the ancient dramatic laws, nor Voltaire for having objected to the violations. Each age has its own expression, and in judging each we enter the field of history. In ethics, again, the revolt against absolute standards limits us to the relative, and morals are investigated on the basis of history, as largely conditioned by economic environment and the growth of intellectual freedom. Revelation no longer appeals to scientific minds as a source of knowledge. Experience on the other hand is history. As for political science, we do not regard the national state as that ultimate and final product which men once saw in the Roman Empire. It has hardly come into being before forces are evident which aim at its destruction. Internationalism has gained ground in Europe in recent years; and Socialism itself, which is based upon a distinct interpretation of history, is regarded by its followers as merely a stage in human progress, like those which have gone before it. It is evident that Freeman’s definition of history as “past politics” is miserably inadequate. Political events are mere externals. History enters into every phase of activity, and the economic forces which urge society along are as much its subject as the political result.

In short the historical spirit of the age has invaded every field. The world-picture presented in this encyclopaedia is that of a dynamic universe, of phenomena in process of ceaseless change. Owing to this insistent change all things which happen, or seem to happen, are history in the broader sense of the word. The encyclopaedia itself is a history of them in the stricter sense,—the description and record of this universal process. This narrower meaning is the subject of the rest of this article.

The word “history” comes from the Gr. ἱστορία, which was used by the Ionians in the 6th century B.C. for the search for knowledge in the widest sense. It meant inquiry, investigation, not narrative. It was not until two centuries later that the historikos, the reciter of stories, superseded the historeōn (ἱστορέων), the seeker after knowledge. Thus history began as a branch of scientific research,—much the same as what the Athenians later termed philosophy. Herodotus himself was as much a scientific explorer as a reciter of narrative, and his life-long investigation was historiē in his Ionian speech. Yet it was Herodotus himself who first hinted at the new use of the word, applied merely to the details accumulated during a long search for knowledge. It is not until Aristotle, however, that we have it definitely applied to the literary product instead of the inquiry which precedes it. From Aristotle to modern times, history (Lat. historia) has been a form of literature. It is only in the scientific environment of to-day that we recognize once more, with those earliest of the forerunners of Herodotus, that history involves two distinct operations, one of which, investigation, is in the field of science, while the other, the literary presentation, is in the field of art.

The history of history itself is therefore two-fold. History as art flourishes with the arts. It calls upon the imagination and the literary gifts of expression. Its history does not run parallel with the scientific side, but rather varies in inverse ratio with scientific activity. Those periods which have been dominated by the great masters of style have been less interested in the criticism of the historian’s methods of investigation than in the beauty of his rhetoric. The scientific historian, deeply interested in the search for truth, is generally but a poor artist, and his uncoloured picture of the past will never rank in literature beside the splendid distortions which glow in the pages of a Michelet or Macaulay. History the art, in so far as it is conditioned upon genius, has no single traceable line of development. Here the product of the age of Pericles remains unsurpassed still; the works of Herodotus and Thucydides standing along with those of Pheidias as models for all time. On the other hand, history the science has developed so that it has not only gained recognition among historians as a distinct subject, but it has raised with it a group of auxiliary sciences which serve either as tools for investigation or as a basis for testing the results. The advance in this branch of history in the 19th century was one of its greatest achievements. The vast gulf which lies between the history of Egypt by Herodotus and that by Flinders Petrie is the measure of its achievement. By the mechanism now at his disposal the scientific explorer can read more history from the dust-heaps of Ābydos than the greatest traveller of antiquity could gather from the priests of Saïs. In tracing the history of history we must therefore keep in mind the double aspect.

History itself, this double subject, the science and the art combined, begins with the dawn of memory and the invention of speech. It is wrong to term those ages pre-historic whose history has not come down to us, including in one category the pre-literary age and the literary whose traces have been lost. Even the pre-literary had its history, first in myth and then in saga. The saga, or epos, was a great advance upon the myth, for in it the deeds of men replace or tend to replace the deeds of the gods. But we are still largely in the realm of imagination. Poetry, as Thucydides complained, is a most imperfect medium for fact. The bard will exaggerate or distort his story. True history, as a record of what really has happened, first reached maturity in prose. Therefore, although much of the past has been handed down to us in epic, in ballad and in the legends of folk-lore, we must turn from them to what became history in the narrower sense.

The earliest prose origins of history are the inscriptions. Their inadequacy is evident from two standpoints. Their permanence depends not upon their importance, but upon the durability of the substance on which they are inscribed. A note for a wedding ring baked into the clay of Babylon has been preserved, while the history of the greatest events has perished. In the second place they are sealed to all but those who know how to read them, and so they lie forgotten for centuries while oral tradition flourishes,—being within the reach of every man. It is only recently that archaeology, turning from the field of art, has undertaken to interpret for us this first written history. The process by which the modern fits together all the obtainable remains of an antiquity, and reconstructs even that past which left no written record, lies outside the field of this article. But such enlargement of the field of history is a modern scientific product, and is to be distinguished from the imperfect beginnings of history-writing which the archaeologist is able to decipher.

Next to the inscriptions,—sometimes identical with them,—are the early chronicles. These are of various kinds. Family chronicles preserved the memory of heroic ancestors whose deeds in the earliest age would have passed into the keeping of the bards. Such family archives were perhaps the main source for Roman historians. But they are not confined to Rome or Greece. Genealogies also pass from the bald verse, which was the vehicle for oral transmission, to such elaborate tables as those in which Manetho has preserved the dynasties of Egyptian Pharaohs.

In this field the priest succeeds the poet. The temple itself became the chief repository of records. There were simple religious annals, votive tablets recording miracles accomplished at a shrine, lists of priests and priestesses, accounts of benefactions, of prodigies and portents. In some cases, as in Rome, the pontiffs kept a kind of register, not merely of religious history, but of important political events as well. Down to the time of the Gracchi (131 B.C.) the Pontifex Maximus inscribed the year’s events upon annual tablets of wood which were preserved in the Regia, the official residence of the pontiff in the Forum. These pontifical “annals” thus came to be a sort of civic history. Chronicles of the Greek cities were commonly ascribed to mythical authors, as for instance that of Miletus, the oldest, to Cadmus the inventor of letters. But they were continued and edited by men in whom the critical spirit was awakening, as when the chroniclers of Ionian towns began the criticism of Homer.

The first historians were the logographi of these Ionian cities; men who carried their inquiry (historiē) beyond both written record and oral tradition to a study of the world around them. Their “saying” (logos) was gathered mostly from contemporaries; and upon the basis of a widened experience they became critics of their traditions. The opening lines of Hecataeus of Miletus begin the history of the true historic spirit in words which read like a sentence from Voltaire. “Hecataeus of Miletus thus speaks: I write as I deem true, for the traditions of the Greeks seem to me manifold and laughable.” Those words mark an epoch in the history of thought. They are the introduction to historical criticism and scientific investigation. Whatever the actual achievement of Hecataeus may have been, from his time onward the scientific movement was set going. Herodotus of Heraclea struggled to rationalize mythology, and established chronology on a solid basis. And finally Herodotus, a professional story-teller, rose to the height of genuine scientific investigation. Herodotus’ inquiry was not simply that of an idle tourist. He was a critical observer, who tested his evidence. It is easy for the student now to show the inadequacy of his sources, and his failure here or there to discriminate between fact and fable. But given the imperfect medium for investigation and the absence of an archaeological basis for criticism, the work of Herodotus remains a scientific achievement, as remarkable for its approximation to truth as for the vastness of its scope. Yet it was Herodotus’ chief glory to have joined to this scientific spirit an artistic sense which enabled him to cast the material into the truest literary form. He gathered all his knowledge of the ancient world, not simply for itself, but to mass it around the story of the war between the east and west, the Greeks and the Persians. He is first and foremost a story-teller; his theme is like that of the bards, a heroic event. His story is a vast prose epos, in which science is to this extent subordinated to art. “This is the showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, to the end that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works, great and marvellous, which have been produced, some by Hellenes, some by Barbarians, may lose their renown, and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another” (i.e. the Persian war).

In Thucydides a higher art than that of Herodotus was combined with a higher science. He scorned the story-teller “who seeks to please the ear rather than to speak the truth,” and yet his rhetoric is the culmination of Greek historical prose. He withdrew from vulgar applause, conscious that his narrative would be considered “disappointing to the ear,” yet he recast the materials out of which he constructed it in order to lift that narrative into the realm of pure literature. Speeches, letters and documents are reworded to be in tone with the rest of the story. It was his art, in fact, which really created the Peloponnesian war out of its separate parts. And yet this art was merely the language of a scientist. The “laborious task” of which he speaks is that of consulting all possible evidence, and weighing conflicting accounts. It is this which makes his rhetoric worth while, “an everlasting possession, not a prize competition which is heard and forgotten.”

From the sublimity of Thucydides, and Xenophon’s straight-forward story, history passed with Theopompus and Ephorus into the field of rhetoric. A revival of the scientific instinct of investigation is discernable in Timaeus the Sicilian, at the end of the 4th century, but his attack upon his predecessors was the text of a more crushing attack upon himself by Polybius, who declares him lacking in critical insight and biased by passion. Polybius’ comments upon Timaeus reach the dignity of a treatise upon history. He protests against its use for controversial pamphlets which distort the truth. “Directly a man assumes the moral attitude of an historian he ought to forget all considerations, such as love of one’s friends, hatred of one’s enemies.... He must sometimes praise enemies and blame friends. For as a living creature is rendered useless if deprived of its eyes, so if you take truth from History, what is left but an improfitable tale” (bk. xii. 14). These are the words of a Ranke. Unfortunately Polybius, like most modern scientific historians, was no artist. His style is the very opposite of that of Isocrates and the rhetoricians. It is often only clear in the light of inscriptions, so closely does it keep to the sources. The style found no imitator; history passed from Greece to Rome in the guise of rhetoric. In Dionysius of Halicarnassus the rhetoric was combined with an extensive study of the sources; but the influence of the Greek rhetoricians upon Roman prose was deplorable from the standpoint of science. Cicero, although he said that the duty of the historian is to conceal nothing true, to say nothing false, would in practice have written the kind of history that Polybius denounced. He finds fault with those who are non exornatores rerum sed tantum narratores. History for him is the mine from which to draw argument in oratory and example in education. It is not the subject of a scientific curiosity.

It should be noted before we pass to Rome that with the expansion of Hellenism the subject of historians expanded as well. Universal history was begun by Ephorus, the rhetorician, and formed the theme of Polybius and Deodorus. Exiled Greeks were the first to write histories of Rome worthy of the name. The Alexandrian Eratosthenes placed chronology upon the scientific basis of astronomy, and Apollodorus drew up the most important chronica of antiquity.

History-writing in Rome,—except for the Greek writers resident there,—was until the first half of the 1st century B.C. in the form of annals. Then came rhetorical ornamentation,—and the Ciceronian era. The first Roman historian who rose to the conception of a science and art combined was Sallust, the student of Thucydides. The Augustan age produced in Livy a great popular historian and natural artist and a trained rhetorician (in the speeches),—but as uncritical and inaccurate as he was brilliant. From Livy to Tacitus the gulf is greater than from Herodotus to Thucydides. Tacitus is at least a consummate artist. His style ranges from the brilliancy of his youth to the sternness and sombre gravity of age, passing almost to poetic expression in its epigrammatic terseness. Yet in spite of his searching study of authorities, his keen judgment of men, and his perception of underlying principles of moral law, his view was warped by the heat of faction, which glows beneath his external objectivity. After him Roman history-writing speedily degenerated. Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars is but a superior kind of journalism. But his gossip of the court became the model for historians, whose works, now lost, furnish the main source for the Historia Augusta. The importance to us of this uncritical collection of biographies is sufficient comment on the decline of history-writing in the latter empire. Finally, from the 4th century the epitomes of Eutropius and Festus served to satisfy the lessening curiosity in the past and became the handbooks for the middle ages. The single figure of Ammianus Marcellinus stands out of this age like a belated disciple of Tacitus. But the world was changing from antique to Christian ideals just as he was writing, and with him we leave this outline of ancient history.

The 4th and 5th centuries saw a great revolution in the history of history. The story of the pagan past slipped out of mind, and in its place was set, by the genius of Eusebius, the story of the world force which had superseded it, Christianity, and of that small fraction of antiquity from which it sprang,—the Jews. Christianity from the first had forced thinking men to reconstruct their philosophy of history, but it was only after the Church’s triumph that its point of view became dominant in historiography. Three centuries more passed before the pagan models were quite lost to sight. But from the 7th century to the 17th—from Isidore of Seville and the English Bede for a thousand years,—mankind was to look back along the line of Jewish priests and kings to the Creation. Egypt was of interest only as it came into Israelite history, Babylon and Nineveh were to illustrate the judgments of Yahweh, Tyre and Sidon to reflect the glory of Solomon. The process by which the “gentiles” have been robbed of their legitimate history was the inevitable result of a religion whose sacred books make them lay figures for the history of the Jews. Rejected by the Yahweh who became the Christian God, they have remained to the present day, in Sunday schools and in common opinion, not nations of living men, with the culture of arts and sciences, but outcasts who do not enter into the divine scheme of the world’s history. When a line was drawn between pagan and Christian back to the creation of the world, it left outside the pale of inquiry nearly all antiquity. But it must be remembered that that antiquity was one in which the German nations had no personal interest. Scipio and the Gracchi were essentially unreal to them. The one living organization with which they came into touch was the Church. So Cicero and Pompey paled before Joshua and Paul. Diocletian, the organizing genius, became a bloodthirsty monster, and Constantine, the murderer, a saint.

Christian history begins with the triumph of the Church. With Eusebius of Caesarea the apologetic pamphlets of the age of persecutions gave way to a calm review of three centuries of Christian progress. Eusebius’ biography of Constantine shows what distortion of fact the father of Church history permitted himself, but the Ecclesiastical History was fortunately written for those who wanted to know what really happened, and remains to-day an invaluable repository of Christian antiquities. With the continuations of Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret, and the Latin manual which Cassiodorus had woven from them (the Historia tripartita), it formed the body of Church history during all the middle ages. An even greater influence, however, was exercised by Eusebius’ Chronica. Through Jerome’s translation and additions, this scheme of this world’s chronology became the basis for all medieval world chronicles. It settled until our own day the succession of years from the Creation to the birth of Christ,—fitting the Old Testament story into that of ancient history. Henceforth the Jewish past,—that one path back to the beginning of the world,—was marked out by the absolute laws of mathematics and revelation. Jerome had marked it out; Sulpicius Severus, the biographer of St Martin, in his Historia sacra, adorned it with the attractions of romance. Sulpicius was admirably fitted to interpret the miraculous Bible story to the middle ages. But there were few who could write like him, and Jerome’s Chronicle itself, or rather portions of it, became, in the age which followed, a sort of universal preface for the monastic chronicler. For a time there were even attempts to continue “imperial chronicles,” but they were insignificant compared with the influence of Eusebius and Jerome.

From the first, Christianity had a philosophy of history. Its earliest apologists sought to show how the world had followed a divine plan in its long preparation for the life of Christ. From this central fact of all history, mankind should continue through war and suffering until the divine plan was completed at the judgment day. The fate of nations is in God’s hands; history is the revelation of His wisdom and power. Whether He intervenes directly by miracle, or merely sets His laws in operation, He is master of men’s fate. This idea, which has underlain all Christian philosophy of history, from the first apologists who prophesied the fall of the Empire and the coming of the millennium, down to our own day, received its classic statement in St Augustine’s City of God. The terrestrial city, whose eternity had been the theme of pagan history, had just fallen before Alaric’s Goths. Augustine’s explanation of its fall passes in review not only the calamities of Roman history—combined with a pathetic perception of its greatness,—but carries the survey back to the origin of evil at the creation. Then over against this civitas terrena he sets the divine city which is to be realized in Christendom. The Roman Empire,—the last general form of the earthly city,—gives way slowly to the heavenly. This is the main thread of Augustine’s philosophy of history. The mathematical demonstration of its truth was left by Augustine for his disciple, Paulus Orosius.

Orosius’ Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans, written as a supplement to the City of God, is the first attempt at a Christian “World History.” This manual for the middle ages arranged the rise and fall of empires with convincing exactness. The history of antiquity, according to it, begins with Ninus. His realm was overthrown by the Medes in the same year in which the history of Rome began. From the first year of Ninus’ reign until the rebuilding of Babylon by Semiramis there were sixty-four years; the same between the first of Procas and the building of Rome. Eleven hundred and sixty-four years after each city was built, it was taken,—Babylon by Cyrus, Rome by Alaric, and Cyrus’ conquest took place just when Rome began the Republic. But before Rome becomes a world empire, Macedon and Carthage intervene, guardians of Rome’s youth (tutor curatorque). This scheme of the four world-monarchies, which was to prevail through all the middle ages, was developed through seven books filled with the story of war and suffering. As it was Orosius’ aim to show that the world had improved since the coming of Christ, he used Trogus Pompeius’ war history, written to exalt Roman triumphs, to show the reverse of victory,—disaster and ruin. Livy, Caesar, Tacitus and Suetonius were plundered for the story of horrors; until finally even the Goths in Spain shine by contrast with the pagan heroes; and through the confusion of the German invasions one may look forward to Christendom,—and its peace.

The commonest form of medieval historical writing was the chronicle, which reaches all the way from monastic annals, mere notes on Easter tables, to the dignity of national monuments. Utterly lacking in perspective, and dominated by the idea of the miraculous, they are for the most part a record of the trivial or the marvellous. Individual historians sometimes recount the story of their own times with sober judgment, but seldom know how to test their sources when dealing with the past. Contradictions are often copied down without the writer noticing them; and since the middle ages forged and falsified so many documents,—monasteries, towns and corporations gaining privileges or titles of possession by the bold use of them,—the narrative of medieval writers cannot be relied upon unless we can verify it by collateral evidence. Some historians, like Otto of Freising, Guibert of Nogent or Bernard Gui, would have been scientific if they had had our appliances for comparison. But even men like Roger Bacon, who deplored the inaccuracy of texts, had worked out no general method to apply in their restoration. Toward the close of the middle ages the vernacular literatures were adorned with Villani’s and Froissart’s chronicles. But the merit of both lies in their journalistic qualities of contemporary narrative. Neither was a history in the truest sense.

The Renaissance marked the first great gain in the historic sense, in the efforts of the humanists to realize the spirit of the antique world. They did not altogether succeed; antiquity to them meant largely Plato and Cicero. Their interests were literary, and the un-Ciceronian centuries were generally ignored. Those in which the foundations of modern Europe were laid, which produced parliaments, cathedrals, cities, Dante and Chaucer, were grouped alike on one dismal level and christened the middle ages. The perspective of the humanists was only one degree better than that of the middle ages. History became the servant to literature, an adjunct to the classics. Thus it passed into the schools, where text-books still in use devote 200 pages to the Peloponnesian war and two to the Athens of Pericles.

But if the literary side of humanism has been a barrier to the progress of scientific history, the discovery and elucidation of texts first made that progress possible. Historical criticism soon awoke. Laurentius Valla’s brilliant attack on the “Donation of Constantine” (1440), and Ulrich von Hutten’s rehabilitation of Henry IV. from monkish tales mark the rise of the new science. One sees at a glance what an engine of controversy it was to be; yet for a while it remained but a phase of humanism. It was north of the Alps that it parted company with the grammarians. Classical antiquity was an Italian past, the German scholars turned back to the sources of their national history. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II.) had discovered Otto of Freising and Jordanes. Maximilian I. encouraged the search for manuscripts, and Vienna became a great humanistic centre. Conrad Celtes left his Germania illustrata unfinished, but he had found the works of Hroswitha. Conrad Peutinger gathered all sorts of Chronicles in his room in Vienna, and published several,—among them Gregory of Tours. This national movement of the 15th century was not paralleled in France or England, where the classical humanities reigned. The Reformation meanwhile gave another turn to the work of German scholars.

The Reformation, with its heated controversies, seems a strange starting-point for science, yet it, even more than the Renaissance, brought out scientific methods of historical investigation. It not only sobered the humanist tendency to sacrifice truth for aesthetic effect, it called for the documents of the Church and subjected them to the most hostile criticism. Luther himself challenged them. Then in the Magdeburg Centuries (1559-1574) Protestantism tried to make good its attack on the medieval Church by a great collection of sources accompanied with much destructive criticism. This gigantic work is the first monument of modern historical research. The reply of Cardinal Baronius (Annales ecclesiastici, 1588-1697) was a still greater collection, drawn from archives which till then had not been used for scientific history. Baronius’ criticism and texts are faulty, though far surpassing anything before his day, and his collection is the basis for most subsequent ones,—in spite of J. J. Scaliger’s refutation, which was to contain an equal number of volumes of the errors in Baronius.

The movement back to the sources in Germany until the Thirty Years’ War was a notable one. Collections were made by Simon Schard (1535-1573), Johannes Pistorius (1576-1608), Marquard Freher (1565-1614), Melchior Goldast (1576-1635) and others. After the war Leibnitz began a new epoch, both by his philosophy with its law of continuity in phenomena, and by his systematic attempt to collect sources through an association (1670). His plan to have documents printed as they were, instead of “correcting” them, was a notable advance. But from Leibnitz until the 19th century German national historiography made little progress,—although church historians like Mosheim and Neander stand out among the greatest historians of all time.

France had not paralleled the activity of Maximilian’s Renaissance historians. The father of modern French history, or at least of historical research, was André Duchesne (1584-1640), whose splendid collections of sources are still in use. Jean Bodin wrote the first treatise on scientific history (Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, 1566), but he did not apply his own principles of criticism; and it was left for the Benedictine monks of the Congregation of St Maur to establish definitely the new science. The place of this school in the history of history is absolutely without a parallel. Few of those in the audiences of Molière, returning home under the grey walls of St Germain-des-Près, knew that within that monastery the men whose midnight they disturbed were laying the basis for all scientific history; and few of the later historians of that age have been any wiser. But when Luc d’Achery turned from exegetics to patristics and the lives of the saints, as a sort of Christian humanist, he led the way to that vast work of collection and comparison of texts which developed through Mabillon, Montfaucon, Ruinart, Martène, Bouquet and their associates, into the indispensable implements of modern historians. Here, as in the Reformation, controversy called out the richest product. Jean Mabillon’s treatise, De re diplomatica (1681), was due to the criticisms of that group of Belgian Jesuits whose Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur (1643, &c., see [Bollandists]) was destined to grow into the greatest repository of legend and biography the world has seen. In reply to D. Papebroch’s criticisms of the chronicle of St Denis, Mabillon prepared this manual for the testing of medieval documents. Its canons are the basis, indeed, almost the whole, of the science of diplomatic (q.v.), the touchstone of truth for medieval research. Henceforth even the mediocre scholar had a body of technical rules by which to sort out the vast mass of apocrypha in medieval documentary sources. Scientific history depends upon implements. Without manuals, dictionaries, and easy access to texts, we should go as far astray as any medieval chronicler. The France of the Maurists supplied the most essential of these instruments. The great “glossary” of Ducange is still in enlarged editions the indispensable encyclopaedia of the middle ages. Chronology and palaeography were placed on a new footing by Dom Bernard de Montfaucon’s Palaeographia graeca (1708), the monumental Art de vérifier les dates (3rd ed., 1818-1831, in 38 vols.), and the Nouveau Traité de diplomatique (1750-1765) of Dom Tassin and Dom Toustain. The collections of texts which the Maurists published are too many and too vast to be enumerated here (see C. Langlois, Manuel de bibliographie historique, pp. 293 ff.). Dom Bouquet’s Historiens de la Gaule et de la France—the national repertory for French historians—is but one of a dozen tasks of similar magnitude. During the 18th century this deep under-work of scientific history continued to advance, though for the most part unseen by the brilliant writers whose untrustworthy generalities passed for history in the salons of the old régime. Interrupted by the Revolution, it revived in the 19th century, and the roll of honour of the French École des Chartes has almost rivalled that of St Germain-des-Prés.

The father of critical history in Italy was L. A. Muratori (1672-1750), the Italian counterpart of Leibnitz. His vast collection of sources (Rerum Italicarum scriptores), prepared amid every discouragement, remains to-day the national monument of Italian history; and it is but one of his collections. His output is perhaps the greatest of any isolated worker in the whole history of historiography. The same haste, but much less care, marked the work of J. D. Mansi (d. 1769), the compiler of the fullest collection of the Councils. Spain, stifled by the Inquisition, produced no national collection of sources during the 17th and 18th centuries, although Nicolas Antonio (d. 1684) produced a national literary history of the first rank.

England in the 16th century kept pace with Continental historiography. Henry VIII.’s chaplain, John Leland, is the father of English antiquaries. Three of the most precious collections of medieval manuscripts still in existence were then begun by Thomas Bodley (the Bodleian at Oxford), Archbishop Matthew Parker (Corpus Christi at Cambridge), and Robert Cotton (the Cottonian collection of the British Museum). In Elizabeth’s reign a serious effort was made to arrange the national records, but until the end of the 18th century they were scattered in not less than fifteen repositories. In the 17th and 18th centuries English scholarship was enriched by such monuments of research as William Dugdale’s Monasticon, Thomas Madox’s History of the Exchequer, Wilkins’s Concilia, and Thomas Rymer’s Foedera. But these works, important as they were, gave but little idea of the wealth of historical sources which the 19th century was to reveal in England.

In the 19th century the science of history underwent a sort of industrial revolution. The machinery of research, invented by the genius of men like Mabillon, was perfected and set going in all the archives of Europe. Isolated workers or groups of workers grew into national or international associations, producing from archives vast collections of material to be worked up into the artistic form of history. The result of this movement has been to revolutionize the whole subject. These men of the factory—devoting their lives to the cataloguing of archives and libraries, to the publication of material, and then to the gigantic task of indexing what they have produced—have made it possible for the student in an American or Australian college to master in a few hours in his library sources of history which baffled the long years of research of a Martène or Rymer. The texts themselves have mostly become as correct as they can ever be, and manuals and bibliographies guide one to and through them, so that no one need go astray who takes the trouble to make use of the mechanism which is at his hand. For example, since the papal archives were opened, so many regesta have appeared that soon it will be possible to follow the letter-writing of the medieval popes day by day for century after century.

The apparatus for this research is too vast to be described here. Archives have been reformed, their contents catalogued or calendared; government commissions have rescued numberless documents from oblivion or destruction, and learned societies have supplemented and criticized this work and co-ordinated the results. Every state in Europe now has published the main sources for its history. The “Rolls” series, the Monumenta Germaniae historica, and the Documents inédits are but the more notable of such national products. A series of periodicals keeps watch over this enormous output. The files and indices of the English Historical Review, Historische Zeitschrift, Revue historique, or American Historical Review will alone reveal the strength and character of historical research in the later 19th century.

Every science which deals with human phenomena is in a way an implement in this great factory system, in which the past is welded together again. Psychology has been drawn upon to interpret the movements of revolutions or religions, anthropology and ethnology furnish a clue to problems to which the key of documents has been lost. Genealogy, heraldry and chronology run parallel with the wider subject. But the real auxiliary sciences to history are those which deal with those traces of the past that still exist, the science of language (philology), of writing (palaeography), of documents (diplomatic), of seals (sphragistics), of coins (numismatics), of weights and measures, and archaeology in the widest sense of the word. These sciences underlie the whole development of scientific history. Dictionaries and manuals are the instruments of this industrial revolution. Without them the literary remains of the race would still be as useless as Egyptian inscriptions to the fellaheen. Archaeology itself remained but a minor branch of art until the machinery was perfected which enabled it to classify and interpret the remains of the “pre-historic” age.

This is the most remarkable chapter in the whole history of history—the recovery of that past which had already been lost when our literary history began. The perspective stretches out as far the other side of Homer as we are this. The old “providential” scheme of history disintegrates before a new interest in the “gentile” nations to whose high culture Hebrew sources bore unwilling testimony. Biblical criticism is a part of the historic process. The Jewish texts, once the infallible basis of history, are now tested by the libraries of Babylon, from which they were partly drawn, and Hebrew history sinks into its proper place in the wide horizon of antiquity. The finding of the Rosetta stone left us no longer dependent upon Greek, Latin or Hebrew sources, and now fifty centuries of Egyptian history lie before us. The scientific historian of antiquity works on the hills of Crete, rather than in the quiet of a library with the classics spread out before him. There he can reconstruct the splendour of that Minoan age to which Homeric poems look back, as the Germanic epics looked back to Rome or Verona. His discoveries, co-ordinated and arranged in vast corpora inscriptionum, stand now alongside Herodotus or Livy, furnishing a basis for their criticism. Medieval archaeology has, since Quicherat, revealed how men were living while the monks wrote chronicles, and now cathedrals and castles are studied as genuine historic documents.

The immense increase in available sources, archaeological and literary, has remade historical criticism. Ranke’s application of the principles of “higher criticism” to works written since the invention of printing (Kritik neuerer Geschichtsschreiber) was an epoch-making challenge of narrative sources. Now they are everywhere checked by contemporary evidence, and a clearer sense of what constitutes a primary source has discredited much of what had been currently accepted as true. This is true not only of ancient history, where last year’s book may be a thousand years out of date, but of the whole field. Hardly an “old master” remains an authoritative book of reference. Gibbon, Grote, Giesebrecht, Guizot stand to-day by reason of other virtues than their truth. Old landmarks drop out of sight—e.g. the fall of the Western Empire in 476, the coming of the Greeks to Italy in 1450, dates which once enclosed the middle ages. The perspective changes—the Renaissance grows less and the middle ages more; the Protestant Revolution becomes a complex of economics and politics and religion; the French Revolution a vast social reform in which the Terror was an incident, &c., &c. The result has been a complete transformation of history since the middle of the 19th century.

In the 17th century the Augustinian scheme of world history received its last classic statement in Bossuet’s Histoire universelle. Voltaire’s reply to it in the 18th (Essai sur les mœurs) attacked its limitations on the basis of deism, and its miraculous procedure on that of science. But while there are foreshadowings of the evolutionary theory in this work, neither the philosophe historians nor Hume nor Gibbon arrived at a constructive principle in history which could take the place of the Providence they rejected. Religion, though false, might be a real historic force. History became the tragic spectacle of a game of dupes—the real movers being priests, kings or warriors. The pawns slowly acquired reason, and then would be able to regulate the moves themselves. But all this failed to give a satisfactory explanation of the laws which determine the direction of this evolution. Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744) was the first to ask why there is no science of human history. But his lonely life and unrecognized labours leave him apart from the main movement, until his works were discovered again in the 19th century. It was A. L. H. Heeren who, at the opening of the 19th century, first laid that emphasis upon the economic factors in history which is to-day slowly replacing the Augustinian explanation of its evolution. Heeren’s own influence, however, was slight. The first half of the century (apart from the scientific activity of Pertz, Guizot, &c.) was largely dominated by the romanticists, with their exaggeration of the individual. Carlyle’s “great man theory of history” is logically connected with the age of Scott. It was a philosophy of history which lent itself to magnificent dramatic creations; but it explained nothing. It substituted the work of the genius for the miraculous intervention of Providence, but, apart from certain abstract formulae such as Truth and Right, knew nothing of why or how. It is but dealing in words to say that the meaning of it all is God’s revelation of Himself. Granting that, what is the process? Why does it so slowly reveal the Right of the middle ages (as in slavery for instance) to be the Wrong to-day? Carlyle stands to Bossuet as the sage to the myth. Hegel got no closer to realities. His idealistic scheme of history, which makes religion the keynote of progress, and describes the function of each—Judaism to typify duty, Confucianism order, Mahommedanism justice, Buddhism patience, and Christianity love—does not account for the facts of the history enacted by the devotees. It characterizes, not the real process of evolution, but an ideal which history has not realized. Besides, it does not face the question how far religion itself is a product or a cause, or both combined.

In the middle of the century two men sought to incorporate in their philosophy the physical basis which Hegel had ignored in his spiritism—recognizing that life is conditioned by an environment and not an abstraction for metaphysics. H. T. Buckle, in his History of Civilization in England (1857), was the first to work out the influences of the material world upon history, developing through a wealth of illustration the importance of food, soil and the general aspect of nature upon the formation of society. Buckle did not, as is generally believed, make these three factors dominate all history. He distinctly stated that “the advance of European civilization is characterized by a diminishing influence of physical laws and an increasing influence of mental laws,” and “the measure of civilization is the triumph of mind over external agents.” Yet his challenge, not only to the theologian, but also to those “historians whose indolence of thought” or “natural incapacity” prevented them from attempting more than the annalistic record of events, called out a storm of protest from almost every side. Now that the controversy has cleared away, we see that in spite of Buckle’s too confident formulation of his laws, his pioneer work in a great field marks him out as the Augustine of the scientific age. Among historians, however, Buckle’s theory received but little favour for another generation. Meanwhile the economists had themselves taken up the problem, and it was from them that the historians of to-day have learned it. Ten years before Buckle published his history, Karl Marx had already formulated the “economic theory of history.” Accepting with reservation Feuerbach’s attack on the Hegelian “absolute idea,” based on materialistic grounds (Der Mensch ist, was er isst), Marx was led to the conclusion that the causes of that process of growth which constitutes the history of society are to be found in the economic conditions of existence. From this he went on to socialism, which bases its militant philosophy upon this interpretation of history. But the truth or falseness of socialism does not affect the theory of history. In 1845 Marx wrote of the Young-Hegelians that to separate history from natural science and industry was like separating the soul from the body, and “finding the birthplace of history, not in the gross material production on earth, but in the misty cloud formation of heaven” (Die heilige Familie, p. 238). In his Misère de la philosophie (1847) he lays down the principle that social relationships largely depend upon modes of production, and therefore the principles, ideas and categories which are thus evolved are no more eternal than the relations they express, but are historical and transitory products. In the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) the theory was applied to show how the industrial revolution had replaced feudal with modern conditions. But it had little vogue, except among Socialists, until the third volume of Das Kapital was published in 1894, when its importance was borne in upon continental scholars. Since then the controversy has been almost as heated as in the days of the Reformation. It is an exaggeration of the theory which makes it an explanation of all human life, but the whole science of dynamic sociology rests upon the postulate of Marx.

The content of history always reflects the interests of the age in which it is written. It was so in Herodotus and in medieval chronicles. Modern historians began with politics. But as the complex nature of society became more evident in the age of democracy, the economic or sociological history gained ground. Histories of commerce and cities now rank beside those on war and kings, although there are readers still who prefer to follow the pennants of robber barons rather than to watch the slow evolution of modern conditions. The drum-and-trumpet history has its place like that of art, jurisprudence, science or philosophy. Only now we know that no one of these is more than a single glimpse at a vast complex of phenomena, most of which lie for ever beyond our ken.

This expansion of interest has intensified specialization. Historians no longer attempt to write world histories; they form associations of specialists for the purpose. Each historian chooses his own epoch or century and his own subject, and spends his life mastering such traces of it as he can find. His work there enables him to judge of the methods of his fellows, but his own remains restricted by the very wealth of material which has been accumulated on the single subject before him. Thus the great enterprises of to-day are co-operative—the Cambridge Modern History, Lavisse and Rambaud’s Histoire générale, or Lavisse’s Histoire de France, like Hunt and Poole’s Political History of England, and Oncken’s Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen. But even these vast sets cover but the merest fraction of their subjects. The Cambridge history passes for the most part along the political crust of society, and seldom glances at the social forces within. This limitation of the professed historian is made up for by the growingly historical treatment of all the sciences and arts—a tendency noted before, to which this edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is itself a notable witness. Indeed, for a definition of that limitless subject which includes all the phenomena that stand the warp and stress of change, one might adapt a famous epitaph—si historiam requiris, circumspice.

Bibliography.—See Ch. V. Langlois, Manuel de bibliographie historique (2 vols., 1904). This forms the logical bibliography of this article. It is a general survey of the whole apparatus of historical research, and is the indispensable guide to the subject. Similar bibliographies covering sections of history are noted with the articles where they properly belong, e.g. in English medieval history the manual of Chas. Gross, Sources and Literature of English History; in German history the Quellenkunde of Dahlmann-Waitz (7th ed.); for France the Bibliographie de l’histoire de France of G. Monod (antiquated, 1888), or the Sources de l’histoire de France so ably begun by A. Molinier’s volumes on the medieval period. Perhaps the sanest survey of the present scientific movement in history is the clear summary of Ch. V. Langlois and Ch. Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of History (trans. with preface by F. York Powell, London, 1898). Much more ambitious is E. Bernheim’s Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie mit Nachweis der wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmittel zum Studium der Geschichte (3rd and 4th ed., Leipzig, 1903).

(J. T. S.*)

HIT, a town of Asiatic Turkey, in the vilayet of Bagdad, on the west bank of the Euphrates, 70 m. W.N.W. of Bagdad, in 33° 38′ 8″ N., 42° 52′ 15″ E. It is picturesquely situated on a line of hills, partly natural, but in large part certainly artificial, the accumulation of centuries of former habitation, from 30 to 100 ft. in height, bordering the river. The houses are built of field stones and mud. A striking feature of the town is a lofty and well-proportioned minaret, which leans quite perceptibly. Behind and around Hit is an extensive but utterly barren plain, through which flow several streams of bitter water, coming from mineral springs. Directly behind the town are two bitumen springs, one cold and one hot, within 30 ft. of one another. The gypsum cliffs on the edge of the plain, and the rocks which crop out here and there in the plain, are full of seams of bitumen, and the whole place is redolent of sulphuretted hydrogen. Across the river there are naphtha springs. Indeed, the entire region is one possessing great potential wealth in mineral oils and the like. Hit, with its fringe of palms, is like an oasis in the desert occasioned by the outcrop of these deposits. From time immemorial it has been the chief source of supply of bitumen for Babylonia, the prosperity of the town depending always upon its bitumen fountains, which are still the property of the government, but are rented out to any one who wishes to use them. There is also a shipyard at Hit, where the characteristic Babylonian boats are still made, smeared within and without with bitumen. Hit is the head of navigation on the Euphrates. It is also the point from which the camel-post starts across the desert to Damascus. About 8 m. inland from Hit, on a bitter stream, lies the small town of Kubeitha. Hit is mentioned, under the name of Ist, in the Karnak inscription as paying tribute to Tethmosis (Thothmes) III. In the Bible (Ezra viii. 15) it is called Ahava; the original Babylonian name seems to have been Ihi, which becomes in the Talmud Ihidakira, in Ptolemy Ιδικάρα, and in Zosimus and Ammianus Δακίρα and Diacira.

See Geo. Rawlinson’s Herodotus, i. 179, and note by H. C. Rawlinson; J. P. Peters, Nippur (1897); H. V. Geere, By Nile and Euphrates (1904).

(J. P. Pe.)

HITA, GINÉS PEREZ DE (1544?-1605?), Spanish novelist and poet, was born at Mula (Murcia) about the middle of the 16th century. He served in the campaign of 1569-1571 against the Moriscos, and in 1572 wrote a rhymed history of the city of Lorca which remained unpublished till 1889. He owes his wide celebrity to the Historia de los bandos de Zegríes y Abencerrajes (1595-1604), better known as the Guerras civiles de Granada, which purports to be a chronicle based on an Arabic original ascribed to a certain Aben-Hamin. Aben-Hamin is a fictitious personage, and the Guerras de Granada is in reality a historical novel, perhaps the earliest example of its kind, and certainly the first historical novel that attained popularity. In the first part the events which led to the downfall of Granada are related with uncommon brilliancy, and Hita’s sympathetic transcription of life at the Emir’s court has clearly suggested the conventional presentation of the picturesque, chivalrous Moor in the pages of Mlle de Scudéry, Mme de Lafayette, Châteaubriand and Washington Irving. The second part is concerned with the author’s personal experiences, and the treatment is effective; yet, though Calderón’s play, Amar después de la muerte, is derived from it, the second part has never enjoyed the vogue or influence of the first. The exact date of Hita’s death is unknown. His blank verse rendering of the Crónica Troyana, written in 1596, exists in manuscript.

HITCHCOCK, EDWARD (1793-1864), American geologist, was born of poor parents at Deerfield, Massachusetts, on the 24th of May 1793. He owed his education chiefly to his own exertions, and was preparing himself to enter Harvard College when he was compelled to interrupt his studies from a weakness in his eyesight. In 1815 he became principal of the academy of his native town; but he resigned this office in 1818 in order to study for the ministry. Having been ordained in 1821 pastor of the Congregational church of Conway, Mass., he employed his leisure in making a scientific survey of the western counties of the state. From 1825 to 1845 he was professor of chemistry and natural history, from 1845 to 1864 was professor of natural theology and geology at Amherst College, and from 1845 to 1854 was president; the college owed its early success largely to his energetic efforts, especially during the period of his presidency. In 1830 he was appointed state geologist of Massachusetts, and in 1836 was made geologist of the first district of the state of New York. In 1840 he received the degree of LL.D. from Harvard, and in 1846 that of D.D. from Middlebury College, Vermont. Besides his constant labours in geology, zoology and botany, Hitchcock took an active interest in agriculture, and in 1850 he was sent by the Massachusetts legislature to examine into the methods of the agricultural schools of Europe. In geology he made a detailed examination and exposition of the fossil footprints from the Triassic sandstones of the Connecticut valley. His collection is preserved in the Hitchcock Ichnological Museum of Amherst College, and a description of it was published in 1858 in his report to the Massachusetts legislature on the ichnology of New England. The footprints were regarded as those of reptiles, amphibia and birds (?). In 1857 he undertook, with the aid of his two sons, the geological survey of Vermont, which was completed in 1861. As a writer on geological science, Hitchcock was largely concerned in determining the connexion between it and religion, and employing its results to explain and support what he regarded as the truths of revelation. He died at Amherst, on the 27th of February 1864.

His son, Charles Henry Hitchcock (1836-  ), did good service in geology, in Vermont, New Hampshire (1868-1878), and other parts of America, and became professor of geology at Dartmouth in 1868.

The following are Edward Hitchcock’s principal works: Geology of the Connecticut Valley (1823); Catalogue of Plants growing without cultivation in the vicinity of Amherst (1829); Reports on the Geology of Massachusetts (1833-1841); Elementary Geology (1840; ed. 2, 1841; and later ed. with C. H. Hitchcock, 1862); Fossil Footmarks in the United States (1848); Outline of the Geology of the Globe and of the United States in particular (1853); Illustrations of Surface Geology (1856); Ichnology of New England (1858); The Religion of Geology and its Connected Sciences (1851; new ed., 1869); Reminiscences of Amherst College (1863); and various papers in the American Journal of Science, and other periodicals.

HITCHCOCK, GEORGE (1850-  ), American artist, was born at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1850. He graduated from Brown University in 1872 and from the law school of Harvard University in 1874; then turned his attention to art and became a pupil of Boulanger and Lefebvre in Paris. He attracted notice in the Salon of 1885 with his “Tulip Growing,” a Dutch garden which he painted in Holland. He had for years a studio at Egmond, in the Netherlands. He became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, France; a member of the Vienna Academy of Arts, the Munich Secession Society, and other art bodies; and is represented in the Dresden gallery; the imperial collection, Vienna; the Chicago Art Institute, and the Detroit Museum of Fine Arts.

HITCHCOCK, ROSWELL DWIGHT (1817-1887), American divine, was born at East Machias, Maine, on the 15th of August 1817, graduated at Amherst College in 1836, and later studied at Andover Theological Seminary, Mass. After a visit to Germany he was a tutor at Amherst in 1839-1842, and was minister of the First (Congregational) Church, Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1845-1852. He became professor of natural and revealed religion in Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in 1852, and in 1855 professor of church history in the Union Theological Seminary in New York, of which he was president in 1880-1887. He died at Somerset, Mass., on the 16th of June 1887.

Among his works are: Life of Edward Robinson (1863); Socialism (1879); Carmina Sanctorum (with Z. Eddy and L. W. Mudge, 1885); and Eternal Atonement (1888).

HITCHIN, a market town in the Hitchin parliamentary division of Hertfordshire, England, on the small river Hiz, 32 m. N. from London by the Great Northern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 10,072. It is the junction of the main line with the Cambridge branch, and with a branch of the Midland railway to Bedford. The church of St Mary is Perpendicular, with a fine porch, a painting of the Adoration of the Magi, attributed to Rubens, a small crypt said to have been used by Cromwell as a prison for the Royalists, and many interesting monuments. Hitchin Priory is a mansion on the site of a Carmelite foundation of the early 14th century. A Gilbertine nunnery, founded later in the same century, stood adjacent to the church, and portions of the buildings appear in an existing block of almshouses. The grammar school (1632) was reconstituted in 1889 for boys and girls. Straw-plaiting, malting, brewing, and the cultivation and distillation of lavender and peppermint are carried on.

HITTITES, an ancient people, alluded to frequently in the earlier records of Israel, and also, under slightly variant names, in Egyptian records of the XVIIIth, XIXth and XXth Dynasties, and in Assyrian from about 1100 to 700 B.C. They appear also in the Vannic cuneiform texts, and are believed to be the authors of a class of monuments bearing inscriptions in a peculiar pictographic character, and widely distributed over Asia Minor and N. Syria, around which much controversy has raged during the past thirty years.

1. The Bible.—In the Old Testament the name of the race is written Heth (with initial aspirate), members of it being Hitti, Hittim, which the Septuagint renders χέτ, χετταῖος, χεττείν or χεττείμ, keeping, it will be noted, ε in the stem throughout. The race appears in two connexions, (a) In pre-Israelite Palestine, it is resident about Hebron (Gen. xxiii. 3), and in the central uplands (Num. xiii. 29). To Joshua (i. 4) is promised “from the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites.” The term “wilderness” here is of geographical ambiguity; but the promise is usually taken to mean that Palestine itself was part of the Hittite land before the coming of Israel; and an apostrophe of Ezekiel (xvi. 3) to Jerusalem, “thy mother (was) an Hittite,” is quoted in confirmation. Under the monarchy we hear frequently of Hittites within the borders of Israel, but either as a small subject people, coupled with other petty tribes, or as individuals in the Jewish service (e.g. Uriah, in the time of David). It appears, therefore, that there survived in Palestine to late times a detached Hittite population, with which Hebrews sometimes intermarried (Judges iii. 5-6; Gen. xxvi. 34) and lived in relations now amicable, now tyrannical (e.g. Hittites were made tributary bondsmen by Solomon, 1 Kings ix. 20, 21; 2 Chron. viii. 7, 8). (b) An independent and powerful Hittite people was domiciled N. of Palestine proper, organized rather as a confederacy of tribes than a single monarchy (1 Kings x. 28; 2 Kings vii. 6). Presumably it was a daughter of these Hittites that Solomon took to wife. If the emendation of 2 Sam. xxiv. 64, “Tahtim-hodshi,” based on the Septuagint version γὴν χεττεὶμ καδής be accepted, we hear of them at Kadesh on Orontes; and some minor Hittite cities are mentioned, e.g. Luz; but no one capital city of the race is clearly indicated. Carchemish, on the Euphrates, though mentioned three times (2 Chron. xxxv. 20; Isa. x. 9; Jer. xlvi. 2), is not connected explicitly with Hittites, a fact which is not surprising, since that city was no longer under a Hatti dynasty at the epoch of the Old Testament references. So far as the Old Testament goes, therefore, we gather that the Hittites were a considerable people, widely spread in Syria, in part subdued and to some extent assimilated by Israel, but in part out of reach. The latter portion was not much known to the Hebrews, but was vaguely feared as a power in the early days of the monarchy, though not in the later pre-Captivity period. The identification of the northern and southern Hittites, however, presents certain difficulties not yet fully explained; and it seems that we must assume Heth to have been the name both of a country in the north and of a tribal population not confined to that country.

2. Egyptian Records.—The decipherment of the inscriptions of the XVIIIth Theban Dynasty led, before the middle of the 19th century, to the discovery of the important part played in the Syrian campaigns of Tethmosis (Thothmes) III. by the H-t8 (vulgarly transliterated Kheta, though the vocalization is uncertain). The coincidence of this name, beginning with an aspirate, led H. K. Brugsch to identify the Kheta with Heth. That identification stands, and no earlier Egyptian mention of the race has been found. Tethmosis III. found the Kheta (“Great” and “Little”) in N. Syria, not apparently at Kadesh, but at Carchemish, though they had not been in possession of the latter place long (not in the epoch of Tethmosis I.’s Syrian campaign). They were a power strong enough to give the Pharaoh cause to vaunt his success (see also [Egypt]: Ancient History, § “The New Empire”). Though he says he levied tribute upon them, his successors in the dynasty nearly all record fresh wars with the Kheta who appear as the northernmost of Pharaoh’s enemies, and Amenophis or Amenhotep III. saw fit to take to wife Gilukhipa, a Syrian princess, who may or may not have been a Hittite. This queen is by some supposed to have introduced into Egypt certain exotic ideas which blossomed in the reign of Amenophis IV. The first Pharaoh of the succeeding dynasty, Rameses I., came to terms with a Kheta king called Saplel or Saparura; but Seti I. again attacked the Kheta (1366 B.C.), who had apparently pushed southwards. Forced back by Seti, the Kheta returned and were found holding Kadesh by Rameses II., who, in his fifth year, there fought against them and a large body of allies, drawn probably in part from beyond Taurus, the battle which occasioned the monumental poem of Pentaur. After long struggles, a treaty was concluded in Rameses’s twenty-first year, between Pharaoh and “Khetasar” (i.e. Kheta-king), of which we possess an Egyptian copy. The discovery of a cuneiform tablet containing a copy of this same treaty, in the Babylonian language, was reported from Boghaz Keui in Cappadocia by H. Winckler in 1907. It argues the Kheta a people of considerable civilization. The Kheta king subsequently visited Pharaoh and gave him his daughter to wife. Rameses’ successor, Mineptah, remained on terms with the Kheta folk; but in the reign of Rameses III. (Dyn. XX.) the latter seem to have joined in the great raid of northern tribes on Egypt which was checked by the battle of Pelusium. From this point (c. 1150 B.C.)—the point at which (roughly) the monarchic history of Israel in Palestine opens—Egyptian records cease to mention Kheta; and as we know from other sources that the latter continued powerful in Carchemish for some centuries to come, we must presume that the rise of the Israelite state interposed an effective political barrier.

3. Assyrian Records.—In an inscription of Tiglath Pileser I. (about 1100 B.C.), first deciphered in 1857, a people called Khatti is mentioned as powerful in Girgamish on Euphrates (i.e. Carchemish); and in other records of the same monarch, subsequently read, much mention is made of this and of other N. Syrian names. These Khatti appear again in the inscriptions of Assur-nazir-pal (early 9th century B.C.), in whose time Carchemish was very wealthy, and the Khatti power extended far over N. Syria and even into Mesopotamia. Shalmaneser II. (d. 825 B.C.) raided the Khatti and their allies year after year; and at last Sargon III., in 717 B.C., relates that he captured Carchemish and its king, Pisiris, and put an end to its independence. We hear no more of it thenceforward. These Khatti, there is no reasonable doubt, are identical with Kheta. (For the chronology see further under [Babylonia and Assyria].)

4. Other Cuneiform Records.—The name of the race appears in certain of the Tel-el-Amarna letters, tablets written in Babylonian script to Amenophis (Amenhotep) IV. and found in 1892 on the site of his capital. Some of his governors in Syrian districts (e.g. one Aziru of Phoenicia) report movements of the Hittites, who were then pursuing an aggressive policy (about 1400 B.C.). There are also other letters from rulers of principalities in N. Syria (Mitanni) and E. Asia Minor (Arzawa), who write in non-Semitic tongues and are supposed to have been Hittites.

Certain Khatē or Khati are mentioned in the Vannic inscriptions (deciphered partially by A. H. Sayce and others) as attacked by kings of Bianas (Van), and apparently domiciled on the middle Euphrates N. of Taurus in the 9th century B.C. This name again may safely be identified with Khatti-Kheta.