ll^ 1
 
 ASIATIC STUDIES 
 
 RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL.
 
 ASIATIC STUDIES 
 
 BELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL. 
 
 BY SIR ALFKED C. LYALL, K.C.B., C.I.E. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1882. 
 
 [All Rights reserved. ]
 
 LONDON : 
 BPADBURY, AGNEW, & CO , PKINTEP.S, WHITEFRIARS
 
 PKEFACE. 
 
 THIS Look contains, in the form of chapters, eleven essays 
 published by me during the past ten years ; they were written 
 in such intervals of leisure as could be spared by the constant 
 and occasionally urgent preoccupations of official duties in 
 India, and they have been thought to be worth the experiment 
 of republication together. Ten of these essays relate to India, 
 being mainly the outcome of personal observation in certain 
 provinces and of intercourse with the people; one essay 
 relates to China, with which country the writer has no direct 
 acquaintance; and since they are all so far alikp in their 
 subject-matter that they deal with the actual character and 
 complexion of religion and society in these countries at the 
 present time, they may possibly be considered to have some 
 useful bearing on the general study of Asiatic ideas and institu- 
 tions. For throughout Asia, wherever the state of society has 
 not been distinctly transformed by European influences, there is 
 a fundamental resemblance in the social condition of the people, 
 in their intellectual level, and in their habits of thought. And 
 although India is in many respects a peculiar country, isolated 
 and fenced off from the rest of the continent by broad belts of 
 high and often impassable mountain country, so that it cannot 
 be classed either with Eastern or Western Asia, yet it possesses 
 by reason of its extraordinary variety of peoples, creeds, .and
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 manners, a strong affinity with the widely different countries 
 on either side of it; it partakes largely of the religious charac- 
 teristics both of Western Asia, whence it has received Ma- 
 homedanism, and of Eastern Asia, to which it has given. 
 Buddhism, the pure outcome of Hindu theosophy ; and it has 
 preserved specimens of almost every stage in the history of 
 Asiatic politics and the growth of Asiatic societies. No 
 single first class country of Asia, therefore, so well repays 
 examination ; and it is just this part of Asia in which 
 Europeans have had incomparably the best opportunities of 
 accurate and continuous observation. The English know India 
 as no other Europeans, since the Romans, have ever known an 
 Asiatic country; in the long territorial struggle of modern 
 times between Europe and Asia, their command of the sea 
 enabled them to turn the flank of India's land defences, 
 and by pushing up from the coast to establish themselves in 
 the heart of Asia, at a time when the Cross and the 
 Crescent were still contending fiercely on the Danube and 
 the Caspian. Having thus occupied large provinces of 
 Asia for more than a century, the English have been 
 obliged, in building up their administration and consolidating 
 their successive conquests, to look closely into the social 
 and economical conditions of India, to consider the feel- 
 ings of the people and to realize their political and religious 
 idiosyncrasies ; with the general result that by opening 
 out India they have let a flood of clear daylight in upon 
 Asia at large. The present small volume may possibly add 
 something to the English store of information derived from 
 Eastern experiences ; it may aid toward the exact appreciation 
 of Indian life and thought, and to a knowledge, through India, 
 of Asia; and it may perhaps contribute materials of some
 
 PREFACE. Vil 
 
 special use to those who are engaged in the comparative study 
 of religious and social phenomena generally. There may be 
 nothing new in the ideas, to which reference is constantly made 
 in this volume, that India, with its multiplicity of religions and 
 tribes, and its variety of political groups, is the best surviving 
 specimen, on a large scale, of the ancient world of history, the 
 Orbis vcteribus notus ; and that the provincial administration 
 as well as the foreign policy of the Roman empire are repro- 
 duced, in several notable respects, by our system of government 
 in India. The conception is, of course, aided by the analogies 
 to be found between the position of the Romans in some of 
 their proconsulates and legations, and that of Englishmen in 
 Bengal or in the Punjab ; the administrative problems that 
 arise are much the same, and they are often solved in a similar 
 manner ; insomuch that for the cases before our courts we can 
 sometimes find very close precedents in those recorded as 
 having been placed before Roman procurators or prefects. 
 The consequence is that these ideas are continually recurring to 
 the mind of any one who attempts to survey India at the present 
 day, and to understand in what state the English found the 
 country, and what they are now doing there. All such 
 resemblances and comparisons help to bridge over the distance 
 between the ancient and the modern world, and to give more 
 distinct and familiar proportions to scenes and figures which 
 appear strange and beyond our own experience when we read of 
 them in history. We begin to feel the true religious atmo- 
 sphere of past ages, and to realize their political aspects. We see 
 that the polytheism of India still flows from sources and 
 assumes shapes similar to those which produced the beliefs and 
 worships of pra3-Christian Europe; and we understand more 
 clearly the situation that is created whenever a great empire is
 
 Till PREFACE. 
 
 formed by the intervention of a nation pre-eminent in arms 
 and civilization among backward and unstable communities. 
 
 Moreover, India not only presents a sort of picture in which 
 we may recognize and examine for ourselves many of the 
 features and incidents of early history; it also gives us a 
 connected view of society in different stages, of various forms 
 of tribal organization, of different systems of rule, and concep- 
 tions of sovereignty. The country affords a field of remarkable 
 abundance for the collection and verification at first hand of 
 living specimens of various types, especially for the study of 
 early ideas on the subject of religion and rulership, and for 
 observing the general movement of Asiatic society, which 
 appears to be not unlike ancient European society in a state of 
 arrested development. This field has been frequently and skil- 
 fully worked, by Sir Henry Maine and others, for the purpose 
 of scientific research ; and its exploration is of special value to 
 those who, like the English in India, are going through a course 
 of practical lessons in the great and prodigiously difficult art of 
 dealing with races of backward and alien civilizations. 
 
 The first chapter in this volume, upon the religion of an 
 Indian province, gives the conclusions formed by me upon the 
 nature and condition of Hinduism in certain inland districts of 
 India not very well known nor much visited, which, although 
 they are administered by British officers, are not part of 
 British India, and have preserved their local characteristics. 
 Chapter VII., on the formation of castes and clans, was 
 written after I had become acquainted with Rajputana, a 
 country parcelled out among native States, and possessing a 
 very rare and antique stratification of society, having still on 
 its surface things that have been long overlaid or swept away 
 in other parts of India.
 
 PKEFACE. IX 
 
 Chapter VIII. gives a description of this country, and enters 
 into some detail of its political history and social composition. 
 Of the other chapters, that upon the origin of divine myths in 
 India is, in effect, a somewhat venturesome attempt to resus- 
 citate the discredited notions of Euemerus on the subject, and 
 to suggest that some of the latest theories regarding the sources 
 of ancient mythology have been extended too far. The writer, 
 however, has no pretensions to scholarship, and can only claim 
 to have analysed and registered the visible growth of myths in 
 India as a phenomenon which cannot but throw much light upon 
 the derivation of the heroic and divine legends of classic 
 antiquity, in Europe as well as in Asia. In this chapter, and 
 in others, some account is also given of the manner in which 
 the myth-making faculty expands into the processes which 
 evolve polytheism by the gradual elevation of heroes, saints, and 
 remarkable personages to the higher honours of divinity. The 
 rapidity with which their real history became transformed and 
 their earthly origin is lost in the clouds, and the extent to which 
 the evolution of deities is still going on after this fashion 
 through a large portion of Asia, is perhaps not usually known 
 or appreciated, even by students of primitive religions. It 
 appears to be actively at work in China, under a curious and 
 probably unique system of State encouragement and control, 
 whereby the deifying processes are subordinated to adminis- 
 trative authority. Some illustrations of this system, and of the 
 extent to which it prevails, are given in the sixth chapter ; but 
 the exact nature of the relations between the government and 
 the religions of China can only be determined by those who 
 know the country and have mixed with the people. 
 
 Chapter V. reproduces an Essay in which I ventured upon 
 some dissent from certain views put forth by Professor Max
 
 X PEE FACE. 
 
 Miiller, in a lecture delivered in Westminster Abbey, regarding 
 the vitality of Brahrninism, and its classification as a Non- 
 Missionary religion. Professor Max Miiller did me the 
 honour of answering my remarks in an article which has 
 since been republished in " Chips from a German Workshop;'* 
 and I have now altered or toned down those parts of my original 
 essay which may have been written upon a misunderstanding 
 of the Lecturer's position, or which at any rate I am not 
 prepared to maintain against so distinguished an authority. 
 All that I desire, with deference, to uphold is that Brahminism 
 is a religion by no means dead or even moribund, but that, on 
 the contrary, numbers are constantly brought within its pale, 
 and are allowed to share more or less in its ritual. The last 
 four chapters consist mainly of political discussions and specu- 
 lations; they also contain references to controversies that were 
 going on at the time when they appeared as articles, so that 
 it is necessary to mention that they were all written not less 
 than ten years ago. " Islam in India" for instance, is a review 
 of a book published in 1871, and of course it does not nearly 
 cover the extensive ground indicated by this heading to the 
 chapter. Such questions as those relating to the present position 
 and prospects of our Mahomedan fellow subjects in India, to 
 their wants and feelings, and to the degree and manner in 
 which they are likely to be affected, as a community, by the 
 rapid advance of European civilization in India, require much 
 more elaborate and comprehensive treatment, and are indeed 
 closely allied to the momentous subject of the Future of Islam, 
 upon which. Mr. Wilfrid Blunt has recently published a disser- 
 tation of great interest As to the chapter on our Heligious 
 Policy in India, it gives some retrospective account of what 
 may be called, very roughly, the relations between Church and
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 State in British India, and its point is to argue that, taking the 
 two leading theories on the proper relations between the civil 
 government and religion to be, first, that which was advocated in 
 Mr. Gladstone's book on Church and State, and, secondly, the 
 contrary view propounded by Macaulay's review of the book, 
 between these two opposed theories Asiatic custom and public 
 opinion leans almost entirely to the side taken by Mr. Glad- 
 stone's book. In the final chapter, on the Religious situation 
 in India, some broad speculations have been hazarded upon 
 the probable course and outcome of religious development 
 under the very singular combination of circumstances which 
 have brought about the English empire in India. There can 
 be no doubt that the religions of a country are necessarily 
 acted upon by wide and deep political changes, by the substi- 
 tution of peace and the rule of law for uncertainty and dis- 
 order, and by the sudden advance of a new civilization. Any 
 speculations in this direction must inevitably be deeply coloured 
 by the impression which pervades all political survey of India, 
 and which is continually coming back on the spectator as a 
 scene in ordinary life suddenly brings to mind, and at times 
 appears actually to reproduce, something that one has witnessed 
 or read of before the profound impression of the analogy 
 between the English dominion in Asia and the vanished empire 
 of Rome. 
 
 The Essays in this volume, which originally appeared in the 
 pages of the Fortnightly Review, are now reprinted by the kind 
 permission of the proprietors of that journal. 
 
 A. C. LYALL.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The actual religious condition of India, with its extraordinary variety of 
 rites and worships, exemplifies the state of the civilized world in the 
 ages of classic polytheism, before Christianity or Islam had arisen 
 A brief account of the religious beliefs in one province, Berar, may 
 serve as a sample of Hinduism Constant growth, movement, and 
 change, of religious forms and conceptions Classification, suggesting 
 successive development, of the prevailing beliefs and liturgies, worship 
 of things inanimate, of animals, of spirits, of ghosts, of divine incar- 
 nations, of the supreme Brahmanic gods Some description of each 
 class, with their connexion and the gradual evolution of deities from 
 ancestral spirits, saints, heroes, and demi-gods Successful wonder- 
 working the selecting agency whereby this evolution is carried on ; 
 and the system of divine embodiment often the process of transmu- 
 tation into and assimilation with the higher deities of Brahmanism 
 Probability that the existing state of Hinduism will not last long . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. 
 
 Grote's conclusion, in the History of Greece, regarding myths Remarks 
 upon his argument Comparative observation of heroic and religious 
 myths of India may throw some light on the general subject of growth 
 of myths Leading authorities on mythology ascribe myths too largely 
 to personifications of natural phenomena Suggestion that the theory 
 of Euemerus has been too entirely condemned, and that in India the 
 deification of humanity is one main source of divine legends and of 
 theogonies The process of the generation and development of gods 
 can be witnessed in India Mythology developes into polytheism out 
 of the mystery of death, out of wonder at the deeds, sufferings, and
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 saintly character of remarkable men The Heaven thus created is a 
 reflection of the earth below, and religion rests upon the analogy of 
 nature Spiritual ascetics absorbed into materialistic divinities 
 General conclusion as to the various sources of the deities, their 
 legends, and attributes 30 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 INFLUENCE UPON RELIGION OF A RISE IN MORALITY. 
 
 Religion regarded by primitive and civilized men respectively from two 
 different stand-points In Europe religion could not now stand apart 
 from morality ; in India there is still no necessary connection In 
 India morality unable to advance without the concurrence of religion, 
 which adopts and authorizes useful and progressive ideas as soon as 
 they become popular, thus accommodating itself to the gradual im- 
 provement and enlarged ideas of mankind As moral sentiments and 
 notions of utility thus develop, the religion which accepts them be- 
 comes more refined and more rational ; and the sacred books lay down 
 consistent rules adjusted to new ideas and uses Influence of morality 
 tends to modify the capricious and malevolent character of early 
 divinities, while the recognition of order and regular sequence lessens 
 their direct responsibility for the world's affairs Difficulty of intro- 
 ducing moral systems without leaning for support on divine sanction, 
 which is the basis of all authoritative teaching, and of all claims, tem- 
 poral or religious, to legislate or command Titles of Indian dynasties 
 run back by presumption to divine origin British Government alone 
 in India rests on purely secular rights and its own power Question 
 whether physical conditions of India permit any great national or 
 moral changes 54 
 
 CHAPTER IT. 
 
 WITCHCRAFT AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 
 
 Enquiry into distinction between witchcraft and the lowest types of 
 religion Suggestion as to difference of origin and principle Religion 
 works invariably through some agency supposed to be divine ; witch- 
 craft works independently of priests and deities, and probably begins 
 with some accidental discoveries of natural laws Witches persecuted 
 in polytheist countries because their underworking is contraband, un- 
 aided by recognized supernatural powers or methods Resemblance 
 of practices and devices of witch finders in India to those formerly 
 used in Europe Cruelties inflicted on witches because they are sup-
 
 CONTEXTS. XV 
 
 PAGK 
 
 posed to be personally the cause of calamities ; also, because the priests 
 shift on to witches the blame of all inexplicable evils which the 
 gods cannot or will not cure As religion becomes purified and 
 elevated, this shifting process increases, and witchcraft becomes 
 more degraded and detested Men go to witches for disreputable 
 purposes, or when the gods fail to help Witchcraft protected by the 
 British Government in India ; is possibly the lowest phase of empiric 
 observation and inchoate, and thus superior to mere vague super- 
 naturalism 75 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MISSIONARY AND NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. 
 
 Professor Max Miiller's Lecture in Westminster Abbey, Deceml)er, 1873 
 His classification of religious systems as Missionary and Non-Mission- 
 ary Remarks on the classification of Brahmanism as non-missionary, 
 not upon the view that, as a proselytizing religion, it is dying or dead 
 Brahmanism still proselytizes in the sense of accepting and admit- 
 ting members from the outside Its spread among Non-Aryan tribes ; 
 examples and illustrations Its vitality as shown by reforming and 
 purifying movements from within ; and as an indigenous religion and 
 social system Question as to the future of Brahmanism Whether it 
 can transmute and raise itself in accordance with rising standards of 
 intelligence and morality Extensive changes will probably be gradual 
 Present state of Indian polytheism compared with Gibbon's sketch 
 of religion in the Roman Empire Possible difficulties and hazards of 
 a transitional period of general decay of traditional beliefs . . 99 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 RELATIONS BETWEEN THE STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. 
 
 Difference between earliest and latest ideas or relations between Religion 
 and the State Controversies in Europe over the question Separation 
 between religion and civil government is becoming a recognized 
 principle in Europe, while the contrary is still the rule in Asia 
 Islamitic institutions Position of the Chinese government, and its 
 method of dealing with the three official religions of China Confucian, 
 Buddhist, Taouist, all independently established as separate creeds 
 Public -worship of the Chinese, rites performed by Emperor The 
 Pekin Gazette ; illustrate the attitude of the Government toward 
 religion, and explain its influence Posthumous honours and titles 
 bestowed on deceased persons, their deification by order of govern- 
 ment Titles and rewards given to divinities for public services,
 
 
 XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 instances quoted Control exercised by the State over Buddhist incar- 
 nations, cases cited from Gazette Intellectual condition of a people 
 which sees no clear distinction between the unseen and the visible 
 world, between gods and men Danger of too close connection between 
 religion and the State 122 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ON THE FORMATION OF SOME CLANS AND CASTES IN INDIA. 
 
 Early history of nations runs back to a tribal period Reference to this 
 period in European history The Native States of Central India, which 
 have been left outside the great empires of India, are still in the state 
 of tribal formation Description of this state of society, no nation- 
 alities, the people are classed in clans and sects, by kinship or worship 
 Examples of grouping by consanguinity and by Keligion Descrip- 
 tion of the structure and development of a consanguineous group 
 Circles of affinity Connection between lowest and highest groups, 
 Non- Aryan tribes, predatory tribes, half blood and pure blood clans 
 Influence on a clan of the original founder or leader Effect upon 
 social formations of religious ideas, rise of sects, and their transition 
 into castes Narrowing of circle of affinity Possible connection of 
 these early phases of society with latest European forms . . .150 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE RAJPtfT STATES OF INDIA. 
 
 Political institutions of Rajputana preserved by the English Description 
 of the country called Rajputana, its boundaries, and the States which 
 it includes Origin and development of Rajput States and the domi- 
 nant clans Brief retrospect of their history during the time of the 
 Moghal empire ; connection of the ruling families with the Emperors 
 Effect on Rajputana of period of anarchy during 18th century when 
 the empire collapsed The States rescued from destruction by the 
 English Government Extinction of predatory rights by Lord 
 Hastings, and his establishment of permanent peace Examination 
 of the constitution of a Rajput State and of the nature of its organiz- 
 ation : the Chief is the head of a clan, and the descendant of the State's 
 founder Rules of succession to chiefship and customary practice of 
 selection ; the hereditary right subject to condition of fitness Policy 
 of English Government in disputed cases Subordinate chiefs and 
 landholders, qteir rights and obligations Tenures not feudal, but 
 according to tribal usages and privileges of kinship Primogeniture 
 Marriage customs Religious movements Fosterage Remarks on 
 the character and durability of these institutions . . . .181
 
 CONTENTS. XV11 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ISLAM IN INDIA. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dr. Hunter's literary skill and success as a writer on India Reference to 
 Mahomcdan grievances as stated by Dr. Hunter in his " Indian Musal- 
 mans," and by Colonel Lees in a pamphlet Remarks and criticisms 
 upon these statements, and upon the real position and feelings of 
 Indian Mahomedans Brief historical retrospect of our relations with 
 the Mahomedans, and of the cause of events leading up to the existing 
 situation, in which the English have succeeded to the political supre- 
 macy over India relinquished by the Mahomedans Question whether 
 religions texts or rulings have much practical effect on the acts or 
 attitude of Mahomedans Observations upon the inevitable anomalies 
 and difficulties surrounding English government in India Same dis- 
 content and disappointment among Mahomedans unavoidable Syud 
 Ahmed's polemical controversy with Sir William Muir Unpopularity 
 of Wahabis among Mahomedans The educational policy of the Indian 
 Government, how far it actually deserves the imputation of formidable 
 errors and grievances Examination of specific charges ; nature and 
 effect oftqn exaggerated Explanation of our general policy ; the 
 substantial complaints against it mainly founded on incidents inse- 
 parable from the situation ; to be remedied by time, goodwill, steady 
 and impartial administration, and the general spread of our civilizing 
 influences 228 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. 
 
 Difficulty of position of the British Government in India, in regard to the 
 numerous creeds and sects ; and to the widely different phases of 
 religious opinion in Europe and in Asia Brief sketch of the early 
 policy of toleration adopted by the English in India, disregard shown 
 for political reasons to native Christians ; careful performance of State 
 ceremonial towards Hindu worships Gradual effect of missionary pro- 
 tests against connexion of English Government with the religions of 
 the country ; withdrawal of Government from superintendence of 
 endowments ; counter protests of natives against total withdrawal ; 
 course and tendency of legislation on the subject ; effect upon it of 
 the mutiny Grievances of the Mahomedans as put forward by Eng- 
 lish writers ; criticism of their views Suggestions as to the proper 
 
 policy to be followed .... 
 
 b
 
 XV111 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN INDIA. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The striking appearance presented by the religious aspect of India as a 
 survival of the world of pne-Christian ages Geographical and his- 
 toric reasons why India has been thus preserved, whereas all Asia 
 west of India has been levelled by Islam, which only partially estab- 
 lished itself in India Incoherence and confusion of religions in 
 India, to be accounted for mainly by its political history India has 
 never been organized, as a whole, into one great State ; and it has 
 been dilapidated by incessant wars The multitude of gods and rites 
 recalls the description of polytheism in the Roman empire, given by 
 Eusebius Analogy between the effect on ancient polytheism of the 
 establishment of the Roman peace, and the possible influence upon 
 Hinduism of the English government in India Speculation as to the 
 future of Hinduism under civilized influences and an ordinary govern- 
 ment Probable disappearance or complete transformation of existing 
 ideas and worships The English have only to superintend gradual 
 moral and intellectual progress ; their empire the most efficient 
 instrument of civilization among dissociated communities . . . 287
 
 ASIATIC STUDIES: 
 
 RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 KELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. 
 
 The actual religious condition of India, with its extraordinary variety of rites and 
 worships, exemplifies the state of the civilized world in the ages of classic 
 polytheism, before Christianity or Islam had arisen A brief account of the 
 religious beliefs in one province, Berar, may serve as a sample of Hinduism 
 Constant growth, movement, and change, of religious forms and conceptions 
 Classification, suggesting successive development, of the prevailing beliefs 
 and liturgies, worship of things inanimate, of animals, of spirits, of ghosts, 
 of divine incarnations, of the supreme Brahmanic gods Some description of 
 each class, with their connexion and the gradual evolution of deities from 
 ancestral spirits, saints, heroes, and demi-gods Successful wonder-working- 
 the selecting agency whereby this evolution is carried on ; and the system 
 of divine embodiment often the process of transmutation into and assimilation 
 with the higher deities of Brahmanism Probability that the existing state 
 of Hinduism will not last long. 
 
 THE general form and complexion of Hinduism is familiar 
 enough to those who take interest in the subject of Asiatic 
 religions. Many persons know that the Hindus are divided, 
 as to their theology, into various sects, schools, and orders ; 
 that their orthodox Brahmanical doctrines express an esoteric 
 Pantheism by an exoteric Polytheism ; and that the mass of 
 the people worship innumerable gods with endless diversity of 
 ritual. A few students of India in England know a great deal 
 more than this ; but I doubt whether any one who has not 
 lived among Hindus can adequately realise the astonishing 
 variety of their ordinary religious beliefs, the constant changes 
 of shape and colour which these beliefs undergo, the extraor-
 
 2 RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 dinary fecundity of the superstitious sentiment in short, the 
 scope, range, depth, and height of religious ideas and practices 
 prevailing simultaneously among the population of one coun- 
 try, or of one not very extensive province. It is not easy, 
 indeed, for Europeans of this century to realise the condition 
 even of a great continent in which there are no nationalities ; 
 or to perceive how in a mere loose conglomeration of tribes, 
 races, and castes the notion of religious unity, or even of common 
 consent by a people as to the fundamental bases of worship, 
 can hardly be comprehended, much less entertained. For 
 nationality is, as we know, a thing of modern growth ; when 
 Charlemagne restored the Western Empire, he swept within 
 its pale not nations but tribes Franks and Saxons, Lombards 
 and Gauls just as we have subdued and now rule, in India, 
 Sikhs, Pathans, Rajputs, and Marathas. It is therefore, per- 
 haps, 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 organised 
 and executed throughout Europe by the combined authority of 
 the Holy Roman Empire and the Church Catholic. From 
 this Asiatic standpoint, looking down upon a tangled jungle of 
 disorderly superstitions, upon ghosts and demons, demigods, 
 and deified saints ; upon household gods, tribal gods, local 
 gods, universal gods ; with their countless shrines and temples, 
 and the din of their discordant rites ; upon deities who abhor 
 a fly's death, upon those who delight still in human victims, 
 and upon those who would not either sacrifice or make offering 
 looking down upon such a religious chaos, throughout a vast 
 region never subdued or levelled (like all Western Asia) by 
 Mahomedan or Christian monotheism, we realise the huge 
 enterprise undertaken by those who first set forth to establish 
 one Faith for all mankind, and an universal Church on earth. 
 We perceive more clearly what classic polytheism was by real 
 ising what Hinduism actually is. We have been so much 
 habituated in Europe to associate any great historic religion 
 with the idea of a Church (if not in its mediaeval sense, then 
 in the sense of a congregation of the faithful), that most of us 
 assign this kind of settled character and organic form to
 
 CHAP. I.] A FAIR SAMPLE OF HINDUISM. 3 
 
 paganism, modern or ancient, so long as it is not barbarism. 
 We are thus prone to assume that a people like the Hindus, 
 with their history, literature, sacred books, and accumulated 
 traditions, must by this time have built up some radical 
 dogmas, or at least some definite conceptions of divinity, which 
 the upper classes would have imposed on the crowd as limits 
 to mere superstitious phantasy. For centuries Christianity has 
 marched, along its entire settled frontier, with no other reli- 
 gion beside Mahomedanism, which has distinctive tenets and a 
 firmly-set pale ; therefore we do not readily appreciate the 
 state of millions of Hindus to whom any such common bond 
 or circumscription is altogether wanting. We can scarcely 
 comprehend an ancient religion, still alive and powerful, which 
 is a mere troubled sea, without shore or visible horizon, driven 
 to and fro by the winds of boundless credulity and grotesque 
 invention. 
 
 I have supposed, therefore, that it might be worth while to 
 attempt a brief description of the actual condition, character, 
 and tendencies of the religious beliefs now prevailing in one 
 province of India. It will present, I believe, a fair average 
 sample of Hinduism as a whole, like a pail of water taken out 
 of a pond. But I do not purpose to draw the well-known 
 figures of Brahmanic theology, nor to rehearse standard myths 
 and heroic fables common to all India. The doctrine of 
 Brahmanism, and the whole apparatus of its ceremonial, with 
 its sects, orthodox or heterodox, flourish in this particular 
 province much as they do in all others ; I assume that the 
 outline of them has been studied and understood. My present 
 plan is to try whether the different superstitious notions and 
 forms of worship which fall under everyday observation in an 
 Indian district, can be arranged so as to throw any light upon 
 recent theories as to the gradual upward growth and successive 
 development of religion through connected stages. That the 
 sphere of observation has, for the purposes of this essay, been 
 mostly confined within provincial limits, is a condition not 
 without certain advantages. By comparing different ages, 
 diverse societies, and men under dissimilar physical environ- 
 ment, we may collect without difficulty every species and 
 
 B 2
 
 4 RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAV. I, 
 
 variety of superstition required to fit up our respective theories 
 of religious evolution ; and people have thus been accustomed 
 to construct such theories upon materials drawn from an infi- 
 nite diversity of habitations or races scattered over long periods 
 of time. The convenience of ranging over such a wide field of 
 selection may sometimes tempt us to ascribe to the customs and 
 fancies of distant and greatly differing societies a closer rela- 
 tionship and inter-connexion than really exist. But if the 
 living specimens can all be gathered from one country, then 
 their affinity may seem more demonstrable, and the manner of 
 their sequence or descent more intelligible. At any rate, the 
 actual facts may be thus brought more easily under a connected 
 view, and within compass of accurate research ; while it may 
 be interesting (setting aside all theories) to observe a whole 
 vegetation of cognate beliefs sprouting up in every stage of 
 growth beneath the shadow of the great orthodox traditions 
 and allegories of Brahnianism. 
 
 The province (commonly called Berar) from which I have 
 drawn my facts is situated nearly in the centre of India ; it is- 
 almost identical in area with the present kingdom of Greece on 
 , the mainland ; and it contains* 2,250,000 inhabitants, of whom 
 155,000 are Musalmans, and the rest (of the natives) are 
 loosely called Hindus. Now just as the word Hindu is no 
 national or even geographical denomination, but signifies 
 vaguely a fortuitous conglomeration of sects, tribes, races, 
 hereditaiy professions, and pure castes ; so the religion of this 
 population of Hindus is at first sight a heterogeneous confu- 
 sion. Without doubt much of this miscellany may be at once 
 referred, for its source, to the composite character of its 
 people. The Hindus proper, who can be ranged in known 
 castes, have come in by migrations from North, South, and 
 "West ; 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. Neverthe- 
 less, the various superstitions have long ceased to correspond 
 
 * 1868.
 
 . I.] THE SYSTEM OF CASTE. 5 
 
 with ethnic varieties ; they have even little accordance with 
 gradations of social position or of civil estate. Moreover, the 
 characteristic which, after close examination, most strike an 
 European observer, is not so much the heterogeneity of the 
 popular religion taken at a glance, as the fact that it is a thing 
 which is constantly growing ; that it is perceptibly following 
 certain modes of generation, transmutation, and growth, which 
 point toward and lead up from the lower toward the higher 
 kinds of belief. Here, as everywhere in like conditions, the 
 floating and molecular state of society has prevented religious 
 consolidation ; while again the multiformity of religion reacts 
 continually upon the society, subjecting its constitution to a 
 perpetual morcellement. And the wedges which have riven 
 asunder and are keeping separate the general mass of the 
 Indian people are furnished and applied by the system of 
 Caste. The two great outward and visible signs of caste 
 fellowship, intermarriage and the sharing of food, are the bonds 
 which unite or isolate groups. Now Caste seems to be the 
 stereotype mould which has in India preserved those antique 
 prejudices of blood and religion that have been worn out or 
 destro} T ed in almost all countries of equal or inferior civiliza- 
 tion ; and so far as caste is by origin Ethnological, Political, 
 or Professional, its tendency in modern India is to subside 
 and fade away out of active life. But to this threefold classifi- 
 cation (by Professor Max Miiller) * of the source of Indian 
 caste must be added, I submit, a fourth term, Sectarian, mean- 
 ing the castes which are produced by difference of religion, by 
 new gods, new rites, new views, and new dogmas. While 
 the three first-named sources are virtually closed, producing no 
 fresh varieties, this fourth source is still open and flowing, and 
 its effect upon the social fabric is still actively dissolvent. 
 Where tribal and political distinctions are blending and amal- 
 gamating according to the ordinary operation of civilizing 
 forces, this process is in India continually interrupted and foiled 
 by the religious element of disseveration ; the community, 
 instead of coalescing, is again split \ip by divergencies of doc- 
 
 * " Chips from a German Workshop."
 
 6 .RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 trine, of ritual, or by some mere caprice of superstition, into 
 separate bodies which eat and intermarry only among them- 
 selves, thus establishing and preserving isolation. New 
 objects of adoration are continually being discovered and 
 becoming popular; certain shrines get into fashion, or an 
 image is set up, or a temple built ; new prophets arise with 
 fresh messages to deliver, or with fresh rules for a devout life. 
 Holy men are canonized by the vox populi after death, or even 
 attain apotheosis as incarnations of the elder gods; and these 
 also have usually their recognised disciples. In fact, the chief 
 among these moralists and miracle-workers are the founders of 
 sects, and sects always tend to become sub-castes. Thus 
 the objects of Hindu adoration are constantly changing, so 
 that the Indian Pantheon, like the palace in the Persian 
 parable, is but a caravanserai ; the great dome of many- 
 coloured glass endures with little change, but its occupants 
 come and go. And these novelties of teaching or practice 
 mark oft' the persons who adopt them ; the devotees often 
 become known by a separate denomination which denotes a 
 peculiar discipline or tenet, or perhaps only the exclusive 
 worship of one god or deified man. So that, if a metaphor 
 may be borrowed from physical science, we may say that in 
 India all Hindu religions belong to the fisslparous order, they 
 have the property of disseverance into portions, each of which 
 retains life and growth. And as the direction taken by the 
 development of any considerable sect is toward the formation 
 of a caste, the result is that continual piece-meal disintegration 
 by religious anarchy of the mass of society, which I have 
 endeavoured to describe. 
 
 We can perceive the vestiges of similar tendencies even in 
 Great Britain, where very peculiar sectaries, like the Quakers, 
 have lived and married for generations among themselves, and 
 where any radical antagonism of creeds is still a serious bar to 
 matrimony. But the state of things in India can only be 
 realised by supposing that the Irvingites, for instance, should 
 have become, as an inevitable and obvious consequence of their 
 distinctive tenets, a class so far drawn apart from the rest of 
 England that marriage beyond the communion would be of
 
 CHAP. I.] CLASSIFICATION OF BELIEFS. 7 
 
 disputable validity*, and dining with them would compromise 
 the social and religious reputation of Anglican Churchmen.* 
 
 To give any intelligible account of beliefs and liturgies thus 
 complicated, some system of classification appears necessary. 
 I have therefore attempted to adopt one, though I do not 
 pretend to much confidence in the hypothesis which it involves. 
 Taking as the lowest stage of religious thought that conception 
 which seems the most narrow and superficial, and proceeding 
 upward as the ideas which I suppose to lie at the root of each 
 conception become wider and more far-fetched, I should distri- 
 bute the popular worship that can now be witnessed within 
 Berar into the grades here following. It should be explained 
 that these divisions in no way denote separate bodies of exclu- 
 sive votaries, nor do they correspond even with any parallel 
 steps of civilized intelligence or of social position. The 
 average middle-class Hindu might be brought by one part or 
 another of his everyday religious practice, within any or many 
 of these classes, namely : 
 
 1. The worship of mere stocks and stones and of local con- 
 figurations, which are unusual or grotesque in size, shape, or 
 position. 
 
 2. The worship of things inanimate, which are gifted with 
 mysterious motion. 
 
 3. The worship of animals which are feared. 
 
 4. The worship of visible things animate or inanimate which 
 are directly or indirectly useful and profitable, or which possess 
 any incomprehensible function or property. 
 
 * Much might be suggested here (in approve of the common Hindu marriage 
 
 support of what Sir Henry Maine has ceremonies ; but for a long time it was 
 
 recently pointed out) upon the peculiar not safe for the Brahmoists to disregard 
 
 influence of the English law in arresting them, because any material omission of 
 
 in India this process of constant change; the customary rites might invalidate 
 
 in stereotyping institutions once found their marriage in an English court of 
 
 to exist, or perhaps only found by books law. Had no such court existed, they 
 
 to have existed, the facts haying would probably have gone their own 
 
 been long since transformed. A very way, and become a sub-caste, with 
 
 notable example of this may be seen in matrimonial rules of their own, which 
 
 the history and present state of the would have been recognised as per- 
 
 modern sect called Brahmo Somdj. fectly valid, for Brahmists, by all 
 
 They are philosophical deists, who dis- Hindus.
 
 S RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 5. The worship of a Deo, or spirit, a thing without form 
 and void the vague impersonation of the uncanny sensation 
 that comes over one at certain places. 
 
 6. The worship of dead relatives and other deceased persons 
 known in their lifetime to the worshipper. 
 
 7. The worship of persons who had a great reputation 
 during life, or who died in some strange or notorious way at 
 shrines. 
 
 8. The worship, in temples, of the persons belonging to the 
 foregoing class, as demigods or subordinate deities. 
 
 9. The worship of manifold local incarnations of the elder 
 deities, and of their symbols. 
 
 10. The worship of departmental deities. 
 
 11. The worship of the supreme gods of Hinduism, and of 
 their ancient incarnations and personifications, handed down 
 by the Brahmanic scriptures. 
 
 This category comprises, I think, all the different kinds of 
 Fetichisrn and Polytheism which make up the popular religion 
 of Berar. "With the inner and higher sides of Hindu teaching 
 and belief known in the country I do not now pretend to deal, 
 except so far as these doctrines (which are usually to be respected 
 as profound and serious) have degenerated into mere idolatry 
 of symbols, a relapse to which they are constantly liable. And 
 with regard to the varieties of worship in the catalogue just 
 finished, they are of course deeply tinged throughout by the 
 strong skylight reflection of over-arching Brahmanism ; whence 
 the topmost classes now pretend to derive their meaning 
 immediately. Yet it may be said of all (except perhaps of the 
 latest classes in the series) that these ideas are not so much 
 the offspring of Brahmanism as its children by adoption ; they 
 have not sprung out of.any authoritative teaching or revelation 
 which would control and guide their development, nor are they 
 the decaying survivals either of a higher faith or of a lower 
 superstition. They are living and fertile conceptions of 
 species constantly germinating and throwing up new shoots, in 
 the present age and in the country where they are found. 
 
 The Worship of Stocks or Stones, for instance, is an active 
 species which incessantl} 7 spreads and reproduces itself before
 
 CHAP. I.] WORSHIP OF MERE STOCKS OR STONES. 9 
 
 our eyes, with different modifications that all eventually find 
 their place and meaning in the general order of the people's 
 religion. This worship has been placed in the lowest class, 
 because it is taken to represent the earliest phase of Indian 
 fetichisin now existing. Let fetichism he defined as the 
 straightforward objective adoration of visible substances fancied 
 to possess some mysterious influence or faculty ; then it may be 
 supposed that the intelligence which argues that a stock or stone 
 embodies divinity only because it has a queer, unusual form, 
 expresses a low type of fetichism. And to this type I am 
 disposed to refer, for their original idea and motive, all such 
 practices as the worship of a stone oddly shaped, of a jutting bit 
 of rock, a huge boulder lying alone in the plain, a circle of 
 stones, a peculiar mark on the hill-side or a hummock atop, an 
 ancient carved pillar, a milestone unexpectedly set up where 
 none was before, with strange hieroglyphics, a telegraph post, 
 fossils with their shell marks ; in fact, any object of the kind 
 that catches attention as being out of the common wa}'. Now 
 the Brahrnanic explanation of this reverence for curious-look- 
 ing things, especially for things conical and concave, is always 
 at hand and producible to the earnest inquirer after divine 
 emblems or manifestations ; but these interpretations appear to 
 belong to a later symbolism, which is habitually invented by the 
 more ingenious to account upon orthodox principles for what is 
 really nothing but primitive fetichism rising into a higher atmos- 
 phere. I mean that this worship would prevail in India if the 
 Brahmanic symbolism had never been thought of does prevail, 
 as a fact, in other far-distant countries. For the feeling which 
 -actuates the uninitiated Indian worshipper of stocks and stones, 
 or of what are called freaks of nature, is in its essence that simple 
 awe of the unusual which belongs to no particular religion. It 
 survives, in England to this day in the habit of ascribing 
 grotesque and striking landmarks or puzzling antiquities to the 
 Devil, who is, or has been, the residuary legatee of all obsolete 
 Pagan superstitions in Christian countries. In any district of 
 India such objects or local configurations as the Devil's Quoits 
 {near Stanton), the Devil's Jumps (in Surrey), or the Devil's 
 Punch-bowl (in Sussex), would be worshipped ; similar things
 
 10 RELIGION OF AX INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 are actually worshipped all over Berar, and in every case some 
 signification, either mythical or symbolical, has been contrived 
 or sanctioned by some expert Brahman to justify and authorise 
 the custom. Yet it seems certain that among the vulgar there 
 is at first no arrivrepensee, or second meaning, in their adoration. 
 The worshipper requires no such motive, he asks. for no sign, 
 offers no prayer, expects no reward. He pa} T s reverent atten- 
 tions to the Unaccountable Thing, the startling expression of 
 an unknown power, and goes his way. It is not difficult to 
 perceive how this original downright adoration of queer-look- 
 ing objects is modified by passing into the higher order of 
 imaginative superstition. First, the stone is the abode of some 
 spirit; its curious shape or situation betraying JJOSSCSSJOH. 
 Next, this strange form or aspect argues some design, or 
 handiwork, of supernatural beings, or is the vestige of their 
 presence on earth ; and one step further lands us in the world- 
 wide regions of mythology and heroic legend, when the natural 
 remarkable features of a hill, a cleft rock, a cave, or a fossil, 
 commemorate the miracles and feats of some saint, demi-god, 
 or full-blown deity. Berar is abundantly furnished with such 
 fables, and beyond them we get, as I think, to the regarding of 
 stones as emblems of mysterious attributes, to the phallic 
 rites, to the Saligram or fossil iii which Vishnu is manifest, 
 and to all that class of notions which entirely separate the 
 outward image from the power really worshipped. So that at 
 last we emerge into pure symbolism, as when anything appears 
 to be selected arbitrarily to serve as a visible point for spiritual 
 adoration. The present writer knew a Hindu officer of great 
 shrewdness and very fair education, who devoted several hours 
 daily to the elaborate worship of five round pebbles, which he 
 had appointed to be his symbol of Omnipotence. Although 
 his general belief was in one all-pervading Divinity, he must 
 have something symbolic to handle and address. 
 
 It may be affirmed that the adoration of Things Inanimate 
 having motion is, even in its rudest expression, more reason- 
 able than the habit of staring with awe at a big stone, and 
 may therefore be held to mark a slight advance towards higher 
 levels. In Berar we have the worship of elements as fetich,
 
 CHAP. I.] WORSHIP OF THINGS INANIMATE. 11 
 
 of elements inhabited and directed by local spirits, and of 
 elements with mythological origin or descent from the gods. 
 Water runs up this whole gamut or scale of religious expres- 
 sion. The honours paid to i\ running brook, a hot spring, or 
 to a river that alternately floods and falls causing famine or 
 abundance, bringing riches or ruin are intended for the living 
 water itself by a large class of votaries ; and this notion of 
 material identity seems preserved by the customs of bathing in 
 sacred streams, of self-drowning, and of witch-dipping, which 
 last custom resembles exactly that of England.* Suicide and 
 witch-dipping in rivers present both sides of the same concep- 
 tion, acceptance or rejection by the divine element. Further 
 on, the water-power is no longer deified nature, but controlled 
 by a supernatural spirit, we have the kelpie who inhabits 
 rivers under the form of a buffalo and personifies their effects. 
 His name is ^lahisoba, he has no image, but a buffalo's head is 
 cut off and deposited on his altar. After this we ascend to 
 mythologic fictions about the origin and descent of the greater 
 rivers from the Hindu heaven, and to legends of streams 
 turned, stopped, or otherwise engineered by interposition of 
 the divine energy incarnate. The Southern Berar country is 
 much tossed about by intersecting ridges and devious hill- 
 ranges. The rivers pierce their way down from the watersheds 
 by sharp angles and deep cuttings which suggest mighty forces. 
 A torrent goes struggling and rushing through its channel 
 choked by huge rocks and broken by rapids. The muffled roar 
 of its waters, which cease not night or day, affect the mind 
 with a sense of endless labour and pain ; you might well fancy 
 that the river-god was moaning over his eternal task of cleaving 
 stony barriers and drawing down the tough basalt hills. Fire 
 is a great Hindu Fetich, but it is nowhere in Berar generated 
 spontaneously ; and I believe that even the worship of Agni, 
 the fire-god, has fallen to desuetude. The sun is the tribal god, 
 as fetich, of the aboriginal Korkus who live apart among 
 the northern hills of Berar ; of course he is also worshipped 
 by all Hindus under different conceptions and doctrines regard- 
 
 * It will be recollected tb.it an old suspicion of sorcery, so late as the year 
 Frenchman was drowned in Essex, on of grace 1863.
 
 1 2 RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 ing his personality. Tree- worship has a wide range. A tree 
 is first reverenced as a thing to be feared, having sentient 
 existence and mysterious potency, as proved by waving 
 branches and weird sounds. Next, fruitful trees are honoured 
 for yielding good fruits, which are bestowed yearly in more 
 or less quantity according to some hidden caprice that, may 
 possibly be propitiated ; then a particular species becomes 
 sacred to a well-known god ; or a great solitary trunk becomes 
 the abode of a nameless impalpable spirit ; or a dark grove or 
 thicket may be his habitation. Soon this is perceived to be 
 ground sacred to one of the acknowledged Hindu deities, with 
 recognised titles and attributes ; either by having got woven 
 into some myth or local legend, or because some pious person 
 sets up a temple therein, or because an anchorite fixes his 
 hermitage there and devotes himself to a particular divinity. 
 There are several thickets and clumps of trees in Berar, from 
 which no stick is ever cut, nor even the dead wood picked up, 
 though firewood is scarce and timber valuable. A temple or 
 shrine will usually be found among the trees ; but the sanctity of 
 the spot does not necessarily derive from the building, the 
 converse is more likely to be the case ; and I conjecture that 
 these dim and dusky retreats have usualty been at first conse- 
 crated to the gods by some alarming accident or apparition 
 which betokened the presence of a deity. 
 
 It does not seem hard to trace up thus in India, from the 
 root of primitive tree-worship, the growth and ramification of 
 the innumerable customs which, in the East, as once in 
 England, ascribe essential virtues to certain trees in matters of 
 ritual use and magic practice. In Berar different families are 
 said to pay exclusive honour to certain kinds of trees ; the rod 
 of a special wood still divines water, and witches are scourged 
 with switches of the castor-oil plant, which possesses sovereign 
 virtue in the exorcising and dislodging of the evil power. It 
 has been said that the English held hazelwood to be of specific 
 efficacy in both cases, for detecting water and witches ; while the 
 Maypole and the misletoe are supposed to be relics of early Keltic 
 tree-worship. But in England the pedigree of these customs is 
 dim, dubious, and disputable ; the Church has for ages been
 
 CHAP. I.] WORSHIP OF ANIMALS. 13 
 
 denouncing and stamping out the ancient indigenous super- 
 stitions. "Whereas in India the aboriginal autocthonic ideas of 
 the country folk have been subjected to no persecution by 
 dominant faiths, so that the entire concatenation of these ideas 
 may be exhibited and tested within one province ; the various 
 practices and beliefs are alive before us ; the sequence of them 
 is close ; we can collect the evidence of our eyes and verify it 
 by cross-examination of devout believers, men far above the 
 mental calibre of ignorant savages and rude peasants. 
 
 The worship of Animals, which by their appearance or habits 
 alarm and startle human beings, is so obvious in its primitive 
 reason, and so common throughout India, that it needs no 
 detailed description for Berar. Of course, the tiger, wolf, 
 monkey, serpent, and, above all serpents, the cobra di capdla, 
 are the most prominent objects of reverence. Some modifica- 
 tions and later aspects of the primordial instinct towards pro- 
 pitiation of a fearsome beast may be noticed. For instance, a 
 malignant tiger's body may be possessed by the unquiet ghost 
 of a dead man ; or it may be the disguise adopted by a living 
 sorcerer of evil temper. In another province an old witch, 
 suspected of roving at night under a striped skin, had all her 
 teeth knocked out to disable her. Here we have the transition 
 from a simple Fetich to the idea of a disembodied spirit, and 
 of possession. Then the idea gets completely superhuman ; 
 the tiger is an evil demon, without antecedent connection with 
 humanity ; and the terror spread abroad by such a pest become 
 wholly preternatural has led to the institution of a depart- 
 mental god, just as a violent epidemic necessitates a special 
 administration to control it. Any application having reference 
 to the ravages of a tiger, ma3 r be addressed to Waglidco, 
 though the particular beast who vexes you should also be 
 cajoled with offerings. But the most complete and absolute 
 elevation of an animal to the higher ranks of deified beings is 
 to be seen in the case of Hannman, who from a sacred monkey 
 has risen, through mists of heroic fable and wild forest legends, 
 to be the universal tutelary god of all village settlements. The 
 setting up of his image in the midst of an hamlet is the out- 
 ward and visible sign and token of fixed habitation, so that he
 
 1-i RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 is found in every township. Ward, in his work on the Hindu 
 religion, says that the monkey is venerated in memory of the 
 demigod Hanuman, which seems to be plainly putting the cart 
 before the horse, for the monkey is evidently at the bottom of 
 the whole story. Hanuman is now generally supposed to have 
 been adopted into the Hindu heaven, from the Non-Aryan or 
 aboriginal idolatries ; though to my mind any uncivilized 
 Indian of this day, Aryan or Non- Aryan, would surely fall 
 down and worship at first sight of such a beast as the ape. 
 Then there is the modern idea that this god was really a great 
 chief of some such aboriginal tribe as those which to this day 
 dwell almost like wild creatures in the remote forests of India ; 
 and this may well be the nucleus of fact at the bottom of the 
 famous legend regarding him. It seems as if hero-worship and 
 animal-worship had got mixed up in the myth of Hanuman. 
 At any rate his traditions and attributes illustrate curiously the 
 process by which a mere animal fetich, dreaded for his 
 ugliness and half-human ways, soon rises to be an elfin king of 
 the monkey tribe, next becomes a powerful genius, and latterly 
 emerges into the full glory of divine Avatar, surrounded by 
 the most extravagant fables to explain away the simian head and 
 tail which have stuck to him through all his metamorphoses. 
 
 Some examples may be given of the simple and superficial 
 indications which suffice to prove divine manifestations in 
 animals. The goat has a peculiar trick of shivering at inter- 
 vals, and this is taken to be the afflatus. In the North of 
 India he is turned loose along a disputed border-line, and 
 where he shivers there is the mark set up ; the Thugs would 
 only sacrifice a goat if the patroness Devi had signified accept- 
 ance by one of these tremors, but then they washed the animal 
 to make him shake himself the quicker.* Obviously this habit 
 (like the bray of an ass, which is one of the strongest omens) 
 is ascribed to supernatural seizure, because it is uncertain, 
 inexplicable, and apparently motiveless. I remark, in passing, 
 
 * Plutarch mentions that among the cold water. If the animal did not shiver 
 
 Greeks the test whether a goat was in a and shake himself when the water was 
 
 fit state for the sacrifice that preceded thrown over him, the offering was not 
 
 the interrogation of an oracle, was by judged acceptable to the god.
 
 CHAP. I.] WORSHIP OF VISIBLE THINGS. 15 
 
 that the scapegoat is an institution widely known and con- 
 stantly used in India. The cat seems to be comparatively 
 unnoticed by Indian credulity, though her squalling at night 
 boded ill to Thugs ; and it may be guessed that only in lands 
 where the great carnivora have been exterminated does she 
 keep up the last faint relics of primitive animal-worship. 
 With wild beasts that are a real plague and horror she has no 
 chance in competition for the honours of diablerie; but her 
 nocturnal wanderings, her noiseless motions, and her capacity 
 for sudden demoniac fierceness distinguish her from other 
 domesticated animals ; so that her uncanny reputation still 
 survives among the obscure pagan superstitions yet haunting 
 us under the name of witchcraft. 
 
 The worship of Things and creatures beneficial might be 
 classed apart from and after that of puzzling and menacing 
 things, dead or alive, because the idea of gratitude and of 
 boons attainable by propitiations seems a step in advance of 
 the idea of averting ills. I have already alluded to the rever- 
 ence paid to fruitful trees ; and everyone knows that horned 
 cattle, the wealth of a simple society, are adored throughout 
 India. Comte remarks that this feeling has preserved certain 
 species of plants and animals through the ages when no owner- 
 ship existed to protect them ; but after all they were really pre- 
 served by the universal appreciation of their value ; and worship 
 was only the savage man's expression of his sense of that value, 
 combined with his ignorance of the laws which gave or with- 
 held it. 
 
 Next after Plants and Animals, in the order of progress from 
 the simple to the more complex notions might be placed the 
 grotesque practice of worshipping Implements, Utensils, and 
 generally the tools of the trade or craft by which one subsists. 
 Not only does the husbandman pray to his plough, the fisher 
 to his net,* the weaver to his loom; but the scribe adores his 
 pen, and the banker his account books. Each sets up the thing 
 
 * Compare Habakkuk, i. 16, "There- Thugs, who used to worship the pick- 
 fore thej 7 sacrifice unto their net," &c. axe which they carried for speedy 
 Of this custom, the most sensational burial of their victims on the spot of 
 example was to be found among the the murder.
 
 16 RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 itself as a fetich, does it homage, and makes offering before 
 it. To ascribe to the implements the power which lies in the 
 guiding hand or brain, is at least a thought farther fetched than 
 to adore the generation of fruit on a tree, or the swelling udders 
 of a cow ; while the same fancy survives and is reflected over 
 and over again in the legends of mediaeval magic, of magic 
 swords, enchanted armour, seven-leagued boots, and the like. 
 Moreover, it may be permissible to regard this tool-worship of 
 the Hindus as the earliest phase or type of the tendency which 
 later on leads those of one guild or of the same walk in life to 
 support and cultivate one god who is elected, in lieu of indi- 
 vidual tool-fetiches melted down, to preside over their craft or 
 trade interests. 
 
 Up to this point I have been trying to classify the different 
 kinds of worship of palpable objects, or, at farthest, of sub- 
 stances which by their shape or their qualities appear to 
 evidence possession by a spirit, or the working of a super- 
 human occult power. The idea which suggests fear and (con- 
 sequently) worship of Spiritual beings invisible, without form,, 
 name, or specific substantiality, is, I suppose, deeper and 
 more abstract. It pervades the whole religious atmosphere of 
 Central India. Every mysterious grewsome-looking dell, 
 cavern, steep pass, and wild desolate hill-top or ridge has its 
 Deo; never seen of man, but felt by those who visit the spot 
 by shepherds and herdsmen camping out far amid the melan- 
 choly wolds, or by travellers along the lonely tracks. The 
 notion of fixed habitation in and identity with some object has. 
 now expanded into the notion of a haunting. But the where- 
 abouts is sometimes marked by a heap of stones, sometimes by 
 rags tied to a bush ; occasionally by chains suspended mysti- 
 cally from a cliff or a tree ; or the spirit wanders round a huge 
 old banyan-tree or ruined temple.* As yet, however, he has. 
 
 * Mr. Bowring, in his ' ' Eastern rally. Captain Forsyth, writing about 
 Experiences" (1871), describes the the highlands of Berar, mentions that 
 Spirit-houses found in the Mysore when the Gonds fell the wood on a hill- 
 forests little sheds built over the side, they leave a little clump, to serve 
 white ant-hills, and dedicated (as I as a refuge for the elf or spirit whom 
 understand) to the wood-demons gene- they have dislodged.
 
 CHAP. I.] WORSHIP OF .SPIRITUAL BEINGS. 1? 
 
 no name, no history or distinct origin, and his range is limited 
 territorially. Yet within the uncertain limits of his haunt he 
 can make himself very obnoxious if not duly propitiated ; and 
 fortunately there are always to be found pious men who have 
 devoted themselves to deciphering (for a consideration) the 
 signs of his displeasure. 
 
 This is, I conjecture, the dim penumbra, the vague floating 
 deisidaimonia, which envelops embryonic conceptions of posi- 
 tive forms belonging to deities recognisable by name and 
 character. AVe may surmise that this misty zone must have 
 been passed through before a clearer air was first reached ; 
 before people gradually evolved out of these shadowy terrors 
 the definite outline of their anthropomorphism. And this stage 
 may perhaps mark the first imaginings of superhuman beings 
 finally dissociated from their visible shells, that is, from their 
 manifestations as individuals through natural substances, a 
 stone, a tree, or a beast. The next step after this may be 
 guessed to be the investing of this unseen intangible spirit with 
 a man's individuality, though without a visible body ; and thus 
 the transition to anthropomorphism from unseen spirits in 
 general to unseen spirits in particular is represented, as I 
 venture to infer, by the worship of the ghosts of dead relatives. 
 For it is easier to imagine that the active intelligence and 
 familiar soul which have just left a corpse still exist round you 
 in an invisible personality, than to abstract the notion of defi- 
 nite spiritual beings belonging by origin to an order quite dis- 
 tinct from humanity. Thus in Berar the aboriginal tribes, 
 which are as yet little touched by Brahmanic doctrines, prac- 
 tise most elaborate and singular obsequies known by a name 
 which may be accurately translated into the Irish term wake, 
 meaning a vigil. The ceremony includes that very suggestive 
 practice (known also to Brahmanic rites) of bringing back to 
 his house the dead person's soul, supposed to have lost its 
 home by the body's death. A stone, or some such object, is 
 picked up at the grave, and carried reverentially back to the 
 house, where it is worshipped for a few days, and then decently 
 disposed of. There are also libations and a funeral banquet, 
 sacrifices over the grave to an effigy, and the mourners
 
 18 RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 sing an elegy, of which this is the curiously familiar 
 burden 
 
 "Naked lie came, and naked has gone. 
 
 This dwelling-place belongs neither to you nor to me, 
 To the life which has gone." 
 
 The ordinary funeral chant over a Hindu says, " He who spoke 
 has gone ; " and this idea, like the phrase so commonly used in 
 all countries to express death that the breath, the visible token 
 of life, has departed points to the flitting of something ani- 
 mated and even material. Though it issues forth from the 
 corpse, it must be still somewhere, probably still hovering about 
 its former home and friends. Now the direct motive and -pur- 
 pose of these earliest and most primitive mortuary rites are, I 
 believe, the laying of the ghost ; but from the wailing adora- 
 tion of these Non-Aryan woodlanders, up to the ceremonious 
 annual oblations and invocations of the high-caste Hindu, 
 they are throughout more or less a kind of worship. And 
 at this point we have to look for some explanation of the 
 process by which other less narrow and less obvious ideas of 
 supernaturalism may be conjectured to have developed out of 
 this universal necrolatry. The reverent mind appears to me 
 to rise, by a natural method of selection, from the indiscriminate 
 adoring of dead persons known or akin to the worshipper's 
 family during life, to the distinctive worship of persons who were 
 of high local repute while they lived, or who died in some re- 
 markable way. It would seem that the honours which are at 
 first paid to all departed spirits come gradually to be concen- 
 trated, as divine honours, upon the Manes of notables ; probably 
 the reasoning is that they must continue influential in the 
 spirit-world. For so far as I have been able to trace back the 
 origin of the best-known minor provincial deities, they are 
 usually men of past generations who have earned special pro- 
 motion and brevet rank among disembodied ghosts by some 
 peculiar acts or accident of their lives or deaths, especially 
 among the rude and rough classes. "With the communities of 
 a higher mental level different motives for the selection pre- 
 vail ; but of this more hereafter. Popular deifications appear
 
 CHAP. I.] HERO WORSHIP. 19 
 
 to have been founded, in their simplest form, on mere wonder and 
 pity, as for mental and bodily afflictions ; or an affecting inci- 
 dent, such as the death of a boy bridegroom (now the god 
 Dullia Deo) in the midst of his own marriage procession;* or 
 on horror at terrible and lamentable deaths, as by suicide, by 
 wild beasts, by murder, or by some hideous calamity. Human 
 sacrifice has always been common in India as a last resort for 
 appeasing divine wrath, when manifested in a strange and in- 
 explicable way ; and it is suspected to be still the real motive 
 of occasional mysterious murders. Chdnd Khan is a demon 
 rather than a deity, but his tomb is worshipped on one bastion 
 of every mud-fort in the Dehkan. The legend (without doubt 
 founded on fact) is that a man thus named was buried alive 
 under some bastion of which the building had been supernatu- 
 rally thwarted until this sacrifice was made, when all hindrance 
 and mysterious opposition ceased at once. Some years ago 
 the piers of a railway bridge under construction in Central 
 India were twice washed away, when nearly finished, by the 
 floods ; and a rumour spread abroad among the Bheels of the 
 neighbouring jungles that one of them was to be seized and 
 sacrificed by the engineers who had received such manifest 
 proof of mysterious opposition to their work. 
 
 The Bunjaras, a tribe much addicted to highway robbery, 
 worship a famous bandit, who probably lived and died in some 
 notorious way. Any renowned soldier would certainly be wor- 
 shipped after death, if his tomb were well known and acces- 
 sible. M. Raymond, the French commander who died at 
 Hyderabad, has been there canonised after a fashion ; General 
 Nicholson (who died in the storming of Delhi, 1857) was 
 adored as a hero in his lifetime, in spite of his violent persecu- 
 tion of his own devotees, and there are other known instances 
 of the commemoration of Europeans who have been feared or 
 
 * Compare the legends of Thammuz, an image of his child aoon taken away, 
 
 Adonis, Ganymede, and Hylas. Mere now honoured him as a god which was 
 
 grief at bereavement may be another then dead. Thus, in course of time, an 
 
 motive. See "Wisdom of Solomon," ungodly custom grown strong was kept 
 
 xiv. 15 : " For a father afflicted with as a law." 
 untimely mourning, when he hath made 
 
 c 2
 
 20 RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 loved. Nor do I make out that the origin and conception of 
 these local deities are at first connected with the Brahmanic 
 doctrines by the unlettered and unsophisticated crowd who set 
 up these shrines at their own pleasure. The immediate mo- 
 tive is nothing but a vague inference from great natural gifts 
 or from strange fortunes to supernatural visitation, or from 
 power during life to power prolonged beyond it, though when 
 a shrine becomes popular the Brahmans take care to give its 
 origin an orthodox interpretation. The saint or hero is ad- 
 mitted into the upper circles of divinity, much as a successful 
 soldier or millionnaire is recognised by fashionable society, 
 takes a new title, and is welcomed by a judiciously liberal 
 aristocrac} T . 
 
 Between the class of dead men who are worshipped from 
 feelings of admiration, surprise, pity, or terror, and the class of 
 deified Saints, the line which might be drawn would, I con- 
 sider, make a step upward. The common usage of adoring 
 the spirit of a Sati (or widow who has burnt herself on the p}Te 
 of her husband) at the cenotaph put up on the spot, may per- 
 haps be taken as an intermediate link; for she has been 
 exalted both by the horror of her ending and the supreme 
 merit of her devotion.* 
 
 Of the numerous local gods known to have been living men, 
 by far the greater portion derive from the ordinary canonisa- 
 tion of holy personages. This system of canonising has grown 
 out of the world-wide sentiment that rigid asceticism and piety 
 combined with implicit faith gradually develop a miraculous 
 facult} r . The saint or hermit may have deeper motives the 
 triumph of the spirit over corrupt matter, of virtue over vanity 
 and lusts, or the self-purification required of mediaeval magi- 
 cians and mystical alchemists before they could deal with the 
 great secrets of nature ; but the popular belief is that his 
 relentless austerity extorts thaumaturgic power from reluctant 
 
 * Compare Euripides, " Alcestis," And some one going up the winding 
 
 995. "Nor let the tomb of thy wife be path shall say, ' She once died for her 
 
 accounted as a mound over dead that husband, and is now a blest divinity, 
 
 perish, but let it be honoured equally (yvv S'turl no.Ko.ipa. 
 with the gods, for travellers to worship.
 
 CHAP. I.] SHRINES IN BERAR. 21 
 
 gods. And of him who works miracles do they say in India, 
 as in Samaria they said of Simon Magus, " This man is the 
 great power of God ; " wherefore after death (if not in life) he 
 is honoured as divine indeed. Now the word miracle must not 
 be understood in our sense of an interposition to alter unvarying 
 natural laws, for in India no such laws have been definitely 
 ascertained ; it means only something that passes an ordinary 
 man's understanding, authenticated and enlarged by vague and 
 vulgar report. And the exhibition of marvellous devotion or 
 contempt for what is valued by the world stimulates inventive 
 credulity. He who does such things is sure to be credited 
 with miracles, probably during his life, assuredly after his 
 death. "NVhen such an one dies his body is not burnt, but 
 buried ; a disciple or relative of the saint establishes himself 
 over the tomb as steward of the mysteries and receiver of the 
 temporalities ; vows are paid, sacrifice is made, a saint's day is 
 added to the local calendar, and the future success of the 
 shrine depends upon some lucky hit in the way of prophecy or 
 fulfilment of prayers. The number of shrines thus raised in 
 Berar alone to these anchorites and persons deceased in the 
 odour of sanctity is large, and it is constantly increasing. 
 Some of them have already attained the rank of temples, they 
 are richly endowed, and collect great crowds at the yearly 
 pilgrim gatherings, like the tombs of celebrated Christian 
 martyrs in the Middle Ages. But although the shrines of a 
 Hindu ascetic and of St. Thomas of Canterbury may have 
 acquired fame among the vulgar and ignorant by precise!} 7 ' the 
 same attribute their reputation for miraculous efficacy yet 
 the only point of resemblance between the two cases is this 
 common inference from eminent sanctity in the world to won- 
 der-working power in the grave. For whereas the great 
 Catholic Church never allowed the lowest English peasant to 
 regard St. Thomas or St. Edmund as anything higher than 
 glorified intercessors, with a sort of delegated miraculous 
 power, the Indian prophet or devotee does by the patronage of 
 the Brahmans rise gradually in the hierarchy of supernatural 
 beings, until his human origin fades and disappears completely 
 in the haze of tradition, and he takes rank as a god. "NVe see
 
 22 RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PEOVIXCE. [CnAP. I. 
 
 by this example of India what the Church did for the medley 
 of pagan tribes and communities which came within her pale 
 in the dark ages of anarchic credulity, before great Pan was 
 quite dead. In those days when, according to Milman,* saints 
 were "multiplied and deified" by popular suffrage, when 
 " hardly less than divine power and divine will was assigned to 
 them," when the "wonder-fed and wonder-seeking worship " of 
 shrines and relics actually threatened to " supersede the wor- 
 ship of God and his Son," it may be almost surmised that 
 nothing but a supreme spiritual authority saved Christianity 
 from, falling back for a time into a sort of Polytheism. 
 
 But, in India, whatever be the original reason for venerating 
 a deceased man, his upward course toward deification is the 
 same. At first we have the grave of one whose name, birth- 
 place, and parentage are well known in the district ; if he died 
 at home, his family often set up a shrine, instal themselves in 
 possession, and realize a handsome income out of the offerings; 
 they become hereditary keepers of the sanctuary, if the shrine 
 prospers and its virtues stand test. Or if the man wandered 
 abroad, settled near some village or sacred spot, became re- 
 nowned for his austerity or his afflictions, and there died ; the 
 neighbours think it great luck to have the tomb of a holy man 
 within their borders, f and the landholders administer the 
 shrine by manorial right. I In the course of a very few years, 
 as the recollection of the man's personality becomes mist}', his 
 origin grows mysterious, his career takes a legendary hue, his 
 birth and death were both supernatural ; in the next genera- 
 tion the names of the elder gods get introduced into the story, 
 and so the marvellous tradition works itself into a myth, until 
 
 * "Latin Christianity," vol. vi. pp. J In Afghanistan, certain villagers 
 
 13, 417. close to our frontier recently arranged 
 
 f A good instance will be fonnd in to strangle a saint who abode among 
 
 the history of Mira Bai, an authentic them, in order to secure his tomb 
 
 princess of the Jypore house, who is within their lands. There is a similar 
 
 now worshipped by a sect as their story in Southey's ballads, of a design 
 
 patron saint. They say that she upon St. Eomuald, which is styled by 
 
 vanished from earth through the fissure the Spanish chronicler a " determina- 
 
 ofarock. So did a woman in West cion bestial y indiscreta." 
 Berar, not many years ago.
 
 CHAP. I.] WONDER-WORKING SAINTS. 23 
 
 nothing but a personal incarnation can account for such a 
 series of prodigies. The man was an Avatar of Vishnu or 
 Siva; his supreme apotheosis is now complete, and the 
 Brahmans feel warranted in providing for him a niche in the 
 orthodox Pantheon. 
 
 It is scarcely worth while to enumerate for English readers 
 the instances upon which this sketch of religious growth in 
 Berar has heen drawn out. This could be done only by giving 
 a list of barbarous-sounding names of places and personages ; 
 but the details on which I rely could be produced, if want of 
 space did not prevent it, and if they were of any value beyond 
 the province. Of wonder-working saints, hermits, and martyrs 
 (for Mahomedan and even Christian tombs are worshipped 
 occasionally by Hindus) the name is legion. There are some 
 potent devotees still in the flesh who are great medicine men, 
 others very recently dead who exhale power, and others whose 
 name and local fame have survived, but with a supernatural 
 tinge rapidly coming out. Above these we have obscure local 
 deities who have entirely shaken off their mortal taint ; while 
 beyond these again are the great provincial gods. Four of 
 the most popular gods in Berar, whose images and temples 
 are famous in the Dehkan, are Kandoba, Vittoba, Beiroba, and 
 Bdlaji. These are now grand incarnations of the Supreme 
 Triad; yet by examining the legends of their embodiment 
 and appearance upon earth we obtain fair ground for sur- 
 mising that all of them must have been notable living men not 
 so very long ago. 
 
 Suchis, so far as one can trust personal inquiry and observation, 
 the regular process of Theogony, or the generation of local gods, 
 which is constantly going on before our eyes in the districts of 
 Central India. We have before us there the worship of dead 
 kinsfolk and friends, then the particular adoration of notables 
 recently departed ; then of people divinely afflicted or divinely 
 gifted, of saints and heroes known to have been men; next, 
 the worship of demigods, and, finally, that of powerful deities 
 retaining nothing human but their names and their images. 
 It is suggested that all these are links along one chain of the 
 development of the same idea : and that out of the crowd of
 
 24 RELIGION OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 departed spirits whom primitive folk adore, certain individuals 
 are elevated to a larger worship by notoriety in life or death. 
 At this point a different selecting agency comes into play, that 
 of Successful Wonder Working ; and it is by the luck of 
 acquiring a first-class reputation for efficacious answers to 
 vows that some few Manes emerge into a still higher and more 
 refined order of divinity. This is the kind of success which 
 has made the fortune of some of the most popular, the richest, 
 and the most widely-known gods in Berar, who do all the lead- 
 ing business, and possess the confidence of the respectable 
 and substantial professions. It should be remarked that the 
 earliest start of even a first-rate god may have been exceed- 
 ingly obscure ; but if he or his shrine make a few good cures 
 at the outset (especially among women and valuable cattle), his 
 reputation goes rolling up like a snowball. One of the largest 
 annual fail's in Berar now gathers round the grave of an utterly 
 insignificant hermit. It thus becomes easy to perceive how 
 the source of a far-flowing religion may be lost in obscuritj' ; 
 so that in later times, when the divinity or the sect has 
 become famous, no one will accept the suggestion of a slight 
 or humble, or accidental, origin for so great a development. 
 The scholar explains the fact by some picturesque theory 
 of nvythical evolution ; the devout believer builds up the 
 traditions of some extraordinary life, full of miracles and mystic 
 utterances. 
 
 Thus successful thaumaturgy, with lapse of time sufficient to 
 evaporate the lingering flavour of mortal origin, are the two 
 qualifications which lead to a high status among gods. But 
 interest and a good connection open out short cuts to distinc- 
 tion for gods as well as for men. When the original saint or 
 hero belonged in the flesh to a particular tribe, caste, or pro- 
 fession, in such case he may become the tutelary deity of that 
 community, and is less dependent on continual proof of his 
 efficacy, because the worship of him by his constituents is a 
 point of honour, tradition, and esprit dc corps. On the other 
 hand, a god patronised exclusively by one trade or calling is 
 liable to drop into a department, by contracting a speciality 
 for the particular needs and grievances of his congregation.
 
 CHAP. I.] DOCTRINE OF DIVINE EMBODIMENT. 25 
 
 But this is so far from being the natural ultimate mould into 
 which polytheism falls, that gods now universally venerated 
 have occasionally expanded, like Diana of the Ephesians, far 
 beyond the circle of departmental practice. Comte's view of 
 the development of polytheism is that man gradually gene- 
 ralised his observations of nature, grouping all the phenomena 
 which resembled each other as the acts or characteristics of a 
 Person ; so that a cluster of similar Fetiches were amalga- 
 mated into one personification of the natural department to 
 which they all belonged, which thus came forth as a god with 
 special attributes. But this departmental system is only 
 one side of polytheism, which in no time or country has 
 been rigidly distributed into bureaux or portfolios with one 
 supreme Jupiter, like the French Imperial Government. The 
 Hindus, at any rate, have a multitude of gods very high in 
 estimation and with a large clientele, who preside over no 
 special forces of nature, and have no exclusive province, but 
 subsist solely upon their general reputation for good or bad 
 influence over human affairs. The names of these deities are 
 gradually noised abroad, the circle of their local notoriety 
 widens, the crowd at their annual holy-day increases, the offer- 
 ings attract Brahmans and the leading ascetic orders, who sing 
 their praise, proclaim their miracles, and invent for them 
 orthodox pedigrees. Soon a great prince visits, and perhaps 
 endows, their temple ; until at last the deity throws aside all 
 separate functions, and is set up firmly as an all-powerful 
 manifestation of the great Creators and Rulers of the Hindu 
 universe. 
 
 On the whole, therefore, there is good evidence for con- 
 cluding, that the extravagant and unconscionable use made 
 by Brahmans of their doctrine of divine embodiment is quite 
 enough to account for the creation of the greater number 
 of personal gods actually worshipped, without drawing upon 
 any other source of polytheism. Nor are they always con- 
 tent with posthumous identification of a remarkable man as 
 a god. Thej' still occasionally refuse even to admit that the 
 dissolution of the first mortal body was a sign that the god had 
 departed from among them ; and they employ that astonishing
 
 26 RELIGION OP AN INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 device, so notorious in India, of a perpetual succession of 
 incarnations. At least two persons have been living witliin 
 the last few years in Western and Central India who are 
 asserted to be the tenements or vessels which the deity, who 
 originally manifested himself in some wonderful personage, has 
 now chosen for his abode on earth; and one native official 
 well known in the Bombay Presidency, in whom the signs of 
 divinity had been detected, was so harassed by an incessant 
 following of devout folk that he became unable to do his 
 business. This is, however, an inordinate use of the mystery. 
 Its main employment is to keep up the prestige and privileges 
 of the classical deities, by declaring all wonderful and famous 
 personages to be embodiments of them ; and thus have many 
 great prophets and moral teachers been identified and absorbed, 
 except those who actually attacked Brahmanisin. One of the 
 most numerous sects in Berar, and throughout the Dekhan, 
 is that of the Lingciyets ; they wear constantly the Linga, as 
 Siva's emblem, and their founder was one Cliainba Basapa, 
 evidently a great man in his day, who preached high morality, 
 though probably tinged with mysticism. He is now commonly 
 recognised to have been an incarnation of Siva, and his fol- 
 lowers are merely a peculiar section of Siva-worshippers. The 
 other leading sect among the trading classes of the Dekhan is 
 that of the Jains, who adore certain deified saints that have 
 traversed a series of metempsychoses. But the Jains deny 
 the Vedas, and are distinctly, though not exclusively, heretical ; 
 so their saints have never been exalted or absorbed into the 
 Hindu Pantheon. 
 
 Then we have in Berar an anomalous sect, called the Man- 
 bhaus, part of whom are laymen, and the rest live by strict 
 rule as wandering friars and nuns, clothed in black. Their 
 teaching is quite anti-Brahmanical, and the consequence 
 is that their founder, one Krishna, is declared by the 
 orthodox to have been a Brahman who disgraced himself by 
 a terrible mesalliance, not by any means an incarnation of the 
 god Krishna, as his more enthusiastic and less exclusive 
 votaries say. This real Krishna must have been a person of 
 some mark ; one of those true religious reformers who have
 
 CHAP. I.] AN INDIGENOUS POLYTHEISM. 27 
 
 arisen from time to time in India out of the humblest classes, 
 and have caused great spiritualistic revivals.* Men of this 
 temperament have constantly come forth in India, who, by 
 their active intellectual originality, joined to a spiritual kind 
 of life, have stirred up great movements and aspirations in 
 Hinduism, and have founded sects that endure to this day ; 
 but it has almost invariably happened that the later followers 
 of such a teacher have undone his work of moral reform. 
 They have fallen back upon evidences of miraculous birth, 
 upon signs and wonders, and a superhuman translation from 
 the world ; so that gradually the founder's history becomes 
 prodigious and extra-natural, until his real doctrines shrink 
 into mystical secrets known only to the initiated disciples, 
 while the vulgar turn the iconoclast into a new idol. 
 
 But this line of disquisition would bring us out upon that 
 other vast field of religious ideas in India which have for their 
 base, not religion, but morality ; and for their object, not pro- 
 pitiation of the unseen powers, but an ethical reformation. Upon 
 that ground it is not possible here to enter, as in this essay I 
 am only attempting to draw an outline of the external popular 
 superstitions, and hazarding some conjectures as to the way in 
 which this prodigious panorama of divine things and persons, 
 the outward and visible manifestations of pantheism, has been 
 constructed. Nowhere but in India can we now survey with our 
 eyes an indigenous polytheism in full growth, flourishing like 
 a secular green bay-tree among a people of ancient culture ; 
 and the spectacle may be thought to present many interesting 
 features and analogies. It would seem as if the old order had 
 been continually, though slowly, changing, giving place to new, 
 as if the manifold deities from below had always been pressing 
 upon the earlier divinities, until, like Saturn and Hyperion, 
 they were more or less superseded. The classic personifications 
 of the elements, and of their grand operations, are not now 
 much in vogue as gods of the people. Even the Supreme 
 Triad of Hindu allegory, which represent the almighty powers 
 
 * Compare the life and doctrines of cleaner ; Kabir, Mahomedan weaver 
 Earn Dass, the tanner ; Dklu, cotton- Tuka Earn, farmer ; Nam Deo, tailor.
 
 RELIGION OF AX INDIAN PROVINCE. [CHAP. I. 
 
 of creation, preservation, and destruction, have long ceased 
 to preside actively over any such corresponding distribution of 
 functions. The direct or primary worship of these three 
 divinities, especially of Brahma, the Creator (whose occupa- 
 tion has, obviously, more or less gone), is comparatively rare ; 
 and if it be true that in these outlying districts their original 
 names have gone mostly out of ritual use, the reason may be 
 that the original types have been melted down and divided 
 piecemeal among a variety of emanations and embodiments, 
 and that the highest offices of universal administration have 
 thus been put into commission. Perhaps the gods who have 
 suffered least from the wear and tear, during centuries of 
 religious caprice, and who have longest held their ancient 
 forms and places in the front rank of popular imagination, 
 are the gods of heroic legend. The reason may be that the 
 original kings and warriors out of whom these divinities have 
 developed were especially powerful and famous in their time, 
 and therefore cast a broader and stronger personal shadow 
 upon tradition than the ordinary saint, prophet, or anchorite. 
 They have also this peculiar advantage that poetry has, of 
 course, been a powerful agent in India (as in ancient Europe) 
 for developing heroes into demi-gods, for spreading the fame 
 of their deeds as gods, and for denning their attributes. 
 
 But although polytheism still prevails and multiplies through- 
 out the land, and although the Brahmanic system, deep rooted 
 and wide-spreading, shows no signs of vital decay, one may 
 nevertheless venture to anticipate that the end of simple 
 paganism is not far distant in India. The beliefs of the 
 multitude are the reflections of their social and political 
 history through many generations. Now that the Hindus 
 have been rescued by the English out of a chronic state of 
 anarchy, insecurit} r , lawlessness, and precarious exposure to 
 the caprice of despots, they will surely introduce, at least, 
 some ideas of rule, organised purpose, and moral law, into 
 their popular conceptions of the ways of their gods towards 
 men. It seems certain, at any rate, that wider experience, 
 nearer and more frequent intercourse with the outer world, and 
 the general education of modern life, must soon raise even the
 
 CHAP. I.] AN IMPENDING CHANGE. 29 
 
 masses above the mental level that can credit contemporary 
 miracles and incarnations, however they may still hold by the 
 prodigies of elder tradition. And this will be enough to sever 
 the tap-root of a religion which now, like the banyan-tree 
 which it venerates, strikes fresh root from every branch, 
 discovers a new god under every mystery and wonder. More- 
 over, the evidences of an incipient turning away from gross 
 idolatry and a religion of the senses are already to be seen 
 high and low, in the popularity among the wandering ab- 
 original tribes of certain spiritual teachers, in the spread 
 among the middle classes of certain mystical opinions and 
 of much floating scepticism, and in the perceptible proclivity 
 toward the faith of Islam occasionally exhibited by some of 
 the independent Hindu chiefs.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. 
 
 Grote's conclusion, in the History of Greece, regarding myths Remarks upon his 
 argument Comparative observation of heroic and religious myths of India 
 may throw some light on the general subject of growth of myths Leading 
 authorities on mythology ascribe myths too largely to personifications of 
 natural phenomena Suggestion that the theory of Euemerus has been too 
 entirely condemned, and that in India the deification of humanity is one main 
 source of divine legends and of theogonies The process of the generation 
 and development of gods can be witnessed in India Mythology develops 
 into polytheism out of the mystery of death, out of wonder at the deeds, 
 sufferings, and saintly character of remarkable men The Heaven thus 
 created is a reflection of the earth below, and religion rests upon the analogy of 
 nature Spiritual ascetics absorbed into materialistic divinities General con- 
 clusion as to the various sources of the deities, their legends, and attributes. 
 
 GROTE, in the first volume of his History of Greece, dis- 
 cusses in full the nature of myths, and he determines that 
 the mythical narrative of Europe is a special product of the 
 imagination and feeling, radically distinct hoth from history 
 and philosophy. He refuses altogether to treat the myths as 
 containing any evidence upon matters of fact. He does not 
 deny, indeed he affirms, that myths may often embody real 
 facts and the names of real persons ; but his position is that 
 we have no test whereby to distinguish fact from fiction in any 
 particular myth of which corroborative evidence is not forth- 
 coming, so that we must treat all as " matter appropriate only 
 for subjective history. " 
 
 Looking to the arguments used in support of this sentence 
 on the myths, one may question whether the historian has not 
 been too exacting in his demands for corroboration, and too 
 peremptory in discarding all reliance upon internal evidence 
 and analogies, when he thus condemns indiscriminately all 
 stories which are not specifically propped up by external
 
 CHAP. II.] GROTE ON DIVINE MYTHS. 31 
 
 proofs. For Grote maintains that a narrative of credible 
 incidents raises of itself no more presumption (in default of 
 positive testimony) that the incidents occurred, than does a 
 composition of Defoe : he says that it is plausible fiction and 
 nothing more.* He considers even the highest measure of in- t 
 trinsic probability to be of itself insufficient to justify one's 
 believing that any of the facts related really occurred ; it can only 
 make one admit that they may perhaps haye occurred. An asser- 
 tion may be made, he observes, of a thing entirely probable, 
 which yet no one need credit, as if a man should assert that 
 rain fell in Massachusetts on the day of the battle of Plateea. 
 Here Grote seems to be a little hard on the myths. For, first, 
 it is very difficult to distinguish between plausible fiction (of 
 the kind, for example, to which Defoe's History of the Plague 
 belongs) and genuine history, in dealing with the records come 
 down from ancient and Uncritical ages ; since extrinsic evidence 
 thus preserved and transmitted is as likely to be plausible 
 fiction as any other credible narrative, and we have very scanty 
 means of actually sifting or testing any evidence whatever as 
 to particular events or persons. If we may only receive as 
 credible those ancient narratives which could not possibly turn 
 out to be veiy plausible fiction, we shall be hard pushed for 
 the trustworthy authentication of much early history, religious 
 and secular. Secondly, the example of the supposed assertion 
 as to simultaneous rainfall at Platsea and in Massachusetts is 
 hardly fair. A man's assertion of an isolated fact of which he 
 could not possibly have any positive knowledge, either directly 
 or by hearsay, is a very different thing from affirming credible 
 facts which might reasonably, and according to the known 
 habits of the people who relate the facts, have been handed 
 down by tradition from the persons who witnessed them to 
 those who related them. And, lastly, I venture to think that 
 Grote's purely sceptical attitude ignores a great deal of 
 collateral evidence in favour of myths being ordinarily formed 
 round a nucleus of facts, any other formation being excep- 
 tional. At any rate, if one may rely upon comparative ob- 
 servation of the growth of myths in various parts of a 
 * History of Greece, Chapter XVI., page 413, small edition.
 
 3;i ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. [CHAP. 11. 
 
 country in which they spring up like mushrooms, a very great 
 number of the myths of Indian polytheism and hero worship 
 have grown straight up from a fact at their roots. 
 
 However, Grote did not deny that myths, taken in a mass, 
 contain real matter of fact ; he only said that in any particular 
 myth you cannot distinguish fact from fiction, so he rejects 
 them all as useless for the purpose of history. He would 
 probably have admitted Defoe's History of the Plague to be 
 some kind of evidence that a plague did break out somewhere 
 at some time ; he would not have attempted to explain the 
 whole story as some travesty of early imaginations. Whereas 
 some of the comparative mythologists would remove all foun- 
 dation in fact whatsoever from the figures and incidents of 
 early Aryan myths, especially of divine myths. The whole 
 province of myths has been occupied and annexed under the 
 standard of philology. And of all myths the divine myth is 
 universally taken to be most demonstratively a baseless fabric, 
 to be founded on a class of facts utterly different from those 
 which it purports to relate. The highest authorities in com- 
 parative mythology appear to trace almost the whole of this 
 class of figures and narratives into personifications of the 
 worship of inanimate Nature. Professor Max Muller, in his 
 essay on Comparative Mythology, wrote* 
 
 "If we want to know whither the human mind, though endowed with the 
 natural consciousness of a divine power, is driven necessarily and inevitably by 
 the irresistible force of language as applied to supernatural and abstract ideas, we 
 must read the Veda ; and if we want to tell the Hindus what they are worshipping 
 nifre names of natural phenomena, gradually obscured, personified and deified 
 we must make them read the Veda. It was a mistake of the earl}' Fathers to treat 
 the heathen gods as demons or evil spirits, and we must take care not to commit 
 the same error with regard to the Hindu gods. TJicir gods have no more right to 
 any substantive existence than Eos or Hemera, than Nyx or Apatt. They are 
 masks without an actor the creation of man, not his creators ; they are nomina 
 not numina names without being not beings without names. 
 
 And in another essay on the Manual of Mythology, Mr. Cox 
 receives the very lenient warning that we ought to be prepared 
 even in the legends of Hercules or Theseus " to find some 
 grains of local history on which the sharpest tools of com- 
 
 * "Chips from a German "\Vorkshop," article Comparative Mythology. (Italics 
 nine.)
 
 CHAP. II.] COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY. 33 
 
 parative mythology must bend or break." " It does not 
 always follow," Professor Max Mtiller observes, "that heroes 
 of old who performed what may be called solar nryths are 
 therefore nothing but myths." Nevertheless " the general 
 agreement which has of late years been arrived at by most 
 students of mythology, that all mythological explanations 
 must rest on a sound etymological basis,"* has been so entirely 
 accepted and made so comprehensive by writers of the books on 
 this subject which are most widely read, that it seems likely to 
 obliterate all other explanations from the popular mind. This 
 is especially the case as to divine myths, which contain so 
 much that is obviously incredible that people are the easier 
 convinced that all these stories are imaginary from first to last, 
 and the figures in them mere phantoms of sun and mist. 
 Even Grote, who did not commit himself to the theory of 
 solar myths, uses the fact of the existence of divine myths as 
 undeniable proof that myths need have no basis in fact, but 
 may be pure creations of the mythopceic faculty. For, at any 
 rate, he argues (in opposition to those who affirmed the 
 mythopoeic faculty to be never creative) the divine legend is 
 often purely imaginative, not merely in Greece but in other 
 countries also. These legends, he considers, derive their 
 origin " not from special facts misreported and exaggerated, 
 but from pious feelings pervading the society and translated 
 into narrative by forward and imaginative minds .... 
 legends in which the generating sentiment is conspicuously 
 discernible, providing its own matter as well as its own form." ^ 
 11 To suppose," Grote adds in a note to another passage, " that 
 these religious legends are mere exaggerations of some basis of 
 actual fact that the gods of polytheism were merely divinized 
 men with qualities distorted or feigned would be to embrace 
 in substance the theory of Euemerus."* Now to embrace 
 Euemerism is also an unpardonable heresy against compara- 
 tive mythology. 
 
 But while it would be undoubtedly a grievous error to em- 
 
 * "Chips from a German Work- J History of Greece, Chapter XVI. , 
 
 shop." note to page 394. 
 
 t History of Greece, Chapter XVI. 
 
 D
 
 84 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. [CHAP. II. 
 
 brace the theory of Euemerus as a " Key to all Mythologies," 
 on the other hand I venture to suggest that it cannot be left 
 out altogether as an exploded notion " astonishing in writers 
 who have made themselves in any degree acquainted with the 
 results of comparative grammar."* If one may be permitted 
 to offer an opinion formed upon some extensive observation of 
 the working of the mythopceic faculty in India perhaps the 
 only ancient country which still keeps alive a true polytheism, 
 of the first order I should say that in constructing the science 
 of religion we might do worse than make room for the theory 
 of Euemerus. In the details of his treatment of the myths 
 his method of rejecting all that was to his mind impossible or 
 incredible, and piecing together out of the residuum a 
 plausible version- of the story, seems indefensible. But 
 Euemerus is said to have been an Asiatic traveller ; and if we 
 may judge from what goes on before our eyes in Asia now, 
 there is a great deal to say for his main theory which "repre- 
 sented both gods and heroes as having been mere earth-born 
 men, though superior to the ordinary level in respect of force 
 and capacity, and deified or heroified after death as a recom- 
 pense for services or striking exploits." Indeed, this quotation 
 from Grote describes very nearly the conclusions that would be 
 drawn from looking narrowly at the process of the generation 
 of gods in India at the present day ; and if there be ground 
 for supposing that this process has been going on more or less 
 in India for thousands of years, the effect is worth considering. 
 It is probable that the loose presumptuous way in which 
 Euemerus applied his method has brought his theory into 
 unmerited disrepute, and has thus thrown it too much into the 
 background now-a-days. His mistake lay in treating his- 
 theory as a master-key which would disclose the inside of all 
 mythologies, though this is a mistake rarely avoided by anyone 
 with a theory on the same subject, for the latest writers appear 
 very intolerant of any rival theory in any corner of the same 
 field, and are not satisfied until they have hunted it clear off 
 the ground ; so that even the best and soundest of modern 
 
 * Mythology of the Aryan Nations, page 171.
 
 CHAP. II.] THE EUEMERISTIC THEORY. 35 
 
 theories suffer in this way by overstraining. For example, this 
 theory of Euemerus is, I believe, rejected altogether by the 
 more thorough-going comparative mythologists. The view 
 maintained in the Mythology of Aryan Nations as to the origin 
 and course of divine myths, stated briefly, appears to be that 
 primitive Aryans began with personifying the great processes 
 of Nature, went on to deify in the image of man the imper- 
 sonated phenomena, and to distribute their attributes ; then 
 made the gods actors in legends which accepted in real earnest 
 and converted into earthly incidents such metaphors as of light 
 striving with darkness, and the like ; and, finally, settled their 
 full-blown gods and demi-gods down upon earth with local 
 habitations, names, and human biographies. Now the Euemer- 
 istic theory would, speaking roughfy, invert this order of 
 development and begin at the other end, tracing the local hero 
 of real life through different stages up to the great deity who 
 wields the forces of Nature. And the main objection to either 
 system seems to be that its author insists upon an exclusive 
 monopoly of the whole province of myths ; that it leaves no 
 room for the other ; that because it does explain a part of 
 mythology it has been applied to the whole ; that it endeavours 
 to explain not only mythology in one phase or at one period, 
 but the whole general course of its evolution into actual 
 polytheism. Upon this subject the comparative method and 
 philology have thrown a flood of light ; nevertheless the high 
 authorities who appear to assign to the whole family of divine 
 Aryan myths their birth-place in the personifications of inani- 
 mate Nature may be unaware of the quantity and weight of 
 evidence that an Euemerist could even in these days produce 
 on his side. They seem to exclude too absolutely from their 
 survey of the main springs of mythology and religion that 
 copious and deep flowing foundation of belief, the direct 
 deification of humanity ; the fact that men are incessantly 
 converting other men into gods, or embodiments of gods, or 
 emanations from the Divine Spirit, all over Asia, and that out 
 of the deified man is visibly spun the whole myth which 
 envelops him as a silk-worm in its cocoon. This very remark- 
 able operation of human credulity is little mentioned by 
 
 D 2
 
 36 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. [CHAV. II. 
 
 mythologists, and yet to omit careful account of it, or to treat 
 it as merely the last stage of a personified Nature worship, 
 appears to involve risk of a wide misunderstanding of the 
 whole birth and growth of primitive belief. Moreover, this 
 miscalculation at the starting point would be likely to lead us 
 astray further on, so that we might miss the structural connec- 
 tion between early incoherent forms of religion and those 
 which are later and more concentrated. It should be remem- 
 bered that all the great Asiatic religions which have lifted the 
 world up out of polytheism derive straight from remarkable 
 personages ; that the authentic history of all such personages 
 has invariably become surrounded by every kind of subsequent 
 legend, and discoloured by the refracting lights of popular 
 imagination, whereby the sifting out of the real facts has 
 become very difficult. It is also to be borne in mind that there 
 prevails a constant tendency to question and explain away the 
 historic humanity and substantial individuality of persons 
 recognised as being of divine character or origin. Sakya 
 Muni, the founder of Buddhism, has been disguised by the 
 Brahmans as a great Avatar or embodiment of Vishnu the 
 younger Burnouf actually interprets Christianity, on etymo- 
 logic grounds, to be a Fire worship ; [just as Kapila, the re- 
 puted founder of the Sankhya philosophy among the Hindus, 
 is affirmed by learned Hindu commentators to have been an 
 incarnation of Agni, because one of the meanings of his name 
 is Fire], and the speculations of Strauss are well known. 
 
 Before, therefore, we undertake to tell the Hindu what he is 
 worshipping, and to assure him that his gods are mere names 
 of natural phenomena, I think we are bound to consider them 
 in the actual field of observation, how they grow. We shall 
 at least find a good deal of evidence to be collected in favour of 
 Euemerism in India itself. For there it is certain that the 
 popular polytheism of the present day is constantly growing up 
 and developing out of the worship of holy or famous men who 
 have actually existed. The universal and incessant practice 
 throughout India (and one may say throughout Eastern Asia) 
 of deifying remarkable personages, will account for the origin 
 of almost all divine anthropomorphic narratives and for many
 
 CHAP. II.] DEIFICATION OF HUMANITY. 37 
 
 of the gods now in vogue, and it certainly seems to warrant us 
 in allowing for a much larger proportion of authentic fact than 
 is usually admitted in compounding a theory as to their begin- 
 ning and evolution. In a former chapter some attempt was 
 made to describe the process of turning men into divinities, by 
 which saints and heroes are gradually promoted until they 
 reach the highest and mistiest summits of godship ; and subse- 
 quent enlargement of observation in different provinces of 
 India has created a deep impression that in Europe there is 
 now no adequate conception of the extent to which and the 
 force with which this intense and habitual working of the 
 primitive mind toward deification must have affected the 
 beginning of religions. In this stage of belief the people 
 construct for themselves Jacob's ladders between earth and 
 heaven ; the men are seen ascending until they become gods ; 
 they then descend again as embodiments of the divinities ; 
 insomuch that it may be almost doubted whether any god, 
 except the Yedic divinities and other obvious Nature gods, 
 comes down the ladder who had not originally gone up as a 
 man, and an authentic man. The ascent of the elder Hindu 
 deities is shrouded in the haze of past times ; but several of the 
 most eminent (Siva and Krishna for instance) are still vulgarly 
 reported to have been men ; and there are instances in plenty 
 of men who have actually stalled up the ladder by consent and 
 testimony of the whole neighbourhood, and have re-appeared 
 as acknowledged divinities. To quote examples would be only 
 to give a list of provincial deities, more or less obscure ; but 
 one might safely say that a great number of verifiable men are 
 now worshipped as gods in various parts of India, and the 
 number is constantly added to. The Indians worship every- 
 thing created, but above all things men and women; and any- 
 one can notice that nothing impresses the primitive or the 
 uncultivated mind like human personality or character. 
 Nature worship itself, in its most striking form, is only 
 maintained among the crowd by anthropomorphism, while the 
 actuality and sympathetic attraction of a real known person 
 gives him the immense advantage of local popularity. And 
 this intense impression left by human personality is seen to be
 
 38 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. [CHAP. IT. 
 
 stronger as scrutiny descends into the lower stages of super- 
 stition. The aboriginal tribes are completely under its 
 dominion ; they cannot shake it off at all, and are haunted by 
 their incapacity to get rid of powerful masters in life or death. 
 If they attribute storms or sunsets to a sort of personified 
 agency they are sure to attribute it to the agency of some real 
 man whom they or their fathers have known. The process of 
 Brahmanizing which these tribes are undergoing in India of 
 course greatly increases the suppty of gods from the Euemer- 
 istic source ; for as these poor non- Aryans, innocent of the 
 abstracting faculty, do actually worship men, so the homely 
 jungle hero comes eventually to get brevet rank among regular 
 divinities, whenever his tribe is promoted into Hinduism. 
 
 The upper class of Brahmans are prone to deny the 
 existence of this process, and to prefer that the proselytizing 
 which goes on should be understood as involuntary on their 
 part and merely superficial ; they would be willing to keep 
 their Olympus classic, and above the heads of these low-born 
 intruders. But the local Brahman has to live, and is not 
 troubled by any such fine scruples, so he initiates the rude 
 Gond and Mina (non- Aryans of the jungle) as fast as they 
 come to him for spiritual advice, sets them up with a few 
 decent caste prejudices and gives to their rough unfinished 
 superstitions some Brahmanic shape and varnish. This is 
 vexatious to the refined Vedantist of the towns, but the same 
 thing goes on everywhere ; for a lofty and refined orthodoxy 
 will not attract ignorant outsiders, nor will it keep the mass of 
 a people within a common outline of belief. And so the high 
 and mighty deities of Brahmanisin would never draw the non- 
 Aryan, if he were not invited to bring with him his fetish, his 
 local hero or Obi man, his were-wolf and his vampires, all to 
 be dressed up and interpreted into orthodox emanations. In 
 one part of Rajputana the Minas (an aboriginal tribe) used to 
 worship the pig. When they took a turn toward Islam, they 
 changed their pig into a Saint called Father Adam, and 
 worshipped him as such ; when the Brahmans got a turn at 
 them, the pig became identified as the famous Boar Avatar 
 of Vishnu.
 
 CHAP. II.] WORSHIP OF NATURE. 39 
 
 While these things are going on before one's eyes, insomuch 
 that any striking personage appears tolerably sure of divine 
 honours and a miraculous biography after death, it is difficult 
 not to allot the first place among the different methods of 
 manufacturing gods to this process. Without doubt the Vedic 
 deities and a good many others which prevail in India have 
 been produced by finer and more intelligent handicraft ; but for 
 a rough propitiatory worship, adapted to everyday popular 
 needs and uses, the quantity and quality of the deified men 
 appear to satisfy a large demand and to give them an immense 
 circulation. It should be remarked, however, that the descrip- 
 tion of Hinduism given in this chapter applies throughout to 
 the worship of the mass of the population of India, which is 
 mainly rural ; and that the difference between the worship of 
 the country and of the towns is very considerable whenever 
 polytheism extends over a wide area, and is not under the 
 influence of cities as orthodox centres. Probably some such 
 distinction as is implied by the word pagan has always existed 
 to some degree in India. 
 
 In short, though no one would deny the strong influence of 
 Nature worship upon primitive religions, yet the part played 
 by inanimate phenomena must not be overrated. Early super- 
 stitions derive much from the heavens above, from the sky, the 
 storms, the seasons, and from light and darkness. The great 
 Nature gods still reign in India, if they do not govern ; and 
 their influence is felt over a wide range of legend and liturgy. 
 But all the vitality and the concrete impressive figures which 
 stand forth in the front rank of a popular Asiatic religion 
 appear to come direct out of humanity below, out of the 
 earth, as the scene of the exploits, sufferings, and pas- 
 sions of mankind, which are above all things of absorbing 
 interest to man. That the two sources of mythology meet 
 and are blended, there can be no doubt ; the Nature god 
 sometimes condenses into a man and is precipitated upon earth ; 
 the hero or saint often refines and evaporates into a deity up 
 in the skies. And thus it may, perhaps, be said that a poly- 
 theistic religion forms itself after the manner of a waterspout, 
 which to the looker on appears to be by the dipping down of
 
 40 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. [CHAP. II. 
 
 the clouds from the sky, and the uprising of the waters which 
 cover the earth, whereby is created a continuous column which 
 may seem to lead up from earth to heaven, or down from heaven 
 to earth, according to the fane}* of the wondering spectator. 
 The bowing down of the clouds toward the earth may illustrate 
 the human personification of the great mysteries of the elements 
 of the inanimate forces as seen in the changes of the sky ; the 
 uplifting of the sea water toward heaven above is the elevation 
 to divinity of the incidents of human life, far sounding actions, 
 wonderful adventures, pathetic striving, and the like. "Where 
 the waters of the earth end and those of the sky begin, one can 
 tell precisely neither in the water-spout nor in the religion, 
 after it has formed ; the precise point of contact disappears, and 
 one can only guess by watching the process of formation upon 
 other occasions. But whereas many persons appear to hold 
 that this column which holds up the heaven of a primitive poly- 
 theism is almost entirely let down from the sky, the lesson of 
 Indian observation is that it rises much more directly from the 
 earth, that man is mainly the base as well as the capital. 
 
 That the theory of Euemerus applies more extensively to 
 modern Asiatic polytheism than it did to the polytheism of 
 ancient Europe, may well be true. It may be that Nature 
 worship, conscious or unconscious, prevails more largely in one 
 stage than in another of popular religion ; and that the Indians 
 have passed out of that stage ; that the old personifications have 
 been superseded and have retired into the background. Indeed 
 there is such a crush and jumble of new gods constantly push- 
 ing themselves forward up the Jacob's ladder in India that 
 without fresh blood no old established deity could long main- 
 tain predominance. New and improved miraculous machinery 
 is constantly introduced, and the complex and changing nature 
 of human wants and grievances requires a popular god to keep 
 abreast with the times. Such a thing for instance as vaccina- 
 tion needs in these days to be accounted for ; and the 
 question is whether such new wonders are to be accepted 
 and absorbed or denounced. Fresh blood may be obtained by 
 the simple expedient of a new embodiment of the old fashioned 
 divinity if the competitor is a new and remarkable personage,
 
 CHAP. II.] BRAHMANIC POLYTHEISM. 41 
 
 or by a new attribute if it is a physical discovery. In 
 this manner the elder gods may well have been driven back 
 into the sky by the swarm of earth-born deifications. But the 
 leading gods of ancient Greece and Eome seem to have always 
 been more obvious personifications of inanimate Nature than 
 has for many centuries been the case in the popular liturgy of 
 India. Comte's theory of the evolution of polytheism by the 
 grouping of physical phenomena into a personage (which is in 
 effect identical with the theory of the evolution of all divine 
 myths from Nature worship) appears mainly drawn from classic 
 polytheism, wherein the great heads of natural departments 
 were universally known and adored, more or less consciously. 
 These are the deities with which Euenierism has nothing to do, 
 and which Euemerus should not have tried to explain away into 
 men, for he did not understand their constitution and made 
 altogether a wrong diagnosis. As to these, so far as one can 
 understand their position in India, it would appear that the 
 departmental god, immediate or derived, occupies no very for- 
 ward place in modern Brahmanic polytheism. Without doubt 
 the Yedic personifications are still held in high reverence, and 
 the system agrees with classic polytheism in deifjing a few of 
 the more important vital functions, which are, however, still 
 represented by unmistakable concrete symbolism, very different 
 from such delicate personifications as Aphrodite or Lucina* 
 And natural phenomena are still largely worshipped in concrete, 
 as the Sun or Fire. But it may be affirmed that the vast 
 majority of the deities really in vogue are magnified non-natural 
 men, without any defined speciality, who subsist and flourish 
 by absorbing and taking credit for, not the powers of nature, 
 but the devout or heroic exploits of men.* And this difference, 
 if it exists, between the constitution of Asiatic and of classic 
 polytheism may, perhaps, be explained by saying that the more 
 
 * They also draw largely upon the vince. To those who live in a country 
 
 dangerous characteristics of animals ; where the people are convinced that 
 
 but this is a branch of the subject which wicked people and witches constantly 
 
 is not here touched, though here also take the form ot wild beasts, the ex- 
 
 compaiative mythology seems to have planation of Lykanthropy by a confu- 
 
 made an arbitrary and somewhat un- sion between Leukos and Lukos seems 
 
 justifiable annexation of the whole pro- superfluous and very far fetched.
 
 42 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. [CHAP. II. 
 
 imaginative and incomparably more aesthetic Greek had reached 
 a later stage of polytheism, in which people are satisfied with 
 personifying movements of Nature, that his symmetrical and 
 poetic taste led him to group the attributes of the sea, for in- 
 stance, artistically under one name, and actually to adore his 
 beautiful creation. Whereas the Hindu, grotesque and irre- 
 gular in his conceptions, more gross in his sensuous ideas, but 
 at the same time more profoundly spiritual, more oppressed by 
 the mystery of life and death, requires something closer to 
 human sympathies for his worship. Between a bad climate 
 and worse governments he has usually had a hard and precarious 
 lot upon earth ; he would demur from his own experience to 
 the sentiment that kings and priests can make or cure but a 
 small portion of the ills which man endures ; on the contrary, 
 he would assert the exact contrar}*, taking the priests to be 
 agents of the gods, and taking, as he does, many of the gods 
 as representing merely another phase of the powerful men who 
 do what they choose with him on earth. These personages, 
 whether in the visible or invisible world, are a great burden to 
 his weariful existence, and are the chief causes of his anxiety 
 to escape from it; he by no means looks forward to meet- 
 ing them in some future world and singing their praise ; 
 what the Hindu desires is to escape from them altogether 
 and to attain either absorption or extinction. He canon- 
 izes or deifies his distinguished men, not always by way of 
 distributing orders of merit or titles for past services, but often 
 i because he really thinks they were and are the embodiments of 
 < power and could still do him a mischief. And the extraordi- 
 nary difficulty which the Hindu finds in conceiving a way of 
 escape out of his own personal existence is only one proof of 
 the very strong impression made upon him bj T individual per- 
 sonality and character. He will not realize the dismissal to 
 shades below of a hero, nor will he leave him drinking nectar 
 with a purple mouth up above, only to re-appear when called 
 in to solve knots worthy of a god. His favourite doctrines of 
 transmigration and incarnation bring the individual constantly 
 back upon earth in the flesh. Thus he constantly turns his 
 men into gods, and his gods back into men ; he discovers a
 
 CHAP. II.] BUCKLE S THEORY. 43 
 
 living man in whom the god actually resides, or he builds a 
 temple to a god with an authentic human biography, in either 
 case with equal confidence. All this may rest upon pantheism, 
 or the belief that the primal energy is the same everywhere in 
 a storm, a cow, a man, or a god. But it none the less follows 
 that this divine energy is most directly concerned with humanity 
 when it is run into the mould of a human creature. Borgias 
 and Catilines are, in India, more important and impressive 
 representatives of heaven's design than even storms and earth- 
 quakes ; and, therefore, for one personification of storms and 
 earthquakes, the Hindu deifies a hundred Borgias or successful 
 Catilines. These considerations may be allowed to support 
 an argument that the working divinities of Hinduism are much 
 more largely supplied by the deification of authentic men than 
 may ever have been the case in classic Europe, and conse- 
 quently that the theory of Euemerus affords a good explana- 
 tion of the origin of a great part of Asiatic polytheism. 
 
 It is worth remarking that Buckle, in comparing the Hindu 
 and Greek religions, lays stress upon a view of their respective 
 characteristics which is almost exactly contrary to that which i 
 has here been suggested. He is illustrating the influence of ' 
 physical laws on religion; and in this place his errors on 
 matters of fact are so great as to inspire grave mistrust of the 
 process of searching a library for facts to suit a comprehensive 
 theory. "According to the principles already laid down," < 
 says Buckle, the deification of mortals " could not be expected ) 
 in a tropical civilization, where the aspects of Nature filled 
 man with a constant sense of his own incapacity. It is, there- 
 fore, natural that it should form no part of the ancient Indian 
 religion ; " and he then quotes Colebrooke, who said that the 
 worship of deified men is no part of the Vedic system, as if the 
 remark applied to Indian religion generally ; while he goes on 
 to point out that in Greece the deification of mortals was a 
 recognized part of the national religion at a very early period. 
 But what Colebrooke really said was that the worship of deified 
 heroes is a later phase, not to be found in the Vedas ; though 
 the heroes themselves, not yet deified, are therein mentioned 
 occasionally. Buckle had evidently never heard of that very
 
 44- ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IX INDIA. [CHAP. IL 
 
 remarkable and still flourishing offshoot of Buddhism, the Jaina 
 faith, which is nothing else but the worship of deified men ; 
 > and when we consider that the deification of men is universally 
 ^ characteristic of the cults of all the wild non- Aryan tribes in 
 India, we see how completely Buckle's theory, that this deifi- 
 cation implies a superior respect for human powers, breaks 
 down under accurate observation. The bloodiest and most 
 degrading superstition in all India, that of the Khonds, is 
 saturated with the idea that men become gods, and the worship 
 of the dead, which is embryonic polytheism, is an almost 
 universal characteristic of the earliest superstitions in all 
 countries. 
 
 / And thus, to resume the course of our subject, mythology de- 
 ^ velops into polytheism very largely out of the primitive habit of 
 astonishment at the deeds and sufferings of real men, out of the 
 tragedy of life, the nrystery of death, and the universal attraction 
 exercised overman by superior men. The elemental personifica- 
 tions exist, but the}' retain no monopoly of attributes, for a large 
 proportion of every wonderful event or appearance is claimed 
 for the local hero ; whether it be storm, earthquake, or cholera, 
 it is just as likely to be attributed to some notorious person 
 living or just dead, as to an established god, or to one of the 
 primal deities who are constantly re-appearing in the Avatars 
 or embodiments of famous gods or heroes. Later on in the 
 apotheosis come the stories of monstrous and fantastic mira- 
 cles, which are mainly nothing more than fictions invented for 
 advertising a deity and attracting attention, like a huge picto- 
 rial programme of a circus stuck up in a country village. These 
 amazing excrescences create noproper prejudice at all againstthe 
 actuality of their hero, for no hero ever appeared in Asia who was 
 not at once daubed over with a thick coating of the marvellous, 
 which may be in some cases, however, mere conventional exag- 
 geration, mainly intended to amuse and attract. No one is 
 seriously taken in by the magnificent coloured painting of the 
 circus performer driving twenty horses abreast ; it only means 
 that anyone who goes within the booth will find that something 
 rather novel and curious is really performed. And the end of 
 this deification is that a magnified non-natural man is deposited
 
 CHAP. II.] DEVELOPMENT OF POLYTHEISM. 45 
 
 in Olympus with a large credit to his account for whatever has 
 been latterly going on in his neighbourhood upon earth, and 
 an accumulated capital stock of miracles which are sometimes 
 pure delusions but often facts grievously distorted. Then in 
 latter days when the atmosphere of belief has changed, and 
 when public opinion is become clarified on such matters, 
 people are astounded at finding a deity with such a history 
 quietly seated up aloft, and they try to evaporate him or to 
 explain him away with all possible ingenuity. Hence a variety 
 of metaphors and mystifications employed particularly by the 
 more cultivated and intellectual polytheists ; but it is very rare 
 to find anyone of the superior classes who will acknowledge 
 that the god is simply the natural outgrowth of the deif} T ing 
 process going on around them. They will say of a man that 
 he is the embodiment of a god : they encourage the people to 
 turn men into gods, and they are reluctant to allow that their 
 gods are men. The moralists are puzzled by the apparent want 
 of moral purpose or ethical decency about the god, forgetting 
 that they who fashioned him. went upon the analogy of their own 
 experience and of the hourly processes of nature, and that the 
 god was never intended to be a model, or a reforming ruler and 
 teacher of mankind, only a distorted image of some passages in 
 human existence. And, lastly, in order to get rid of the intense 
 anthropomorphism of polytheism, philosophers expound that 
 it is necessary to the laws and processes of the human mind, 
 that it is absolutely indispensable in order to make certain 
 transcendental ideas conceivable to the faculties. But, in fact, 
 man usually obtains the human figures for his heaven by a 
 very much more material operation, by taking rough casts, as 
 one might say, of famous personages in the flesh, and subse- 
 quently modelling and re-modelling the plastic shape to suit 
 his fancy or his moral sense. Of course it does not logically 
 follow that because every real hero and saint is divinized, 
 therefore every divine personage was once a real hero or saint, 
 and the point contended for in this chapter is only that com- 
 parative observation establishes a strong presumption in 
 favour of some such inference, where no other explanation is 
 manifest.
 
 46 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. [CflAP. II. 
 
 From this point of view, therefore, the professors of the 
 science of religion who maintain that divine mythology 
 was originally formed in the sky out of Nature worship, where 
 it gradually condensed and was precipitated in the shapes of 
 polytheism, may be perhaps said to have omitted due attention 
 to the antecedent process of evaporation upward. The cloud 
 land is first filled by emanations from the earth. And, from a 
 different stand point of observation, the metaphor suggested 
 by this constant transmutation of human forms into divine 
 images, and by their refraction again upon the sight of men 
 wondering, is that of a mirage. In countries and climates 
 where, as in India, the phantastic phantasmagoria of divine 
 shapes or scenes in the heavens above answers very closely to 
 what is actually going on, or supposed to be going on, among 
 men upon earth below, the phenomenon of deification is easily 
 explained and understood. One watches the reflected forms take 
 shape and colour, and fade as the sun grows strong enough to 
 dispel the intellectual mist out of which they are produced. 
 In such circumstances it is impossible not to suspect the 
 fallacy of drawing an argument in favour of the credibility of a 
 divine narrative from its natural analogy with the known order 
 of things in the world, and of demonstrating that because 
 strange and unaccountable things are known to occur upon 
 earth, therefore any incident not more strange and unaccount- 
 able, reported as from heaven, is credible. This is to affirm 
 that the reflection is as substantial as the thing reflected. 
 The peculiarity of the religious mirage is that it remains long 
 after the scenes upon earth which it caught up have past away; 
 for a primitive belief retained among cultivated people is like 
 the survival in the sky of a mirage long after the landscape 
 which it reflected, with the early light and the hazy atmosphere 
 which transmitted it, have changed. If this survival were 
 physically possible, then, since the appearance still remaining in 
 the sky would have no longer even a fanciful or refracted resem- 
 blance to things among the people on earth, they would wonder 
 how it came there, the phenomenon would appear mysterious 
 and inexplicable, mystic and symbolical, as a divine myth 
 appears to later generations. Whereas those who have seen a
 
 CHAP. II.] SPIRITUAL ASCETICS. 47 
 
 religious mirage in its earlier stages perceive that the human 
 forms visible in the heavens are mostly the great shadows cast 
 by real personages who stood out from among the primitive 
 generations of men upon earth. They are fantastic silhouettes, 
 and they fade away as the mists clear ; but they almost cer- 
 tainly reflect and preserve in outline an original figure some- 
 where once existent upon earth, though they may be now no 
 nearer the scale of humanity than the spectres of the Brocken. 
 For the purposes of the science of religion, and as a study 
 of further developments, it is worth while observing how the 
 spiritualists of India, the preachers of pure morals and of 
 subjective creeds, are hampered and entangled by this gross 
 materialism of the people. No spiritual teacher of mark can 
 evade being reckoned a god (or a visible embodiment of divine 
 power) b} r the outer-ring of his disciples, and an atheist or 
 blasphemer by his enemies ; he may disown and denounce, 
 but the surrounding atmosphere is too strong for him. When 
 the lower class of priests discover that in his secret teaching 
 he is against them, they are apt to invent vindictive and 
 scandalous accounts of his birth and social conduct. They 
 may excommunicate him, and prudently, for in all countries 
 the spiritualist is impelled to attack, as empty formalities, in- 
 jurious to religious brotherhood and equality, those caste rules 
 and prejudices about physical purity or impurity which are so 
 inveterate in all early theologies. And if the new sect openly 
 defies caste, it will be persecuted. The common people, on 
 the other hand, amid much vague awe of the professional 
 Brahman, never allow him a monopoly of their religious 
 custom ; nor does the Brahman himself set up as agent for 
 the only genuine repertory of divinities, or declare all others to 
 be spurious. Uniformity and consistency in creeds are inven- 
 tions of the logical and thorough-going European mind ; and 
 though religion is the only general question which really in- 
 terests the Asiatic people, yet they have never organised either 
 their ideas or their institutions up to that point of precision 
 which naturally breeds active intolerance. To the mass of < 
 Hindus it is quite simple that they shall indulge their fancy in < 
 following after any new deity or saint who is likely to do them }
 
 48 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. [CHAP. II. 
 
 / a good turn, without troubling themselves whether this latest 
 ^ dispensation is in accordance or collision with their regular 
 everyday ritual. So they insist on recognizing the spiritualist 
 as a fresh manifestation of Power, and they worship him accord- 
 ingly. This does not much offend orthodoxy, which has no 
 great objection to adding to the number of deities ; but the 
 esoteric doctrines, which probabry drown all priesthoods and 
 gods together in the depths of some mystic revelation, are 
 much more likely to get their authors into trouble. Hence 
 arise the secret fraternities, the symbols and masonic signs, 
 by which nearly every spiritual sect intercommunicates. These 
 things are used to save the teacher from his friends as well as 
 from his enemies ; the melancholy ascetic may be seen sitting 
 and enduring the adoration of the crowd; he does not 
 encourage them, but he does not much attempt to undeceive 
 them. His secret, his way of life, his glimpse behind the 
 curtain before which all this illusive stage play of the visible 
 world goes on, his short cut out of the circle of miserable 
 existences, these things he imparts to those disciples whom he 
 selects out of the herd, and whom he sends abroad to dis- 
 tribute the news. When he dies he is canonized, and he may 
 fall into the grip of the Brahmans after all, and be turned 
 into an embodiment of a god, but his society may also survive 
 and spread on its spiritual basis. Unluckily secret societies 
 founded on the purest principles are unsafe institutions in 
 all ages. They are of course regarded suspiciously b}^ every 
 government, and with very good reason ; for their movements 
 in Asia are sure to grow into political agitation whenever they 
 acquire any impetus. And in India there is such a perceptible 
 tendency of spiritual liberalism to degenerate into licence 
 there is so much evidence of the liability of the purest 
 mysticism to be interpreted by way of orgies among weaker 
 brethren that one may guess scandalous stories about 
 private gatherings of the initiated to have been not altogether 
 without foundation in any age or country. 
 
 Whether a spiritual ascetic shall succeed in founding a sect 
 with inner lights, or only a fresh group of votaries which adore 
 him as a peculiar manifestation of divinity, seems to depend
 
 CHAP. II.] MATERIALISTIC DIVINITIES. 49 
 
 much upon all kinds of chance. Sometimes both conceptions 
 of him survive, and thus we get that duplex formation so 
 common in Eastern religions the esoteric doctrine and the 
 exoteric cult. There is one widely spread sect in India 
 (though not many English know it) which outwardly worships 
 Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, and sets up his image 
 in the house ; but their real point of adoration is an obscure 
 enthusiast who founded the sect not very long ago, and who 
 is now in the semi-miraculous stage. By the outer- disciples 
 he is certainly held to be himself an embodiment of Vishnu ; 
 but, so far as can be made out, the initiated still know him to 
 have been a spiritualist who scorned gods and Brahmans. 
 But, as times go on, these two branches out of one stock, 
 the worship of a divinity and the inner revelation, become 
 twisted up together, so that the reputed miracles are used to 
 authenticate the spiritual message, and the spiritual message 
 is put forward as an adequate motive to explain the miracles. 
 Then of course the message itself is subjected to incessant 
 changes and enlargements ; for, being alwa} r s at its first 
 delivery a very simple message contained in a few deep 
 abstruse sayings, it is very soon required to explain every- 
 thing in this world and the next. Here comes in the living 
 tradition which fills in details, and provides fresh formulas to 
 supply fresh needs. This duty falls upon the successors who 
 are elected as chiefs of the sect, upon whom the mantle of 
 the founder is supposed to have fallen ; sometimes, indeed, 
 they are proclaimed to be successive incarnations of the god 
 who first appeared in the founder. But this is only where 
 the spiritual side of the peculiar doctrine has been very much 
 darkened, either intentionally or by ignorance. 
 
 All these transitions in the working out of religious creeds 
 and dogmas are visible in India at the present day. We 
 can perceive how the religious ideas of a great population 
 do not develop regularly and simultaneously through regular 
 stages in one direction or from one starting point ; but that 
 ideas, simple and complex, physical and metaphysical, moral 
 and immoral, grow up together in a jumble, the strongest 
 growth absorbing the weaker ones. In India of course the
 
 50 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IN INDIA. [CHAP. II. 
 
 whole atmosphere is gradually changing, but we have yet 
 to see how this will modify the old belief. Speaking broadly 
 and excluding Europeanized societies, it may be said that 
 nowhere as yet in India has morality become essential to the 
 credibility of a divine narrative. Perhaps, indeed, the course 
 of ideas in modern India may never lead up to this necessity, 
 and the Hindus may retain their primitive notions of malignant 
 deities as being reasonably in accordance with the perceived 
 analogies of nature, and as furnishing quite as good an 
 explanation of the prevalence of evil in this world as any 
 hitherto discovered by philosophers. For Mill's conclusion, 
 that of accepting a Divinity, but doubting His omnipotence, 
 is, whatever he may say to the contrary, a kind of philosophic 
 return toward the idea of popular polytheism, a distribution 
 of divine powers. And the main practical objection to its 
 becoming popular is that it in no way satisfies the religious 
 feeling of desire for perfect trust and dependence which is 
 peculiar to Christianity and Islam. In Hinduism also this 
 feeling is universal, but vague and indefinite, not belonging 
 necessarily to the conception of the gods. That belief in a 
 moral purpose and a just Providence should be rooted in the 
 Hindu mind, side by side with all these absurd mythologies, is 
 only one of the numerous anomalies natural to polytheism, which 
 should neither derange nor confirm any theory about the origin 
 of the mythology. Yet the co-existence in the same com- 
 munity of irrational and monstrous myths with sublime con- 
 ceptions of the ways of God toward men has not only been 
 marked as a puzzling contradiction, but has been used as evi- 
 dence that the source of divine myths was never really religious 
 belief, that it is to be found in metaphoric expressions. It 
 seems to have been argued that because EumaBus in the 
 Odyssey speaks reasonably and reverentially of God, therefore 
 his generation could not actually have invented or believed the 
 undignified and scandalous stories about the gods. And 
 consistency is saved by the theory that the scandalous stories 
 were only distorted Nature myths. Nevertheless it is quite 
 certain and open to proof that a pagan will invent and worship 
 the most indefensible gods, and will simultaneously believe
 
 CHAP. II.] ATTRIBUTES OP THE DEITIES. 51 
 
 vaguely in a moral purpose and a supreme dispensation of 
 justice and judgment to come. Any Hindu will call on God 
 to attest the justice of liis cause, precisely as a Chris- 
 tian might; though at the same time he worships any 
 number of specific divinities who have no pretensions to moral 
 ideas. And the real explanation of the contradiction is that 
 the specific god is seldom anything more than a glorified super- 
 natural image of a man, not necessarily virtuous at all, only 
 undoubtedly powerful. The innumerable gods of Hinduism 
 are deified ghosts, or famous personages invested with all sorts 
 of attributes in order to account for the caprices of nature. 
 This is the state of the vulgar pagan mind ; by the more reflec- 
 tive intelligence the gods are recognized as existent and as beings 
 capable of making themselves very troublesome, whom it is 
 therefore good to propitiate, like men in office. At the same 
 time a devout pagan trusts that there is something better beyond 
 and above these gods, and that the moral purpose works itself 
 somehow straight in spite of their capricious influences ; at any 
 rate there is death, absorption, or annihilation by which one 
 may escape that dread of the gods which troubles the life of 
 man down to its inmost depths. But whether the Hindus tend 
 toward improving their popular divinities into rational gods or 
 into moral gods, or into gods inconceivable yet credible, or 
 toward sinking them all in the ocean of pantheism or of mate- 
 rialism, we may be sure that both the fantastic deini-gods and 
 the mystical spiritualists will have their acts and sayings 
 melted down and recast to suit the exigencies of the times. 
 All sorts of fictions will be employed to manage the further 
 transition by gentle gradients and breaks, to serve for a curtain 
 behind which the costumes are changed and the scenes shifted. 
 And it is probable that later on scientific inquirers from a dis- 
 tance (either of space or time) will become so puzzled by the 
 anomalies and contradictions thus produced, not only by the 
 original confusion of belief, but also by the processes which 
 these beliefs and the narratives of their origin have undergone 
 in being adapted to different levels of credulity or conscience, 
 that they will distrust altogether the actuality of the human 
 leaven which is at the bottom of these fermentations. People 
 
 9
 
 52 ON THE ORIGIN OF DIVINE MYTHS IX INDIA. [CHAP. II. 
 
 will show how the divine narratives grew up and were pieced 
 together out of unconscious allegoiy, poetic symbolism, per- 
 sonification of nature, or disguise of language, and will decide, 
 because these are necessary conditions to the existence and 
 transitions of a divine myth, that its hero has no more au- 
 thentic human origin. Yet the Hindu at any rate, with his 
 strong sense of personality after death and of the necessity for 
 providing a fresh tenement for the soul disembodied, has cer- 
 tainly built up the greater part of his inhabited pantheon out of 
 the actions and words of real men ; and he mostly follows, not 
 will-o'-the-wisps and distorted metaphors, but the deep foot- 
 steps left by extraordinary men in their passage through the 
 world. He cannot believe that these souls have gone for ever ; 
 he is continually recalling them and worshipping them ; he will 
 not let the heroic shade depart to the shades below ov TTOT^OV 
 yoooxrct, but translates him at once into a present spirit. 
 
 To conclude. It has been thought worth while to lay so 
 much stress in this paper upon the fact that the actual gods of 
 Asiatic poLytheism have been mostly men, because the broad 
 impersonal theories now in vogue about the origin and develop- 
 ment of religious belief usually ignore this fact, more or less, 
 Because an immense quantity of superstitious gossip about the 
 gods, of fairy tales, folk lore, and the like, are evidently fables, 
 built up out of mere words, therefore the extreme comparative 
 mythologist appears to infer that the central divine figures 
 round which all this floating fable gathers are also nebulous 
 and unreal. To dissipate the stories which cluster round a 
 god, and to dissipate the god himself, are two distinct opera- 
 tions; and it is not always clear whether the mythologists 
 observe this distinction in dealing with strange outlandish 
 deities, though it is well known nearer home. This may be a 
 mistaken view of the extent to which comparative mj'thology 
 desires to go, for it is difficult to ascertain positively how far 
 the writers would actually carry their dissolving process ; but 
 certainly the general drift of some standard works upon mytho- 
 logy appears to imply that polytheism gradually grew and took 
 shapes out of mere abstractions and the habit of metaphoric 
 talk. If this were accepted as a comprehensive explana-
 
 CHAP. II.] GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 53 
 
 tion of the worship and multiform gods of the Hindus, for 
 instance, it would, I think, entail a wrong apprehension of 
 the beginning and development of primitive beliefs. For there 
 appears to be sufficient ground for contending that such beliefs 
 do not form themselves upon the personification of natural 
 phenomena or by accidental linguistic coincidences so much as 
 by deifying authentic men. And the popularity of the imper- 
 sonal explanations seems to be very much connected with the 
 exigencies of the transitional state of religion in Europe, which 
 requires all stiff dogmas and clear cut individualities to be 
 softened down into a haze. However this may be, within the 
 domain of religion, as sometimes within that of history, there 
 may be danger of carrying too far the method which obliterates 
 the influence of persons, and ascribes all movement to general 
 causes, physical or metaphysical. Those who are masters of 
 the subject may preserve their own understanding of the true 
 proportion in the general landscape of each religious period 
 that should be allotted to the great figures in the foreground ; 
 but upon the unlearned the effect is apt to be hazy, and a 
 broad view is mistaken for a dead flat. Certainly it would be 
 to depopulate and take a great part of the life out of Indian 
 polytheism if we could suppose that it consisted only of an 
 aggregate of fortuitous impersonations of inanimate Nature.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 INFLUENCE UPON KELIGION OF A EISE IX MORALITY. 
 
 Religion regarded by primitive and civilized men respectively from two different 
 stand-points In Europe religion could not now stand apart from morality ; 
 in India there is still no necessary connection In India morality unable to 
 advance without the concurrence of religion, which adopts and authorizes 
 useful and progressive ideas as soon as they become popular, thus accommo- 
 dating itself to the gradual improvement and enlarged ideas of mankind 
 As moral sentiments and notions of utility thus develop, the religion which 
 accepts them becomes more refined and more rational ; and the sacred books 
 lay down consistent rules adjusted to new ideas and uses Influence of 
 morality tends to modify the capricious and malevolent character of early 
 divinities, while the recognition of order and regular sequence lessens their 
 direct responsibility for the world's affairs Difficulty of introducing moral 
 systems without leaning for support on divine sanction, which is the basis of 
 all authoritative teaching, and of all claims, temporal or religious, to legislate 
 or command Titles of Indian dynasties run back by presumption to divine 
 origin British Government alone in India rests on purely secular rights 
 and its own power Question whether physical conditions of India permit 
 any great national or moral changes. 
 
 THE British Empire has so much concern with great Non- 
 Christian populations, whose religious ideas and institutions 
 are being rapidly transformed by English notions of law and 
 morality, that the influence upon religious beliefs of a rise in 
 morality may be almost as interesting a question as the recent 
 discussion* of the influence upon morality of a decline in 
 religious belief. It is possible, moreover, that some far-away 
 connexion may be recognized between the two subjects and 
 that the examination of one may throw some light upon the 
 other. 
 
 At first sight the two stand-points from which religious 
 belief is regarded by primitive and by civilised men respec- 
 tively, appear as wide apart as possible. In Europe a large 
 
 * In the "Nineteenth Century." Nos. 2 & 3, April and May, 1S77.
 
 CHAP. III.] TWO STAND-POINTS. 55 
 
 majority still holds that morality could not endure without the 
 authority of religion ; hut most people also admit that a creed 
 which should he found not useful to morality would fall into 
 disuse, would in fact, cease to he believed, and would thus 
 dissolve of itself. In India, on the other hand, few people 
 would admit that their religious beliefs were necessarily con- 
 nected with morality, and a good many might even say that 
 morality would be none the better for such a connection. If 
 primitive men were asked the use of their beliefs, they might 
 in substance reply that theology is like navigation or astrology, 
 or any other empiric art which helps one through the risks and 
 chances of the voyage through sensitive existence, that it is 
 the profession of interpreting signs and tokens of the divine 
 caprice, and of propitiating powerful deities, who take a sort 
 of blackmail upon human prosperity. Nevertheless the real 
 difference between the two stand-points may perhaps be 
 expressed by saying that, whereas a civilised religious belief 
 cannot do without the sanction of accepted morality, in 
 primitive times morality (or at least expediency and utility) 
 must seek the patronage of some accepted religious belief. In y 
 Europe morality can, on the whole, dictate terms to theology, 
 and though both sides still equally dread an open quarrel, yet 
 theology has most to fear from a dissolution of partnership. 
 In Asia theology is still the senior partner with all the capital 
 and credit, and can dictate terms to morality, being for the 
 most part independent of any necessary connection with it ; for 
 Asiatic theology transacts with the gods all matters touching >j. 
 the material interests of humanity, and in this very speculative 
 business, as in many others, morality is by no means essential. 
 It is well known that the primitive mind finds relief from the 
 perplexity caused by things passing its understanding, in the 
 theory that the gods swarm all round men, and are incessantly 
 interfering, either to help or to hinder. From the promulga- 
 tion of a code which is to direct society in the minutest par- 
 ticulars, down to the swallowing of a drug or the moment of 
 starting on a journey, every act of life, great and small, re- 
 quires the assent of the divinities, and is assumed to be done 
 after ascertaining their good pleasure, through stewards of the
 
 56 INFLUENCE OF A KISE IN MOEALITY. [CHAP. III. 
 
 mysteries. It follows naturally that with a paramount 
 authority so close at hand, and so constantly meddling 
 irresistibly, no man can act with independence or on his 
 own judgment ; he must obtain the proper sanction of 
 theology for all that he wants to do. Theology is thus the 
 most essential and comprehensive of all sciences, since it 
 teaches men how to obtain the sanction without which 
 no step in advance, however useful or expedient, can be ven- 
 tured upon by mankind. An ethical reform, a sanitary im- 
 provement, a new medicine, any useful discovery or moral 
 axiom, must first be presented at the court of the gods before 
 it can be received into societ}^ ; and the priest acts as Lord 
 Chamberlain. Moreover, it constant^ happens, as in mundane 
 courts, that disagreeable and immoral candidates for court 
 favour get presented by help of powerful patronage ; certain 
 practices and rites are introduced and sanctioned by theology 
 which run directly counter to elementary morality and even to 
 a sense of natural expediency. The excuse is that it has been 
 the gods' good pleasure to ordain and sanction these practices ; 
 but it will almost always be found that they are really founded 
 upon some selfish material interests, and are not, as they are 
 usually supposed to be, merely whimsical superstitions as to 
 what will please the gods, or as to what is right and proper. 
 In short, all novelties and changes, whether the move be for- 
 ward or backward, must be undertaken by theological word of 
 command, and the gods get the credit or discredit. Perhaps 
 the best example of a selfish device obtaining vogue under the 
 cloak of a necessary rite is afforded by the famous practice of 
 a widow becoming sati, or burning herself alive with her dead 
 husband, which is undoubtedly, as Sir H. Maine has pointed out, 
 connected with the desire of the husband's family to get rid of 
 her right, if she is childless, to a tenancy for life upon her hus- 
 band's land. Among the great families it is also connected, 
 as may be easily observed still in certain parts of India, 
 with the wish of an heir to employ tin's simple plan of 
 freeing himself from many inconveniences and incumbrances 
 entailed upon him by the bequest of a number of step-mothers 
 who cannot marry again. Other instances might be given;
 
 CHAP. III.] NATIVE MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS. 57 
 
 but though this habit of lending the names of the gods to 
 dubious transactions and conspiracies to defraud has always 
 prevailed more or less, yet it may be affirmed that on the whole 
 we find the primitive deities almost as often patronizing good 
 as evil. Theology is usually well pleased to grant its patents 
 to improvements and to adopt simple discoveries, in expediency 
 or even in ethics, so long as the inventor or moralist is profes- 
 sedly submissive, dedicates the work and ascribes all the glory 
 to the proper quarter. And this is readily done in a state of 
 society when no sort of venture or enterprise has the slightest 
 chance of being well received or becoming popular unless the 
 gods appear in the prospectus. A good example of the address 
 with which elementary science avails itself of theological pro- 
 tection may be taken from the practice of medicine, which has 
 to be carried on very largely, in the old fashioned pro- 
 vinces of India, under the name and colours of theology, 
 which is here so confidently supreme that it does not 
 even condescend to stipulate for any concealment of the 
 material processes. One may observe the native practitioner, 
 learned in charms and simples, openly mixing a drop of croton 
 oil with the ink with which he indites his charm for a purge, 
 and the patient swallows the paper pill in cheerful reliance 
 upon the combined effect. Many other practices, ascertained 
 empirically to be fit and expedient, have become in course of 
 time so overgrown and concealed by the religious observance in 
 which they were originally wrapped up, that it is now very 
 difficult to extract the original kernel of utility, and one only 
 hits upon it by accident, when in trying to abolish what looks 
 like a ridiculous and useless superstition, the real object and 
 reason are disinterred and sometimes prove worth knowing. 
 Thus the rule of burying Hindus who die by small-pox or 
 cholera is ordinarily expounded by priests to be imperative 
 because the outward signs and symptoms of those diseases 
 mark the actual presence of divinity ; the small-pox is, not the 
 god's handiwork, but the god itself manifest ; but there is also 
 some ground for concluding that the process of burying has 
 been found more wholesome against contagion than that of the 
 hurried and ill-managed cremation which pre vails during a fatal
 
 58 INFLUENCE OF A EISE IX MORALITY. [CHAP. III. 
 
 epidemic. If vaccination could only be ordained theologically, 
 it would have an immense success in India ; hut the English 
 insist on explaining it otherwise, and thereby set theology 
 against it, raising grave suspicion of witchcraft, or at any rate 
 of contraband and unauthorized practices. All elementary 
 methods of natural science which are practised independently 
 of the religious authority are thus stigmatized ; and as the gods 
 gradually acquire some tincture of morality, any very discredit- 
 able and mysterious misfortunes to pious and innocent people 
 are traced to the same source. Men attribute their failures 
 and mishaps to the gods ; the gods pass on to the sorcerer the 
 blame of those accidents which it is not quite convenient to 
 explain ; the system is not favourable to a development of self- 
 reliance, but the people are not by any means so blindly super- 
 stitious as they pretend to be, and both gods and sorcerers 
 yield like prudent ministers to an advance of public opinion. 
 
 In fact the more one watches the actual working and dispo- 
 sition of primitive religion, the more one is impressed by its 
 elasticity and accommodating changeableness. So long as the 
 single principle of the supreme authority of the gods is left 
 undisputed, it may be invoked for the sanction or support of 
 any practice or belief upon which men are tolerably agreed ; 
 and it may be used like steam as a prime mover of any ma- 
 chinery constructed by ingenious mortals. The extraordinary 
 variety and multiformity of polytheism largely represents the 
 endeavours of the vagrant imagination of the people, much 
 aided by priests and other astute leaders of society, to bring 
 their religious ideas into working correspondence with their 
 earthly needs. Discoveries of social utility are brought out as 
 revelations from on high ; and necessary changes in the way 
 of life, for good or for bad, are shown to be distinctly ordained ; 
 while as all the credit is given to theology, it is easy to see 
 what enormous influence that science continues, so long as its 
 position is unchallenged, to accumulate. Comte has noticed 
 with his usual insight into the minds of primitive people the 
 manner in which a religious belief adapts itself to genuine 
 social and political needs ; and personal observation proves 
 that this goes on rapidly and incessantly in the loose incoherent
 
 CHAP. III.] ELASTICITY OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 59 
 
 formations of the earliest types. As tlie state of society im- 
 proves, the religious beliefs seem to develop themselves by a 
 sort of natural selection. We may here put aside mere ritual 
 and the innumerable forms of worship which are only devices 
 for propitiating the unseen, and which continue to be used, like 
 the post-office, just as long as people have reason to believe 
 that their messages arrive and are answered, but no longer. 
 The early religious beliefs are not only propitiatory, but con- 
 tain rules of conduct by which a man is to be guided in all 
 circumstances of his existence ; the main difference between 
 earlier and later religion being that the first looks almost as 
 entirely to man's material as the second does to his spiritual 
 well-being. And as it has been truly remarked in regard to the 
 latest forms of religion that any religious movement is doomed 
 to sterility if it cannot assimilate some philosophical element,^/ 
 if it is not what the age calls moral and reasonable, so also, in 
 early religions, an ordinance or rule of conduct will only 
 endure and develop if it is founded on some true notion or 
 conjecture of material utility or expediency. If it is useless 
 or harmful, a simple caprice of inspiration, it will not last. In 
 the midst of countless random and whimsical guesses at what 
 is fit and suitable, among various tricks and pretexts meant to 
 give a religious colour to some selfish interest, those religious 
 commands alone survive long and develop which are or have 
 been somehow connected with the real needs of the people to 
 w r hom they were delivered. The moral and material progress 
 of a country goes on pushing before it the religious beliefs and 
 shaping them to suit it on exigencies ; while theology slowly 
 and reluctantly repeals and disowns the rules which become 
 obsolete, or which are found to have been issued under some 
 very inconvenient and undeniable error of fact. Morality is 
 not yet essential to religion, but if an inspired command turns 
 out to be a blunder as well as a crime it is shortlived, and will 
 soon be amended by a fresh ruling. Nevertheless the gods in 
 no way admit themselves to be bound by human views of 
 morality, while the functions of popular religion very much 
 resemble, in their highest range, the functions of a modern 
 government ; its business is confined to procuring material
 
 60 INFLUENCE OF A RISE IX MORALITY. [CHAP. IIL 
 
 blessings, warding off evil, contending against such physical 
 calamities as famine or pestilence, and codifying rules of social 
 utility which have been verified by experience. As the scene 
 of its operation is principally the visible world, the scheme of 
 future rewards or punishments is not an essential part of the 
 system ; for such a scheme must not be confounded with vague 
 beliefs in places of refuge for disembodied spirits, which may 
 be either different kinds of limbo from which the ghost issues 
 forth and meddles again with the world, or Elysian shades for 
 heroes, or an Otympus to which dead magnates ascend on 
 special promotion to apotheosis. There are heavens and hells 
 in Indian theologies ; but it is remarkable that a doctrine which 
 in highly civilized religions is usually regarded as the most im- 
 portant, and is certainly the most impressive upon the masses, 
 is in primitive religions of comparatively insignificant effect, 
 and appears to make no such mark upon popular imagination 
 as to influence conduct in every day life. The reason may be 
 that the Indians, as a mass, still consider religion as the 
 supreme authority which administers their worldly affairs, and 
 not as an instrument for the promotion of moral behaviour ; 
 and although, like Job's comforters, they are fond of connecting 
 misfortunes with sins previously committed in the same or in 
 an antecedent existence, yet this law is still supposed to operate 
 within the sphere of the visible world. 
 
 As the confirmed perceptions of utility develop moral senti- 
 ments, these colour slightly the notions regarding the gods, who 
 are soon credited with some indignation at wrong doing, at any 
 rate when the sufferer is one of their clients or devotees. But 
 the idea is still that the gods punish or avenge in this life by 
 material curses, or aid by lending a material hand at critical 
 moments ; and thus as they begin to be affected by the sight of 
 a good man struggling with adversity, the feeling develops 
 that virtue ought to be divinely helped against vice. Never- 
 theless the primeval thinkers very soon observed that as a 
 matter of fact the gods appear to be often on the side of the 
 wicked, or at least against the innocent ; and here comes in the 
 complication between sin and evil which runs through all phases 
 of religious speculation, from Buddha to J. S. Mill, the problem
 
 CHAP. III.] KELIGIOUS SPECULATIONS. 61 
 
 of justifj'ing the ways of the unseen powers which are assumed 
 to be governing human affairs. The earliest and most 
 simple attempts to account for evil are by assuming that the 
 gods must have in some mysterious way been offended ; 
 whence comes the institution of the scapegoat so well known 
 in India in plagues of cholera, which embodies that idea 
 of expiation which has had such immense development in 
 the history of religions ; and the various receipts for dis- 
 covering Jonah, the man with a contagious curse, not neces- 
 sarily a moral offender, but only one who has incurred the 
 divine wrath, who is also common throughout all Asia. Next 
 follows the advanced notion that this offence against the gods 
 is not only some insult or sacrilege, as when Ulysses killed the 
 sacred oxen, but is a moral sin, an offence against society of 
 which the gods take magisterial cognizance. Job's comforters 
 try hard to prove to him that he must be reaping the fruit of 
 his own guilt, and in all times the early theologian has made 
 desperate endeavours to connect misfortune with misconduct, 
 though often driven to explain the connection by references to 
 ancestral stain, or to the hypothesis of something done in a 
 previous existence. But the more vigorous and daring minds 
 rejected these subterfuges; and finding themselves landed in 
 the dilemma between the omnipotence and the perfect justice of 
 divinity, they solved it in different ways. Buddha held firmly 
 to morality, threw over the gods altogether as immoral and 
 troublesome powers from which a philosopher has to escape as 
 fast as he can, and objected even to heaven as a final resting- 
 place, on the ground that you are never safe so long as you own 
 a sentient existence. Nothing but Nirvana, or being blown out 
 like a lamp, will set men finally beyond the reach of the demon 
 who afflicts them with sensation. This teaching was, however, 
 a moral and metaphysical doctrine vastly above the heads of the 
 people ; and practical common-sense Hinduism has never allowed 
 questions as to the moral character of the gods to be sufficient 
 reason for turning one's back on them or refusing to deal with 
 them. Philosophers may have concluded privately that the gods 
 are either incompetent or ill-disposed, a class of beings who must 
 be endured and ignored ; but the people have always made the
 
 62 INFLUENCE OF A RISE IN MORALITY. [CHAP. III. 
 
 best of their divinities so long as they did not oppose themselves 
 to reasonable improvements in the moral standard, adapted them- 
 selves to circumstances, and recognized governments de facto. 
 Mere peccadillos attributed to one or two out of many gods are 
 of little account. Arthur Young ridicules a Frenchman who 
 denounced to him the profligacy of Louis XV. ; and ; he says 
 that Frederick the Great was a much more objectionable 
 despot, because it is infinitely less important to the common- 
 wealth that a king should take a fancy to his neighbour's wife 
 than that he should fancy his neighbour's provinces. This 
 view, though questionable, is precisely that taken by polytheists 
 of their divinities; so long as the gods do not bring more 
 tremendous misfortune upon the country they need not be par- 
 ticularly moral ; their speciality not being the direction of 
 morals, as in later faiths, but the distribution of temporal 
 blessings and curses. 
 
 This process by which the divinities absorb and sanctify 
 useful ideas and convenient reforms evidently tends to improve 
 and elevate the whole religion in its legislative department ; but 
 as the creeds thus refine and cleanse themselves the authorita- 
 tive revelation comes to be recorded in writing and gets into 
 professional hands; which of course makes an important 
 change of type. The scripture is much less easily question- 
 able, the rules become more precise and consistent, and conse- 
 quently much less elastic ; the change is analogous to that 
 whereby a scientific code supplants judge-made law and free con- 
 struction of precedents. Interpretation of holy writ necessarily 
 supersedes, or greatly restricts, oracular delivery of messages 
 and traditions ; and a favourable reading of texts, even under the 
 cloud of a sacred language, is not so easy to negotiate as a fresh 
 oral inspiration, though the latter is largely retained to help out 
 the former. Nevertheless as the world changes gradually for the 
 better, these concessions and compromises have to be managed ; 
 since there are always impatient reformers who will arise to de- 
 nounce the parole morte if it falls too much behind the times, and 
 will come forward with a new prophet, a new symbol, or a new 
 revelation more in accordance with actual needs and convic- 
 tions. And the sects and diverse creeds thus generated repre-
 
 CHAP. III.] . PHILOSOPHIC PAGANISM. 63 
 
 sent the constant oscillations of ideas and opinions beyond and 
 below the orthodox standard not only the high but also the 
 low water-marks of the restless tides of superstition, because 
 occasionally there is a relapse into some grotesque or immoral 
 belief decidedly below orthodox level. When a liturgy becomes 
 established and recognized on a wide scale, as is the high class 
 Brahmanic ritual, it is sure to be more decent and respectable 
 than less public worships of a looser structure ; and though it 
 may become flat, stale, and emotionally unprofitable, it retains 
 the support of all quiet respectable conservatives. 
 
 Now it is to be observed that even Brahmanism has never 
 yet been forced into admitting openly any necessary connexion 
 with morality* It has sanctified a good many rules of life and 
 conduct which are decorous and expedient, but these are issued 
 theologically ; and the ethical Hindu reformer who insisted on 
 the paramount necessity of a moral object and reason for his 
 beliefs has had to leave the pale. That righteousness is better 
 than sacrifice has not yet been openly acknowledged by the high 
 church of Hinduism ; its ultimate teaching points directly, not 
 to a moral Providence of any kind, but to Pantheism, which has 
 no ethical basis. Pantheism and final absorption are not merely 
 esoteric doctrines ; they underlie and give form to the common 
 popular beliefs, and are thoroughly accepted by men of ordinary 
 intellect and culture. In the West the Jews had distinctly 
 founded religion upon righteousness before Christianity came to 
 confirm and perpetuate the connexion ; and the new religion 
 further satisfied and strengthened morality by the doctrine of a 
 final state of rewards and punishments, bej^ond which consum- 
 mation no one desired to go, because this was a sufficient 
 explanation. Whereas in the East morality has never been 
 strong enough to demand of theology a satisfactory explana- 
 tion ; and no such terminus as a single future state satiates the 
 deeper Indian sense of immensity. The Hindu fancy does not 
 repose eternally in a heaven or a hell ; he must go on through 
 an endless rotation of existences until absorption or extinction 
 stave off his pertinacious logical craving for knowledge of the 
 "whence and whither." In his country the moral purpose 
 running through countless ages has never been demonstrable
 
 64 INFLUENCE OF A RISE IN MORALITY. [CHAP. III. 
 
 enough to serve as a final cause ; while the incessant flux and 
 change of religious ideas and shapes support that analogy 
 between the nature of things human and of things divine which 
 is the origin of all primitive religions, and makes the gods 
 appear as ephemeral as mortals. Mr. Swinburne's Hymn to 
 Proserpine represents the attitude of the pagan worshipper who 
 refuses to abandon the old gods, consoles himself for their 
 overthrow by declaring the modern creed just as transitory as 
 the ancient one, will not adore the new divinity, " but standing, 
 looks to the end." This is the true spirit of philosophic 
 paganism; but the popular religious beliefs must obey the 
 pressure of slowly rising moral influence, and if the social 
 condition of a people continues to advance, this process goes 
 on until at last the authority of morals becomes as necessary 
 to theology as at first the authority of theology was to morals. 
 We may some day find in India, as elsewhere, theology com- 
 pletely subordinated to morality; indeed there are already 
 indications of a tendency towards this inversion of original 
 parts, though the mental and material impediments to be sur- 
 mounted are still considerable. 
 
 Here it is obvious that the acknowledgment of the duty of 
 moral government must expose the old divinities to great 
 danger ; they are very much in the same predicament with 
 hereditary despotic rulers who are forced to admit the rights 
 of man ; there is no knowing how the admission will be 
 used against authority and prescription. The analogy from 
 nature, which is the root of all natural religions, becomes 
 gradually subjected to a severe strain, because it is difficult 
 to reconcile this analogy with a moral purpose, and yet this 
 analogy is really what makes all early religions credible, since 
 they are built up out of actual observation and experience of 
 the stern and incomprehensible working of natural laws. 
 This is a solid, and for the time being an incontestable basis 
 for inferences about supernatural beings who administer the 
 visible world ; whose acts and behaviour prove them to be 
 careless and cruel ; but on the other hand these observations 
 disagree widely with a presumption of moral government, 
 and so whenever the ethical reformer attempts to take his
 
 CIIAP. III.] TUE OLD DIVINITIES IX DANGER. 05 
 
 stand on morality as a divine institution, he is instantly 
 challenged to show his authorit}' for any such belief. A 
 theological authority of course he must have, or he must 
 give up all hope of popularizing his teaching ; while in times 
 of material distress and disorder, and in countries where 
 "the amazing waste in nature, the destruction and misery"* 
 are quite unaccountable and prevail on a large scale, the 
 difficulty of making credible the moral government and bene- 
 volence of divinity is perhaps rarely realized by people in 
 more comfortable and enlightened parts of the world. So the 
 analogy from nature constantly trammels the advance of 
 morality, and drags back the higher moral teaching into the 
 slough of despond ; because the people still insist upon 
 inferring the nature of the gods from their experience of 
 the misery and disorder of human life, which the gods are 
 supposed to regulate. In a country subject to wars, famines, 
 pestilences, and scandalous tyrannies, and in a state of 
 thought which attributes directly to the divinities all the 
 remarkable accidents or events of life, the resistance offered 
 to an advancing morality by natural religion is constant and 
 powerful ; it is the incessant gravitation of the earthborn 
 deities whom morality endeavours to lift up. 
 
 It is only when, as time goes on. the gradual perception of 
 the order and sequence of things withdraws from the divinities 
 by tacit consent a great deal of direct responsibility for the 
 course of affairs, that the road ahead is cleared for morality 
 to advance without parting company with theology. The old 
 gods ma) r either fall below the raised level of public opinion, 
 and become discreditable, or they may be provided with an 
 improved set of attributes. Some powerful religious reformer 
 steps in, and strikes a religious note above the ordinary level. 
 His strength lies in this that he collects, and as one might 
 say, edits, puts into popular shape and effective form, all the 
 ideas and feelings about purer morals and worship which 
 have been floating about, usually in the form of saj'ings and 
 maxims, on the highest surface of the popular mind ; these 
 he delivers as his message from heaven, and sanctions it by 
 
 * Butler, Aualogy.
 
 66 INFLUENCE OF A RISE IN MORALITY. [CHAP. III. 
 
 a more refined ritual. Nevertheless the difficulty of a religious 
 reform lies always in this, that to improve religion it is also 
 necessary to rehabilitate the divinities, seeing that no reformer 
 will be listened to at all by the masses unless he can prove his 
 warrant from the powers that be, and can produce his signs 
 and tokens. When Elijah challenged the priests of Baal, he 
 put the authenticity of his authority upon a palpable and 
 immediate issue to be judged by all men. And as in certain 
 states of society the ordinary visible facts are usually against 
 any one who attempts to prove that the gods are good, while 
 the extraordinary signs and tokens are not always on the 
 better side, the reformer runs great danger if he pushes 
 ahead too fast. He exposes his communications with natural 
 religion, and endangers his theologic base ; orthodoxy closes 
 in round him with all the strength of prescription and of the 
 sacred writings that have recorded in ancient days the words 
 of gods speaking with men, so that the new notions have to 
 fight hard to keep their ground. Yet they do keep it if the 
 conditions of existence are favourable, for the influence upon 
 general morality, and thus upon theology, of changes in the 
 material conditions of a people's existence, is very observable. 
 J. S. Mill writes in his autobiography that he is " convinced 
 that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible 
 until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitu- 
 tion of their modes of thought ;" but to those who watch the 
 eifect upon Indianmodes of thought of continuous peace andgood 
 government the converse view seems equall} r true and even 
 more important. A great improvement in the lot of a people 
 begins immediately to affect the sources of their ideas, since 
 it must obviously touch the springs of the natural religions 
 which simply reflect and record mankind's lot upon earth, repre- 
 sented as the ways of gods with men, and which change with the 
 world's aspect, as shadows vary with changes of the substance. 
 The problem, then, for all these indigenous beliefs which 
 have grown up and been moulded by their environment, is to 
 admit the influence of morality brought about by change of 
 circumstance and mental atmosphere, and to rise gradually 
 without losing their footing upon their native earth, or their
 
 ni\r. III.] THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 67 
 
 authority derived from religious prescription. And the pro- 
 blem, conversely, for morality is to raise and shape these 
 beliefs without disowning them abruptly or breaking off from 
 them ; for the stay and sanction of theology are still absolutely 
 essential, and the morality which lets go its hold of them 
 must fall. It is not necessary, however, to conform to a 
 powerful orthodoxy and to allow the moral or material im- 
 provements to be stamped with the one trade-mark without 
 which no principles are genuine ; the Brahmans are read}- 
 enough to say of any new discovery or doctrine that it is 
 the same concern, and the law of patents in theology is very 
 loose. But a moralist must not go so far as to deny altogether 
 the prescriptive authority, or he will surely be attacked in a 
 way which will make it very hard for him to hold his ground 
 coram populo. A very good example of the danger of too 
 rapid an advance over the ramparts of superstition may be 
 drawn from the fortunes of a well-known sect called the 
 Brahmo Somdj. This sect professes an exalted deism, which 
 was imported from Europe by its founder about fifty years ago, 
 and has taken some root in Bengal, where it suits the taste of 
 the educated classes to whom orderly government and the 
 comforts of civilization have suggested a refined and mild ideal 
 of the divine governor of their world. At first the Brahmists 
 attempted to hold by the Vedas, but this involved them in 
 sundry inconsistencies, and the more advanced section appears 
 to have staked its creed upon pure a priori assumptions of a 
 just and benevolent deity. They abjure the "gross mate- 
 rialism" of ancient religions, the}' reject dogmas and traditions, 
 and desire their disciples to look at the objects round them in 
 the world for evidences of divine power, intelligence, and mercy. 
 Their principal leader declares that " the physical sciences 
 give us better and higher conceptions of God and His govern- 
 ment of the world than we could otherwise possess." "Few 
 will deny," he says, "that the material universe is a great 
 religious teacher, that the sublime and beautiful in nature 
 exercise a vast influence on the mind." That the world 
 around us is a great religious teacher, and that religious men 
 feel awed and subdued by the aspect of nature, are obvious 
 
 F 2
 
 63 INFLUENCE OF A RISE IX MORALITY. [CHAP. 111. 
 
 truths ; but most persons who judge by history, observation, 
 and experience, would flatly deny that these feelings neces- 
 sarily make for righteousness, or that the physical forces and 
 processes of the universe prove the divine benevolence. If 
 anyone considers closely the nature and complexion of 
 religions which have encompassed the hearts of great nations, 
 and reviews their origin and progress, it is easy to perceive 
 that a faith which contains mere pious fervent sentiments and 
 high moral lessons has never, as such, taken hold of an entire 
 people. Such a faith has usually been preserved, in all ages 
 of culture, by the refined intellectual minority, with a distilled 
 aroma of the popular creed, just sufficient to indicate its origin. 
 But Dr. Newman is right in saying that religion, properly 
 so called, has hitherto been synonymous with revelation, 
 that it has ever been a message, a history, a vision.* And in 
 point of fact the Brahmists have made no substantial progress, 
 probably because the sect can appeal to no authoritative 
 warrant or prescriptive sanction ; while throughout the 
 greater part of India experience and observation of the 
 natural world tell directly against the assumption that the 
 deity is either just or benevolent. The argument from 
 the analogy of nature which Butler applied so unanswerably 
 to the deism of his time, is as effective when used by 
 Hinduism against the optimistic speculations of India ; indeed 
 in India the deist is very much more puzzled than in England 
 to explain upon his theory the condition and prospects of 
 mankind ; for if the visible world is directed by the divinities, 
 as both sides agree, there can be no doubt that in Asia the 
 system is at least very incomprehensible. And between the 
 two explanations offered, of terrible and capricious, or of just 
 and benevolent deities, the probabilities and primd facie look 
 of the case appear to the simple folk very much on the side of 
 the former; so that we begin to see that Butler's famous 
 argument from the analogy of nature is connected with the 
 ideas that He at the roots of all religions which have grown 
 up out of this very analogy, that is, at the roots of all natural 
 
 * Grammar of Assent.
 
 CHAP. III.] STRENGTH OF NATURAL RELIGIONS. 69 
 
 religions. He revived in logical form the unconscious train of 
 thought out of which all beliefs are more or less evolved ; 
 he proved that the irresistible and pitiless working of 
 natural laws warranted the inference of any degree of stern 
 severity in the character of the administrator ; and it is pre- 
 cisely in this demonstration that lies the strength of natural 
 religions. Butler set this out for the first tune forcibly and 
 scientifically, and the position is doubly impregnable when held 
 by those who are not concerned, as Butler was, to prove that a 
 moral and beneficent government of the world is neverthe- 
 less credible. Wherever morality and the refinements of an 
 improved state of life begin to press in upon the older and 
 rougher conceptions of divinity, we shall always find theology 
 entrenched behind the undeniable concordance of what is 
 recorded about the gods with what is seen of their doings in 
 the visible world ; so long, that is, as they are allowed to be 
 responsible for what is done. Morality can carry this entrench- 
 ment either by relieving them of their direct responsibility 
 or by dissolving connection with them ; both very perilous 
 manoeuvres for morality to attempt in almost every part of 
 the world as it now is, and certain to be ruinous in Asia. In 
 the present state and prospect of ideas in Asia, morality 
 Avould be cut off from its base, and would lose all its leverage, 
 if men were persuaded to abandon their certain belief in the 
 constant intervention and the supreme influence of present 
 divinities, if they were convinced that for ages they had built 
 themselves fanes of fruitless prayer. Any sudden rupture of con- 
 tinuity in the established order of beliefs would be hazardous ; 
 while, on the other hand, theology, if not openly bombarded, 
 is accessible to terms, compromises, and propositions for an 
 alliance, and will even consent to march several stages on the 
 same road with morality, provided that theology has nominal 
 command of the whole force. 
 
 After this manner, therefore, does the gradual and con- 
 stantly interrupted advance of moral and material improve- 
 ment influence the religious beliefs, which adapt themselves 
 good humouredly to newfangled ideas upon decency and the 
 like, so long as their infallibility is not openly defied. Yet to
 
 70 INFLUENCE OF A PJSE IN MORALITY. [CHAP. III. 
 
 this general rule that for every social reform must be given 
 theologic authority, the legislation of the British Government 
 forms one great exception; because instead of seeking dili- 
 gently to find sacred warrants for its acts, this government 
 eliminates with minute care from its laws any kind of reference 
 to or recognition of religious belief as an authority. This is 
 one of those curious contrasts which modern India exhibits at 
 every turn. On one side of a river we may have a British 
 legislature proclaiming incessantly and laboriously its total 
 freedom from any taint whatever of theological considerations ; 
 on the other we may have a native ruler obliged to explain as 
 sedulously that what he does is entirely supported b} r sacred 
 authority, or by prescription resting ultimately upon such 
 authority. British law-giving only defers to prescription in 
 so far as it respects customs and prejudices that are tolerably 
 harmless ; but native administrators can do nothing important 
 without attaching it to prescription ; and the most powerful 
 and unanswerable prescription is obtained by tracing -back a 
 rule to a divine mandate. This is, as has been already 
 observed, the reason why morality is still so entirely dependent 
 upon religious beliefs, and the same necessary connexion holds 
 good between religion and all social and political movements-; 
 except only when the prime mover is the British Govern- 
 ment, which alone in Asia is strong enough to put out a mea- 
 sure upon its intrinsic merits. Indeed the British legislature 
 goes much further, for it has fixed bounds within which theo- 
 logic authority shall have no jurisdiction at all, and morality, 
 or at least expediency, shall reign triumphant. Nor is this 
 objected to by the people, which in fact desires mainly to find 
 out where lies a supreme incontestable power in temporal 
 matters, and if the British Government is strong enough to 
 assume that position, and to undertake responsibilities and 
 duties usually laid upon the gods, there can be no reason why 
 the de facto providence shall not have their allegiance. On 
 the other hand the responsibilities thus assumed are enormous, 
 for one of the conveniences of the old theocratic system was 
 that disasters or afflictions might be shifted by the government 
 on to the shoulders of the priests, who usually passed them on
 
 CHAV. III.] BFJTISH ADMINISTRATION. 71 
 
 downward, if uncommonly damaging, to the sorcerers or to 
 any class unpopular at the moment. Now the British Govern- 
 ment, having thrown aside these lightning-conductors, is much 
 more exposed than a native ruler would be to shocks from 
 famines or other widespread misfortunes; and in fact the 
 native newspapers already indicate that the tendency to cry 
 out upon government when the world goes in any way wrong, is 
 actually becoming immeasurable. Cholera, famine, and great 
 sea inundations, when they are not made the text of invectives 
 against the British Government, do at least in some confused 
 way bring upon it great discredit, not apparently from the idea 
 that the gods are angry with the government which has ignored 
 them so persistently as to have pretty well established its in- 
 dependence of them, but upon the dun feeling that the govern- 
 ment has undertaken the gods' business and is breaking down. 
 And the multifarious functions assumed by a modern adminis- 
 tration (so far beyond the simple regime of an ordinary Asiatic 
 ruler, who merely collects revenue and keeps an army) lay 
 it wide open to every kind of imputation against its wisdom 
 and its benevolence ; it is like a great divinity in whom are 
 absorbed and concentrated a great number of attributes. 
 
 This feeling, moreover, when we consider it, must be 
 admitted to be the natural outcome of the movement and 
 direction given to ideas by the British Empire in such a 
 country as India. We have in many ways openly undertaken 
 the business and liabilities usually left by Asiatics, at least 
 in form, to divine authority ; the science of administration is 
 supplanting the science of theology, the cool scorn of the 
 English legislature, and its force, are fatal to the predominance 
 of divinity, whose sphere of action contracts perceptibly under 
 that influence. Rules of conduct which hitherto have rested 
 upon theologic sanction, gradually drop the connexion with 
 theology when they come to be adopted and enforced by a penal 
 code; while theology is forced, to save its credit and avoid 
 awkward collisions, to drop rules of misconduct which the code 
 prohibits. Under these favourable auspices the reformation 
 of religious beliefs, pushed forward by a morality so powerfully 
 backed up, is likely to be abnormally rapid, and one is almost
 
 72 INFLUENCE OF A ETSE IN MORALITY. [CHAP. III. 
 
 inclined, out of pure cautions conservatism, to question whether 
 the assertion of independence by morality and its annexation of 
 the old theologic dominions may not go on too fast. In Europe 
 we alread}- find a party declaring that morality and theology are 
 about to dissolve their long partnership, and debating only as 
 to the probable consequences, whether there will be the confu- 
 sion of an interregnum or a revolutionary period, and whether the 
 great enterprise of the civilization of mankind can be carried 
 on when the security of religion, and the confidence which it 
 inspires, shall have been withdrawn. Those who regard 
 theology as an essential basis of morals may be right in 
 maintaining that the affairs of the world can never prosper 
 without the support and guidance of some such belief ; 
 but in Europe the transition is at least gradual, and the 
 carefully recorded results of observation and experience are 
 steadily limiting the sphere of any but human responsibi- 
 lity and action. It is at least possible in Europe that morality 
 may take up the position and the responsibilities for temporal 
 affairs and the material interests of mankind, which theology 
 has very nearly relinquished, and may manage to go forward 
 upon her own score and venture ; but even with the aid of British 
 penal codes this would be a very perilous venture in India. 
 In Asia prescriptive authority, which necessarily means divine 
 authority, is the only explanation upon which the Hindu mind, 
 so primitive yet so restlessly inquiring, can find rest and re- 
 lease from uncertainty ; and morality must still be content with 
 playing a secondary role in subordination to the religious beliefs. 
 As with moral and ethical explanations, so it is with political 
 and social institutions, they must have their basis on religious 
 prescription, except where the British Government undertakes 
 to demonstrate practically that the thing must be so. The 
 pedigree of a rule or a right must be traced far away up into 
 the mists of the past, up to a myth or a divine message ; its 
 origin must transcend man's understanding and his memory, 
 or the title becomes incomplete and disputable. One would 
 suppose that the title by which the Chiefs of Rajput clans of 
 Central India hold their dominion would be ancient enough, 
 for their possession has lasted many ages, and their lineage is
 
 CHAP. III.] HINDU DYNASTIES. 73 
 
 accurately preserved ; and yet to this day the Chiefs of the 
 oldest States obtain a sort of religious investiture, upon each 
 accession, from some representative of the aboriginal races 
 whose land the Rajputs took centuries ago. The most impor- 
 tant States in India are of very modern origin, dating back no 
 earlier than the first establishment of the English dominion : 
 but the elder Hindu dynasties, which lay claim to great 
 antiquity, seem to lie under the necessity of either attaching 
 the beginning of their line to that other line which they cut 
 short, or of carrying the chain of inheritance back to a 
 conquering demi-god, or else of quoting a special revelation 
 in their favour, as when Islam conquers under a divine man- 
 date. The right is thus asserted in a form acceptable to the 
 customary apprehension of the people ; nor has any despotism 
 in Asia ever attempted to do without some such religious 
 warranty, excepting only the British Government which is 
 itself a sort of incarnation of inexplicable power. In short, 
 the whole notion of rights is still so closely tied up with the 
 religious beliefs that any premature endeavour to sever the 
 connection would be a very delicate operation. 
 
 In all this there is, of course, nothing very new. Religion 
 has in all countries at one time been the basis of society ; and 
 the divine right of kings is not a very old story in England. 
 Morality and religion everywhere act and react upon each 
 other ; everywhere the slow improvement of the world has pro- 
 duced dynastic revolutions among gods and kings, and the 
 traditional beliefs must accommodate themselves to the change 
 of circumstance. But in India the peculiarity of the situation 
 is that very primitive religious beliefs are being unexpectedly 
 overtaken by an unusually high tide of public morals and 
 spreading knowledge, which have come upon them without due 
 warning ; and the nature gods are confronted by penal codes 
 and modern education in a sudden way that is hardly fair. 
 They have no time to reform, hardly time to change their cos- 
 tume ; it is even questionable whether they will easily 
 manoeuvre their retreat out of the material into the spiritual 
 world, give up the distribution of material blessings, and fall 
 back upon future states of existence over which their power
 
 74 INFLUENCE OF A RISE IN MORALITY. [CHAT. III. 
 
 cannot be tested. It has already been noticed as a charac- 
 teristic of the phase of religious beliefs hitherto prevailing, 
 that the doctrine of heaven and hell, though well known and 
 accepted in Hinduism, has not exercised any great influence 
 over the people. The ordinary worshipper looks for material 
 blessing or ban ; the philosopher accepts heaven and hell not 
 as departments of reward or punishment, but as places of 
 purification whereby a soul may be cleansed of its sensations 
 and become absorbed again into the Infinite, or escape into 
 nothing. Both these conceptions arose out of a thorough dis- 
 trust of the gods, the people dealing with them just as far as 
 they could see (or thought they could see) that worship was 
 answered by works, the philosopher renouncing them and all 
 their works as completely as he dared. Nevertheless if these 
 beliefs are prematurely submerged, we may have an awkward 
 break in the continuity of theologic development, and it is not 
 quite clear how this may affect morals. We may after all find 
 morality in India, as elsewhere, looking dubiously at the 
 ladder she has kicked down, and seriously alarmed at the 
 decline of religious beliefs which has been the necessary con- 
 sequence of her own rise. Or it may be that those are right 
 who insist that Asia has always been too deep a quicksand for 
 Europe to build upon it any lasting edifice of morals, politics, 
 or religion; that the material conditions forbid any lasting 
 improvement ; that the English legions, like the Roman, will 
 tramp across the Asiatic stage and disappear, and that the 
 clouds of confusion and superstition will roll up again. Then 
 after all the only abiding and immovable figure in the midst of 
 the phantasmagoria will be that of the Hindu ascetic and 
 sceptic, looking on at the incessant transformation of men 
 into gods and gods into men, with thoughts that have been 
 caught by an English poet, and expressed in lines that have a 
 strange Asiatic note 
 
 " All ye as a wind shall go by, sd a fire shall ye pass and be past ; 
 Ye are gods, and behold, ye shall die and the waves be upon you at last. 
 In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things 
 Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you as kings."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WITCHCKAFT AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 
 
 " Witchcraft is as the sin of rebellion." 
 
 Enquiry into distinction between witchcraft and the lowest types of religion 
 Suggestion as to difference of origin and principle Religion works invariably 
 through some agency supposed to be divine ; witchcraft works independently 
 of priests and deities, and probably begins with some accidental discoveries of 
 natural laws Witches persecuted in polytheist countries because their under- 
 working is contraband, unaided by recognized supernatural powers or methods 
 Resemblance of practices and devices of witch finders in India to those 
 formerly used in Europe Cruelties inflicted on witches because they are 
 supposed to be personally the cause of calamities ; also, because the priests shift 
 on to witches the blame of all inexplicable evils which the gods cannot or 
 will not cure As religion becomes purified and elevated, this shifting process 
 increases, and witchcraft becomes more degraded and detested Men go to 
 witches for disreputable purposes, or when the gods fail to help Witchcraft 
 protected by the British Government in India ; is possibly the lowest phase 
 of empiric observatipn and inquiry, and thus superior to mere vague super- 
 naturalism. 
 
 To those who live in a country where the belief in witchcraft 
 still pervades all classes, from highest to lowest (though of 
 course the pressure of the superstition is far lighter upon the 
 uppermost layers of society), the study of this delusion by 
 autopsy of the living subject is most interesting. For we have 
 all learnt the history of European witchcraft ; how the fear of 
 it once overspread the whole land, and faith in it was a car- 
 dinal doctrine with church and state, with kings and judges ; 
 how it gradually faded, until the notion of such a thing has at 
 last become ridiculous to all but the most ignorant ; and how 
 this virulent mental disease was expelled, not by refutation or 
 any special remedy, but by a gradual change in the conditions 
 of existence which had engendered and fostered it. We know,
 
 76 WITCHCRAFT & XOX-CERISTIAN RELIGIONS. [Ciur. IV. 
 
 in fact, the precise position of witchcraft under the Christian 
 dispensation ; and we understand the view taken of it by our 
 different churches in different ages; but this essay is meant to 
 carry the inquiry further back, and to seek for more light upon 
 the origin and development of the craft or practice of sorcery, by 
 looking into its relations with the non-Christian religions, and 
 by attempting to ascertain the place which it holds among 
 those very superstitions with which Christians have constantly 
 identified it. 
 
 Witchcraft has been usually supposed to be a very low and 
 degraded phase of religion. Now this is largely true of the 
 art in Europe, where the great Christian churches for ages 
 combined to stamp out the relics of ancient paganism, which 
 they denounced and furiously branded with the opprobrium of 
 hideous sorcery, until the wretched, half-heathen serfs did 
 actually turn devil worshippers ; but the question is whether 
 in a country that is altogether pagan, witchcraft is only one 
 form of what we call Eeligion, or a different species altogether. 
 Was there any plain distinction known among the ancient 
 Greeks, for example, between the slaying of Iphigenia upon 
 the altar at Aulis to obtain a fair wind, and a magical ceremony 
 for the same object? Most people would agree that some dis- 
 tinction has always been recognised, though they might not 
 find it so easy to explain. If we try whether any aid toward 
 a satisfactory explanation is obtained by carefully looking at 
 what goes on before our eyes in India, it seems possible to dis- 
 tinguish a radical separation, from the very outset, between witch- 
 craft and the humblest form of what in India is called Eeligion. 
 
 Witchcraft appears to have been, from the beginning, the 
 aboriginal and inveterate antagonist of religion or theology, 
 and hardly less so in the most primeval ages of barbarous 
 superstition than it was in the days of our King James I. 
 It may be supposed to have arisen from an exceedingly dim and 
 utterly confused glimpse of the secrets of Nature; to have begun 
 with the first notion that such secrets exist and can be known, and 
 that things which we do not comprehend may be brought to pass 
 without the results being inseparably connected with the divine 
 agency. In the rudest stage of religion, the line between the most
 
 CIIAI-. IV.] WITCHCRAFT OPPOSED TO RELIGION. 77 
 
 abject feticliism, perhaps only the worship of certain queer ob- 
 jects, and witchcraft is very difficult to be traced by us to whom 
 from our great intervening intellectual distance both kinds of 
 superstition seem indistinguishable in type and character ; yet 
 even in this lowest grade of primitive- society their separation 
 is decipherable. One ma} r venture to affirm that the difference 
 between devotees and magicians, between those who propitiate 
 gods visible or invisible, and those who use mysterious mummery 
 not necessarily addressed to any object or subject at all, exists 
 and can be verified from the earliest times. As a matter of 
 fact, witchcraft is more feared and more practised by the lowest 
 Indian tribes than by any other classes ; and though one does 
 not at first sight perceive how they can discern or point it out 
 to themselves, amid all the monstrous rites and grotesque 
 terrors of their lawful beliefs, yet they always lay their finger 
 upon it without hesitation. There seem always to have been 
 some faint sparks of doubt as to the efficacy of prayer and 
 offerings, and thus as to the limits within which deities can or 
 will interpose in human affairs, combined with embryonic con- 
 ceptions of the possible capacity of man to control or guide 
 Nature by knowledge and use of her ways, or with some 
 primeval touch of that feeling which now rejects supernatural 
 interference in the order and sequence of physical processes. 
 Side by side with that universal conviction which ascribed to 
 Divine volition all effects that could not be accounted for by 
 the simplest experience, and which called them miracles, 
 omens, or signs of the gods, there has always been a remote 
 manifestation of that less submissive spirit which locates 
 within man himself the power of influencing things, and which 
 works vaguely toward the dependence of man on his own 
 faculties for regulating his material surroundings. Those two 
 antagonistic ideas, of dependence on supernatural will and of 
 independence, can, I think, be found to demarcate Witchcraft 
 and Religion, from the Alpha down to the Omega of their long 
 history, which is a chronicle of incessant war, growing 
 fiercer and fiercer as the two forces developed and became 
 organised, and as the two principles diverged and discovered 
 their mutual antipathy. Science had also a stage when it con-
 
 78 WITCHCRAFT & XOX-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CHAP. IV. 
 
 sisted of unreasoning observation, and in the earliest beginning 
 of that stage it must have been very like witchcraft. The man 
 who first hit upon the conditions under which fire can be inva- 
 riably got by rubbing sticks, probably ceased to pray for fire 
 as he must have prayed -when the result was very uncertain ; 
 or perhaps the more reverent minds continued to rub and pray ; 
 while the bolder and busier men gradually discarded their vows 
 as they became convinced that rubbing was alone effective. 
 But this association of cause and effect, of rubbing sticks with 
 fire, and the like, instead of suggesting the scientific method, 
 only caused the undisciplined savage experimentalist to specu- 
 late rashly, to jump at most unwarrantable conclusions, and to 
 connect together things which have no affinity whatever. The 
 imagination of primitive man was limited or steadied by no 
 true reasoning; one consequence was to him just as likely as 
 another. If rubbing a stick produced fire, an utterly amazing 
 result, without the aid of any sacrifice or other invocation of 
 gods, why should not two knives laid crossways on a threshold, 
 or a bit of red string over the lintel of a door, bring down or 
 avert disease ? or why should not certain charms carved on the 
 door-post make the whole house collapse ? All these things 
 are only questions of experiment, and one successful operation 
 goes a long way to establish confidence in the method. If disease 
 has once been stopped by incantation, why not always, or at 
 least usually? Especially if a wise woman has cured an ulcer 
 by applying a few simples, and muttering unknown words, or 
 has averted a hailstorm by hanging up mystic rags and 
 observing the wind, there are no limits to reasonable faith in 
 her. In this manner the first person who picked up a little 
 physical knowledge beyond his fellows was tempted to trade 
 upon it enormously beyond his real capital, because the bound- 
 less credulity of his neighbours inspires equal belief in himself, 
 and if he can do one inexplicable thing he may be able to do 
 anything else ; the peculiarity of his practice being that he 
 does everything without the aid of the gods. And this it is 
 that makes him a "Witch as distinguished from the successful 
 propitiator of fetich. 
 
 Witchcraft is thus supposed to begin when a savage stumbles
 
 CHAP. IV.] ORIGIN OF WITCHCRAFT. 79 
 
 upon a few natural effects out of the common run of things, 
 which he finds himself able to work hy unvarying rule of 
 thumb. He thence infers that he has in some wonderful way 
 imbibed extra-natural power, while he has only picked up acci- 
 dentally one or two of the roughest keys which open the outer 
 lid of the physical world. He has hit upon a rudimentary 
 materialism ; and, while he fancies himself to be entering upon 
 a mysterious department, in which he can do without the 
 popular fetich, he in fact becomes a Fetich unto himself; 
 for he thinks that the virtue lies in his own self (which is 
 partly true), not in the essential conditions of the things which 
 he sees and handles. His characteristic must have been 
 always this, that he has some real knowledge, or faint tincture 
 of it ; and that while the vulgar crowd round him ascribe all 
 strange coincidences to the spite or favour of idols and demons, 
 the witch makes bold to dispense with divine intervention, 
 and to rely on his own arbitrary tricks for producing not only 
 a few simple effects, which he has verified, but all sorts of 
 absurd exploits which he aims at by mere guess work ; one 
 thing being to him just as probable or improbable as the other. 
 The practice and the pretensions of the sorcerer are very 
 nearly as preposterous as those of the most unsophisticated 
 keeper of idols. Yet the cardinal distinction between the 
 fetich witch and the fetich worshipper is the same as that 
 between the witch and all priesthoods in all times ; the former 
 stands aloof from the ordinary adoration of supernatural 
 powers, asking nothing from capricious gods, exercising an 
 art for the most part as blind and irrational as rites per- 
 formed to a river or a rock, but yet founded upon and clinging 
 to the idea that his power lies somewhere within his own control, 
 and is not vouchsafed by the good pleasure of the popular 
 divinity. Fetichism is the adoration of a visible object sup- 
 posed to possess active power ; it ascribes, as Comte says, to 
 all phenomena ideas of vital energy and power drawn from the 
 human type; in short, the fetich (a river, for instance) is a 
 mysterious being whom you try to make friends with, as 3*011 
 would with a man who is plainly too strong to be frightened. 
 But Fetichism also, as Comte further remarks, admits slavishly
 
 SO WITCHCRAFT & NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CHAP. IV. 
 
 that man can only hope to influence nature by worship, 
 not by work ; and it sets up an order of specialists in the 
 business of enlisting this irresistible supernatural agency. 
 Whereas witchcraft does after its dim, blundering fashion, from 
 Ihe very first stumble away in the contrary direction; in order 
 to avert floods or attract water it does not propitiate the river 
 god or the running stream ; it employs for these purposes 
 some utterly random and senseless ceremony of its own devis- 
 ing, which nevertheless might probably be traced back with 
 infinite trouble to some scrap of real knowledge, or traditional 
 observation, or hap-hazard coincidence. The witch is like a 
 savage, who might pick up a lucifer match-box, and should 
 imagine that the power of lighting the matches was peculiar to 
 himself, thence inferring that he was gifted with miraculous 
 powers, and could command the lightning. He is only just 
 superior to his fellows, who would fall clown and worship the 
 box. 
 
 A witch, therefore, may be thus defined. He is one who 
 professes to work marvels, not through the aid and counsel of 
 the supernatural beings in whom he believes as much as the 
 rest, but by certain occult faculties and devices which he con- 
 ceives himself to possess. In so far as he does really possess 
 a trifling store of superior skill and useful tricks, he is the 
 savant of his time ; in so f far as he merely pretends and 
 guesses, he is a crazy charlatan. By apptying constantly this 
 definition we may reduce into order our ideas of the relative 
 position of witchcraft towards all phases of religion. First, we 
 grasp the real distinction, even in fetichism, between the witch 
 and his brother practitioner upon a fetich, or between the witch 
 and the Shdman who rolls about the ground and screams out his 
 oracle ; and this line between adoration, inspiration, vows, or 
 oracles, on one side, and thauinaturgy by occult incomprehen- 
 sible arts on the other side, divides the two professions from 
 bottom to top. Secondly, we see why the said witch is so 
 violently persecuted even in the earliest times, when there is no 
 church to proscribe him, nor morality to denounce his ways. 
 So long as people ascribe to their gods all inexplicable and 
 unforeseen calamities as well as blessings, and so long as
 
 CHAP. IV.] PERSECUTION OF WITCHES. 81 
 
 everyone is allowed to worship his fetich, spirit, or idol, after 
 his own fashion, the cruelties of superstition are confined 
 mainly to barbarous propitiatory sacrifices, in which the victim 
 is sometimes human. If these offerings will not appease the 
 gods there is nothing else to be done in that direction. But 
 the pretensions of a successful witch suggest the idea that 
 a human being, who is within reach of your hand to seize, 
 wields mysterious power to afflict his fellow-creatures ; and 
 this conviction it is which has always caused, indeed in India 
 it still causes, horrid cruelty. "While the priest, or fetich 
 keeper, or oracle monger, is held in reverence, as the am- 
 bassador of a power on whom it is hopeless to make war, the 
 witch is always feared, and usually detested ; because the 
 priest disclaims all responsibility for the ills inflicted by his 
 angry or malevolent deities, whereas the witch can be made to 
 pay with his person. Moreover, he has also often to pay for 
 all the shortcomings of the popular fetich ; since a priest 
 who has the credit of his establishment at stake will usually 
 attribute any failure in the efficacy of prayer, or of vows, to 
 the malignant influence of his natural opponent, the indepen- 
 dent witch. Among the aboriginal tribes of India any disap- 
 pointment in the aid which they are entitled to expect from 
 their gods, to avoid averting disease or famine, throws the 
 people on the scent of witchcraft. It is too discreditable that 
 the idol or demon spirit, after all that has been done for him in 
 attentions, and even adulation, should have so broken down and 
 abandoned his worshippers, asto let the cholera range damnably, 
 to keep wives obstinately barren, to permit the rinderpest, or to 
 afflict people with chronic rheumatism. But, on the part of the 
 gods, their priest is apt to disown these untoward accidents, 
 though he is willing carefully to absorb all blessings ; and the 
 people, usually directed by priestly advice, fall back on witchcraft 
 as the only possible alternative. The thing which torments us 
 {they argue) is inexplicable ; the only two possessors of inexplic- 
 able powers are gods and witches, the gods can't or won't help us, 
 arcjal we must help ourselves by a hue and cry after the witches. 
 This solution of the puzzle is easier than any speculation as 
 to misfortunes being the outcome of sin, or of some omis-
 
 82 WITCHCRAFT & NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CHAP. IV, 
 
 sion of religious duties, or the stain of crimes done in a 
 previous state, or than ascribing them to the anger of some 
 strange divinity ; and it is the more popular because it suggests- 
 a remedy, as all solid diagnoses of disorder ought to do. If the 
 misfortune were the work of a god who declined to be pro- 
 pitiated, one could only lie flat and adore Setebos who cannot 
 be resisted or punished ; but if it is the wicked invention of a 
 magician the suiferer can proceed at once to counteract it by tor- 
 turing the inventor. Observe that the witches have themselves- 
 created the dilemma, upon one horn of which they are thus 
 impaled, by assuming powers independent of the gods ; for 
 when a man cannot get what he wants out of a god he is wont 
 to consult a witch, who usually undertakes to do his bidding, 
 and never confesses that he does not feel equal to dealing with 
 a case. But in proportion to the popular faith in the witch as- 
 an ally must be of course the fear of him as an enemy. 
 
 Now it is worth noting, that, although among fetichists the 
 simple reason why a witch is persecuted is that he is doing' 
 mischief, for otherwise there is no abstract theological objec- 
 tion to him, yet even in Fetichism the measures employed 
 against him have a flavour of religion ; the gods are called in 
 to act as detectives and judges. It is public opinion that at 
 first indicates the direction in which suspicious scrutiny should 
 be made ; the vox populi usualry names some old woman with 
 a smattering of simples who has attempted to work cures. 
 That particular combination of skill and helplessness presented 
 b} r a cunning old woman seems to have always suggested some 
 underhand mystery to the untutored mind of the poor Indian, 
 as of the English peasant ; and besides, as has been already 
 remarked, a woman who can cure toothache can produce it, for 
 aught the savage can tell. In individual cases the patient him- 
 self, being sick, usually pitches upon his magic persecutor ; 
 and in any instance conjecture is generally justified by con- 
 sulting the professional witch-finder, who will listen to your 
 evidence and give his authoritative opinion on your case. 
 Prescriptions thus made up are administered by the mob. The 
 accused is seized and subjected to experiments which appear 
 partly intended to make him or her confess, and partly aimed
 
 CHAP. IV.] WITCH-FIXDERS IX INDIA. 83 
 
 at forcing the witch to break the malignant charm by incessant 
 counter-irritation, until the evil ceases or the evil-doer dies. 
 There is as yet no exorcism in the proper sense of the word, 
 but these operations are conducted by the light of whatever 
 glimpses of the supernatural may have been vouchsafed to the 
 tribe ; the use of sacred weapons against witches is already 
 indispensable. Such weapons are indeed used by primitive 
 man to combat troubles of every sort, and the particular 
 reason for mentioning the fact here is that it partially explains 
 what at first puzzles an investigator into the witch-finding and 
 witch- punishing business in India the close resemblance of 
 the practice and methods there in use to those formerly 
 approved by mediaeval Europe. The ordeal by water is 
 universal among the barbarous Non-Aryan tribes of Central 
 India, from the Bheels in the west country to the wild men in 
 the almost unexplored jungles of Bustar and the far east, 
 towards the Bay of Bengal. Here is a description of one 
 water test, taken a few years ago from the mouth of an expert 
 witch-finder among the Bheels, who got into a scrape for 
 applying it to an old woman. 
 
 " A bamboo is stuck up in the middle of any piece of water. 
 The accused is taken to it, lays hold of it, and by it descends 
 to the bottom. In the meantime one of the villagers shoots 
 an arrow from his bow, and another runs to pick it up and 
 bring it back to the place whence it was shot. If the woman 
 is able to remain under water until this is done, she is declared 
 innocent, but if she comes up to breathe before the arrow is 
 returned into the bowman's hand, she is a true witch and must 
 be swung as such." 
 
 In the case from which this account is taken the woman 
 failed in the test, and was accordingly swung to and fro, roped 
 up to a tree, with a bandage of red pepper on her eyes ; but it 
 is obvious that this kind of ordeal, like almost all primitive 
 ordeals, is contrived so as to depend for its effect much upon 
 the manner in which it is conducted, whereby the operator's 
 favour becomes worth gaining.* A skilful archer will shoot 
 
 * Another mode of trial is by sewing let down into water about three feet 
 the suspected one in a sack, which is deep. If the person inside tha sack 
 
 c 2
 
 84 WITCHCRAFT & NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CHAV. IV. 
 
 just as far as he chooses. Ordeal by water is the question 
 ordinary, which uiay probably be construed as an inquiry 
 whether the water Fetich or water spirit will accept or reject 
 the witch, whether he is on her side or against her : and this 
 seems the best general explanation of a world-wide custom. 
 Another ordeal is by heat, as for instance, the picking of a 
 coin out of burning oil. But the question extraordinary is by 
 swinging on a sacred tree, or by flogging with switches of a 
 particular wood. Swinging before an idol, with a hook through 
 the muscles of the back, is the well-known rite by which a 
 Hindu devotes himself to the god ; and flogging with rods 
 from a sacred tree manifestly adds superhuman virtue to the 
 ordinary effect of a vigorous laying on. In 1865, a woman, 
 suspected of bringing cholera into the village, was deliberately 
 beaten to death with rods of the castor-oil tree, which is 
 excellent for purging witchcraft. It is usual also to knock out 
 the front teeth of a notorious witch ; the practice appears to 
 be connected with the belief, well known in all countries, that 
 witches assume animal shapes ; for in India they are supposed 
 occasionally to transform themselves into wild beasts, a super- 
 stition analogous to our European lycanthropy. A good many 
 years ago, there was an old man practising as a physician 
 near Srinagar in the Himalayas, who was notorious as a 
 sorcerer, insomuch that his reputation of having devoured 
 many persons under the form of a tiger cost him most of his 
 teeth, winch were extracted by the Raj all who then held that 
 country, so as to render him less formidable during his con- 
 stant metamorphoses. Shaving the heads of female witches is 
 very common among the tribes much infested by sorcerers ; it 
 is employed as an antidote, not merely as a degrading punish- 
 ment, so that one is tempted to trace its origin to some 
 recondite notion of power residing in the hair ; and thus even 
 back towards Samson, to Circe with the beautiful locks, and 
 
 can get his head above water he is a through precisely the same ordeal 
 
 witch. An English officer once saved which they had prescribed. This idea 
 
 a witch in India from ducking to death, hit off the crowd s notion of fair play. 
 
 by insisting that the witch-finder and and the trial was adjourned sine die, 
 
 the accusers generally should go by consent.
 
 CHAP. IV.] THE BRIGHT SIDE OF WITCHCRAFT. 85 
 
 to the familiar devils of early Christian times, who are 
 said to have had a peculiar attachment for women with fine 
 tresses. 
 
 Thus the frightful cruelties inflicted on witches by the wild 
 tribes of Central India are prompted by the conviction that 
 the power which is causing some exasperating calamity lies in 
 the witch himself, and proceeds out of that human creature, 
 not out of any fetich or intangible demon. And as the evil is 
 not from a god, therefore they use holy gear to extirpate it ; 
 but the idea of vindicating the insulted majesty of deities is as 
 yet far off, for the witch is simply a mischievous animal whom 
 you knock on the head as you would a tiger, whenever you 
 have hunted him down. Nor is sorcery yet regarded in the 
 light of treason, for though the votaries of the gods are indeed 
 its ill wishers, yet this is mainly because they have to account for 
 the prevalence of sore afflictions, and for the incompetence of 
 their gods to apply cure after due supplication. It is therefore 
 convenient to resolve such problems by reference to witchcraft, 
 when all that the gods need do is to disown the accused, or to 
 lend a hand in detecting him; for which objects and reasons 
 the ordeals have been instituted. Sorcery is at this stage not 
 so much an illicit irreligious trade as a wily and sinister art 
 whereby honest men are plagued ; being thus esteemed very 
 much' as law and lawyer are received by the unlearned vulgar 
 in England and elsewhere. This is, however, its malevolent 
 and uncanny form ; on its brighter side witchcraft embodies 
 the primitive nvysteries of the art of healing, combining spells 
 with quack medicines, the spell being what the patient mainly 
 relies on. And as the aboriginal Indian patient expects the 
 incantation to have a precise immediate effect, like a strong 
 drug, so we may perceive the same conception inverted still 
 moving among the peasantry of England, who talk of a dose 
 acting "like a charm," that is, novelly and unaccountably, 
 while the Indian employs a charm to act like a dose. Neither 
 in England nor in India is there yet any large class of the 
 population which has finally and firmly grasped the conclusion 
 that a dose will act by itself, and that it cannot be in the least 
 aided by any sort of charm or invocation whatsoever.
 
 86 WITCHCRAFT & NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CHAP. IV. 
 
 But just as the heavy inist which at dawn covers a primeval 
 forest or waste fen land may be seen gradually to rise, spread 
 out into lighter haze, and wreath itself into various fantastic 
 shapes, so in India the dense low-lying aboriginal Fetichism 
 expands and tapers into higher forms. Polytheism then draws 
 closer the broad hem of its sacerdotal phylactery, and shrinks 
 from witchcraft with increasing antipathy. Not yet does the 
 priest abhor or assail the witch ; his prejudices cany him little 
 beyond carefully disowning such low practitioners, and rele- 
 gating sorcery outside the bounds of decent spiritualism, as a 
 college of physicians might separate themselves from a quack. 
 The business manifestly dispenses with the intervention of the 
 great traditional deities, with their embodiments, ministers, 
 rites, and scriptures; it is therefore indefensible upon any 
 orthodox scheme of religion, and is also condemned as in effect 
 disreputable. Moreover, as the religion of a country develops, 
 so also does its witchcraft become modified from its earliest 
 structure, and suffer a change of character. Its essential 
 materialism, always unconscious and hap-hazard, easily accepts 
 a supernatural impression ; and among the Hindus proper the 
 tricks of the primitive art or trade get mcrusted over by the 
 alluvial deposits of superstitions extinct or discarded by the 
 predominant castes and races. Prevailing popular delusions 
 affect even the sorcerer, so to keep up with the times he also 
 must pretend to some backstairs interest with deities ; if he is 
 a Hindu he is often patronise'd by (or patronises) some obscure, 
 ill-conditioned god of the rudest type, who has lost all fashion 
 under the improvement of general religious culture. His craft 
 becomes complicated with the earlier and more discreditable 
 rites of depressed races and superseded liturgies ; so that he is 
 less easily distinguishable than at a more simple stage. No 
 ordinary Hindu, however, has any doubt that there is a wide 
 gulf between a witch and a devout person who has imbibed 
 thauinaturgic power, though it is very difficult to hit off the 
 popular definition ; and, on the whole, it appears that one 
 must judge of wonder-workers by their fruits, whether they be 
 good or evil. So long as a man possessing inscrutable secrets 
 restricts himself to useful employment of them, to the depart-
 
 CHAI-. IV.] EFFECT OF POLYTHEISM. 87 
 
 xnent of detecting thieves and discovering lost property, he is 
 respected as a kind of preternatural private inquiry office and 
 cloak-room for friends or chattels. When, however, the wise 
 man's art takes a dark hue, and his waj's are harmful, then he 
 is at once stigmatized as a witch, and usually with accurate 
 justice, for the sorcerer will too often be found to have stepped 
 into all the scandalous business which a general advance in reli- 
 gious ethics may prove the gods to have abandoned. So far as he 
 relies on any rites at all, they are connected with the worship 
 of those Helot, or outcast tribes, which are excluded from the 
 Brahrnanical temples ; but his whole system escapes the con- 
 trol exercised in practice by public opinion over every openly- 
 professed religion. For these reasons the witch deteriorates 
 rapidly, and descends as polytheism rises. He is not seriously 
 persecuted by the mob or by the learned ; but he holds with 
 all classes a position which a quack of the baser sort still holds 
 in the department of medicine. You go to such an one because 
 he is familiar, and gives himself no airs, does not trouble 
 himself about orthodox forms, or about the morality of means 
 -or ends, will do your work cheaply, though perchance dirtily, 
 and will undertake operations that no respectable priest or 
 shrine would agree to bring about by the favour of divinity. 
 He is to be found in the back slums and alleys of super- 
 stition and of elementary physics ; he dabbles largely in 
 poisons and love philtres ; he can bind or loosen the aiguillctte 
 in a parlous manner ; and throughout he mixes up miracles 
 with medicine after a fashion that ends later on by getting him 
 into trouble with both camps. When his simples will not 
 always kill or cure, he ekes them out with hideous mummery ; 
 and when that resource has failed, he has been known to per- 
 form a contract to rid a man of his enemy by mere carnal 
 assassination. He is more prone than ever to ascribe the 
 credit of his successful cures, not to what he really knows or 
 has done, but to his portentous gifts or to his familiar demons ; 
 whereby any rudimentary conceptions of true science are greatly 
 hindered, for every sudden death or skilful cure is instantly set 
 down to magic by the vulgar. The majority of witches are, it 
 must be owned, mere cheats and swindlers ; nevertheless, they
 
 88 WITCHCRAFT & NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CHAP. IV, 
 
 appear to be the unworthy depositaries of whatever small hoard 
 of natural magic may have been painfully secreted during long 
 ages of soul-destrojdng misrule. They know some optical 
 tricks ; and the action of emotions upon the bodily organism, 
 as in mesmerism, has been perceived and practised from very 
 ancient times. In the East mesmerism is pure magic ; in the 
 West it is suspicious charlatanry. Its whole history offers a 
 good illustration of the manner in which a natural phenomenon 
 which is obscure, uncommon, and isolated, may first be con- 
 demned as sorcery, and afterwards be repudiated as incredible ; 
 may be rejected by orthodox science as well as by orthodox 
 religion. It may be conjectured that the reputation of insensi- 
 bility to pain possessed by witches in India as well as in Europe 
 is connected with the well-known anaesthesia produced by the 
 mesmeric trance. 
 
 It is difficult to explain, except upon the assumption that 
 ignorant and simple imaginations all range with a very short 
 tether over similar ground, why we find in India the identical 
 old English sorcerer's device of moulding an image of his 
 doomed victim and afflicting it with pins ; or wasting it in 
 flame, in mere faith that the person imaged will bleed or pine 
 away simultaneously. But early in this century the life of the 
 Nizam of the Deccan was attempted by this diabolical inven- 
 tion ; and, as the ladies of the harem were said to be at the 
 bottom of the plot, a scandal was caused not unlike that for 
 which the Duchess of Gloucester had to do penance, after con- 
 spiring with sorcerers to remove Henry VI. by this veiy trick 
 of an infernal doll shaped in the likeness of majesty. Not long 
 ago, one partner in a respectable commercial firm in one of the 
 great Indian cities applied to a reputed sorcerer for his aid in 
 removing another partner ; but the sorcerer, who was merely 
 an honest leech, preferred to collude with the threatened 
 partner to cheat the would-be murderer out of heav} r fees, the 
 conjuror performing the wax-doll rites, while the victim 
 pretended mysterious ailments and a general sense of vital 
 exhaustion. 
 
 The Banjaras of Central India, who formerly carried all the 
 grain traffic of the country on vast droves of bullocks, are
 
 CHAP. IV.] WITCHCRAFT A SEPARATE ART. 89 
 
 terribly vexed by witchcraft, to which their wandering and pre- 
 carious existence especially exposes them in the shape of fever, 
 rheumatism, and dysentery. Solemn inquiries are still held 
 in the wild jungles where these people camp out like gipsies, 
 and many an unlucky hag has been strangled lay sentence of 
 their secret tribunals. In difficult cases they consult the most 
 eminent of their spiritual advisers or holy men, who may be 
 within reach ; but it is usual, as a proper precaution against 
 mistakes which even learned divines may commit, to buy some 
 trifling article on the road to the consultation, and to try the 
 diviner's faculty by making him guess what it was, before pro- 
 ceeding to matters of life or death. The saint works himself 
 into a state of demoniac possession, and gasps out some woman's 
 name ; she is killed by her nearest relative, or allowed to commit 
 suicide, unless indeed her family are able to make it worth the 
 diviner's while to have another fit, and to detect some one else. 
 It is to be remarked, that though the witch and the witch- 
 finder are in these transactions both on precisely the same 
 level of darkest and deepest superstition, yet that the two pro- 
 fessions are entirely distinct and mutually opposed. The 
 Banjaras are in no sense an aboriginal tribe. 
 
 The conclusion here suggested is, therefore, that witchcraft 
 has always been a separate art and calling side by side with the 
 stewardship of divine systems, but apart from it. Also, that 
 the most primitive witchcraft looks very like medicine in an 
 embryonic state ; but as no one will give the aboriginal physi- 
 cian any credit for cures or chemical effects produced by simple 
 human knowledge, he is soon forced back into occult and 
 mystic devices which belong neither to religion nor to destiny, 
 but are a ridiculous mixture of both, whence the ordinary kind 
 of witchcraft is generated. Now its progressive degradation 
 as a science may be measured by the gradual elevation of its 
 two original ingredients, of the religious sentiment, and 
 (much later) of real experimental knowledge. In polytheism 
 it is the relative upward growth of morality and of popular 
 conceptions of the divine nature, which depress witchcraft to a 
 lower level of public esteem. A higher idea of the functions 
 of divinity usually coincides with a more restricted idea of their
 
 90 WITCHCRAFT & NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CiiAP. IV. 
 
 employment ; and the notion is soon developed of gods inter- 
 fering mainly on the side of virtue (except where their own 
 majesty or privileges are concerned), and even then only on 
 important occasions. So soon as men come to presume gods 
 to be incapable of gross injustice, of unprovoked cruelty, or of 
 wanton malice, they impute to the witch every sudden misfor- 
 tune, like apoplex}" or paralysis, that befalls a blameless man or 
 beast. In an earlier intellectual state, vicious cruelty is not in- 
 compatible with the character of a revengeful or malignant deity 
 who ma} r have been introduced to Hinduism by Brahmanised 
 fetich worshippers ; but with the milder polytheism of Hindus 
 proper, the practice of using mighty power to do evil ceases to 
 be approved as a godlike characteristic, and thus becomes dis- 
 creditable ; while even to do good the great deities are reluc- 
 tant to interpose, save when the knot is worthy to be loosed by 
 divine fingers. DC minimis non curant; they will bestow a 
 victory or a pestilence, but for petty blessing or cursing there 
 is a tendency towards- the Epicurean theosophy. Nevertheless, 
 since the peculiar need of the primitive mind is to insist upon 
 a religious or supernatural causation for all queer, unaccount- 
 able facts, insomuch that to such minds the miraculous expla- 
 nation is, as Grote remarks, the rational one ; therefore, the 
 vulgar polytheists still cling obstinately to witchcraft as their 
 easiest interpretation of phenomena for which their inferior 
 gods decline to be responsible, as their readiest source for the 
 remedies which Heaven will no longer undertake to provide, 
 and man has not yet tried to discover. The great plagues, 
 like cholera or small-pox, still belong to the gods, who person- 
 ally inflict and can therefore remove them ; but as the nobler 
 Hindu deities rise higher towards the clouds above, and gradu- 
 ally melt away into abstractions, they deign less and less to trou- 
 ble themselves with trivial grievances or animosities, or to bow 
 down their ear to the lamentation and ancient tale of wrong 
 which comes ever steaming up from the much-enduring tillers 
 of Indian soil. The consequence is that all dirty squabbles, 
 and the criminal side of miraculous business generally, are 
 gradually made over to witches ; and the earlier habit of attri- 
 buting malignant, monkey-like tricks to a god, or of expect-
 
 CHAP. IV.] ASTROLOGERS, FORTUNE-TELLERS, ETC. 91 
 
 ing trifling services from him, is discouraged and disowned by 
 the priests as inconsistent with the dignity of their cultus. A 
 man cannot expect a great incarnation of Vishnu to cure his 
 cow, or find his lost purse ; nor will public opinion tolerate his 
 going to any respectable temple or shrine with a petition that 
 his neighbour's wife, his ox, or his ass may be smitten with 
 some sore disease. A respectable minister will not be found to 
 take an offering or to use his influence in such silly and 
 scandalous jobs with any saint or deity who values his self- 
 respect. 
 
 It must be remembered, also, that the upper sort of poly- 
 theistic priest very rapidly hardens down into a mechanical 
 master of ceremonies, the rigid expounder of accredited tradi- 
 tional religion ; and that under this process of change he is 
 apt to transfer even his rnantic office, the expounding of occa- 
 sional marvels, to astrologers, soothsayers, convulsionists, and 
 the like a class which in all its branches must be distin- 
 guished, in India, from the magicians proper. Astrologers, 
 fortune-tellers by sortilege, and interpreters by dreams or omens, 
 all swarm throughout India, but all these watch nature in order 
 to ascertain the will and intention of the gods ; whereas we 
 may define a witch to be one who works independently of 
 them. The witch has originally, I imagine, nothing at all to 
 do with the Mantis ; though it is easy to see how they came 
 to be confounded during the first centuries of the Christian era 
 in Europe. 
 
 It must not be supposed that even the uppermost gods of 
 Hinduism have retired behind mere ceremonial altars, like 
 constitutional monarchs ; on the contrary, all still take active 
 interest in the well-being of their worshippers, some working 
 by laws as loftily as any mortal Indian executive, and are there- 
 fore as well worth propitiation. But there seem to be many 
 grades of accessibility among them, from Brahma who since 
 he created the world has taken no further trouble about it, and 
 is naturally rewarded by possessing only one or two out of 
 the million temples to Hindu gods down to the lowest petti- 
 fogging deity to whom nothing comes amiss by way of a dou- 
 ceur. One of this last sort may often be stumbled upon
 
 92 WITCHCRAFT & NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CHAP. IV. 
 
 enshrined in deep jungle by some lonely cross-road or choked- 
 up well ; a low caste illiterate hedge-priest presides, who with 
 rough and ready ritual immolates a young pig hefore a 
 clay image daubed with red paint. The man is a scandal to 
 Brahmauism, and only distinct from fetichism because the 
 image probably represents some utterly obscure saint or hero 
 of the spot ; but he is not a witch. This hedge-priest serves 
 his god or devil, whereas a witch makes the familiar demon, if 
 one is kept, serve him. Now polytheism is so tolerant that it 
 allows a man to apply at discretion to any of its deities, and 
 perhaps he may begin with his suit to the highest class of 
 them, on the principle of always dealing, where possible, with 
 the heads of departments. But if a man does not get his 
 remedy there, he obviously goes elsewhere. He will generally 
 try some god of local reputation and fail' fame ; failing these he 
 will resort to miraculous shrines and far-famed places of pil- 
 grimage. Thence he may come down for relief to living 
 men, to ecs"tatics, ascetics, and saints marvellously gifted or 
 afflicted ; or he may take a step even lower, and consult 
 inspired Shamanists who inhale the divine afflatus, and de- 
 liver their reply in a frenzy ; * but here he is arriving at the 
 last stage of legitimate research into the supernatural. Be- 
 yond this line a moral man will not venture in pursuit of 
 his object, if it is one of which he is not ashamed ; for if he 
 proceeds further he has left the region of divinity, and has 
 got among the witches. He will only do this if his need be 
 very trifling, such as the cure of a beast or the finding of a 
 coin, or if it be evil and criminal, saving only the exceptional 
 case when he, being himself manifestly vexed by a witch, is 
 justified, according to common opinion, in seeking to employ 
 the lex talionis. Here begins the black art proper, of which, 
 if we may judge by study of its practices from real life in 
 India, we must own that our ancestors may have had very 
 good reasons for persecuting it, though they proceeded on 
 
 * These professional convulsionists violent hysterics, when they thundered 
 
 used to be notorious for oracular powers out curses or prophecies, as the occa- 
 
 upon the Malabar coast, where their sion required, 
 custom was to work themselves into
 
 CHAP. IV.] INDIAN MAGICIANS. 93 
 
 grounds widely mistaken, and very often against the wrong 
 persons. In any decent condition of society the sorcerers have 
 subsided for the most part to level of knaves and cheats, reli- 
 gious and medical. Obviously the wide-spread popular de- 
 testation of witchcraft was against its evil ways, and a great 
 part of its ill-fame was quite separate from the theologic preju- 
 dices against black and white magic indiscriminately, which all 
 Christian communities have very consistently entertained. 
 
 It is among the Mahouiedans that we find, as might be ex- 
 pected, the first distinct expression of religious condemnation 
 of all magic as a sin, because it is treason against God. Sor- 
 cery of all kinds is known and incessantly practised. Much 
 business is done in amulets, charms, spells, exorcism, magic 
 mirrors, cabalistic figures, divination, sortilege, and the like ; 
 nor do the common people curse a magician unless his dealings 
 or deeds be wicked. The magician of Islam is he who hath 
 power over the genii, or over fairies, and who will cast out 
 devils by magic circles and incantations not known to the 
 orthodox rubric for that end provided, and who is also ac- 
 quainted with talismans for causing a devil to enter into pos- 
 session of a man's body. Then there is the minor sorcerer, 
 who helps to captivate women, to discover thieves, or to find out 
 what absent friends are about by the aid of the magic mirror. 
 The magic mirror, so famous in the medieval romance of 
 western Europe, whereby an honest crusader often caught most 
 discomforting glimpses of his domestic interior, may have been 
 imported from the East in those ages. It will be remembered 
 that Lane, in his "Modern Egyptians," gives a minute descrip- 
 tion of this kind of magical feat, and that in " Eothen," Mr. 
 Kinglake relates a ludicrous failure by the conjuror whom he 
 desired to summon Dr. Keats, late of Eton. In India the 
 conjuror polishes with some black oily paste a child's hand; 
 charms are muttered while the child stares steadily at the 
 bright surface, and describes the visions which successively 
 pass across it. It is worth noting that the image of a broom 
 sweeping the ground which, according to Lane, frightened a 
 young Englishwoman who allowed the mirror to be prepared 
 in her hand, appears to be in India also the apparition which
 
 94 WITCHCEAFT & NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CHAP. IV. 
 
 the mirror-holder ordinarily begins by describing. There may 
 be something in Lane's remark that the whole process reminds 
 him of animal magnetism. 
 
 But all these arts are denounced by rigid Mahomedan divines, 
 especially by the "NVahabi sect, whose distinctive theologic note 
 is great jealousy of any encroachment upon the centralised 
 unity of Divinity. Magic, sa} r the more liberal doctors, is a 
 concealed power, which is given to some men for profession 
 and use, just as a sword is a visible instrument which some get 
 hold of and learn to use ; and, as with arms, so with magic, 
 the only question should be whether it is employed for good or 
 for ill. If a man devotes himself to the study of these abstruse 
 and powerful arts, he may acquire the thaumaturgic faculty, 
 and may extort obedience from genii ; but he must wield his 
 authority for right ends. He may succeed in commanding the 
 evil genii to do him all kinds of wicked service, but then he is 
 practising black, or Satanic magic. The story of one Shah 
 Darval is famous in Central India ; indeed it belongs to a kind 
 famous throughout the world, the legend of a man who has 
 obtained possession, usually by chance or trick, of a power 
 which is too strong for him to manage. Shah Darval was 
 groom to a great magician of the Michael Scott type, who, 
 tying on his death-bed, felt himself passing away at an hour 
 when all his disciples were absent. The only person who 
 heard the magician's call was this poor horse-boy, who brought 
 him water, so to him did the wizard impart the secret spell, 
 which bound two genii to serve him. But Shah Darval could 
 handle his magic no better than the dwarf in the " Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel;" some say he did some awful crime, others 
 that he broke the vow of chastity on which his power 
 depended ; anyhow his genii soon tore him to pieces, and he is 
 a wandering demon to this day.* Of course the ordinary 
 moral lesson against abuse of great gifts may be pointed by 
 
 * A similar legend, widely spread and he set them to build temples with 
 
 over a vast tract of country, is that of huge stones, without mortar. The 
 
 Hemar Punt, by some identified with demons finished them all in one night, 
 
 Hemadri, an authentic physician of the and their ruins, called by the profane 
 
 ninth century. He, too, found himself ancient Hindoo architecture, are to be 
 
 obliged to keep his demons employed, seen all over the Dekhan to this day.
 
 CHAP. IV.] DEFINITION OF WITCHCRAFT. 95 
 
 this legend ; but it might also he imagined to be a faint and far 
 distant reverberation of the despairing voice of some ancient 
 seeker after knowledge, who has caught just a glimpse of what 
 will be known after his time, dying in the dark ages, surrounded 
 by fanatics and poor fools like Shah Diirval, with the miserable 
 certainty that his few discoveries must perish with him, and that 
 his name will be lost among a crowd of barbarous conjurors. 
 
 The stricter doctrines of Islam approach Christianity in 
 their entire condemnation of all curious arts. According to 
 them magic is designated by a word which literally means 
 partnership, and secondarily a sort of polytheism. As applied 
 to magic, the term may imply the admission of other super- 
 natural beings into partnership with the miraculous powers 
 that are God's attribute ; or with the rigid Unitarians it would 
 mean that the magician himself becomes an apostate and a 
 renegade, by arming himself rebelliously with weapons that 
 belong by prerogative to God alone. And in this latter 
 definition we find again the idea which is the spinal column of 
 witchcraft ; for the essence of magic, as distinguished from 
 miracles, is in Islam that it is performed without calling on 
 God's name and without ascribing to him glory for the deed, 
 which, if the deed be evil or foolish, cannot of course be done. 
 And so we come round again to our aboriginal definition of 
 witchcraft, that it is a marvellous art independent of popular 
 theology, and therefore disowned by it in every stage of religious 
 belief. Nevertheless not even among Mahoinedans is sorcery 
 really laid under such uncompromising proscription as was im- 
 posed upon it by the stern persecution of the old Catholic Church 
 in Europe, which laid so strict an interdict upon all unautho- 
 rized wonder-working that even scientific discoveries and harm- 
 less tricks were put down as a breach of it.* On the contrary, 
 the respectable Indian world in general is of Ealpho's opinion in 
 Hudibras, that " the Saints have freedom to go to sorcerers if 
 they need 'em," and that by " subtle stratagem " to make use of 
 
 * Tavenrier, who visited India in the slip in half an liour. He says that an 
 17th century, relates how, being at an English minister, who was present, de- 
 English settlement, he saw that cele- clared that he would refuse the commu- 
 brated trick of the Indian jugglers the nion to any man who looked on at such 
 causing of a mango-tree to grow from a devilry, and so broke up the gathering.
 
 96 WITCHCRAFT & NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CHAP. IV. 
 
 the devil for innocent ends is no sin at all. In mediaeval 
 Europe the ban of the Church was laid unsparingly upon all 
 secret acts and occult practices, as being connected with demon 
 worship and otherwise contraband. But no one, not even the 
 soundest Mahomedan divine, is bound, for conscience sake, to 
 molest a witch who has not meddled with him or his. 
 
 It is probable that in no other time or country has witch- 
 craft ever been so comfortably practised as it is now in India 
 under British rule. In Europe it has always been either 
 persecuted or ridiculed ; and its worst sufferings must have 
 been during that period when the Church insisted that belief 
 in witchcraft was an essential dogma, and stamping it out a 
 primary duty. To disbelieve in its preternatural existence was 
 almost as bad as to practise it, wherefore between the two 
 millstones of hard-set credulity and implacable condemnation the 
 witch was brayed as in a mortal'. Now though in India every- 
 one believes in witchcraft as a fact, yet there is here no church 
 convinced that scepticism as to such a dangerous moral disease 
 is not only in itself dangerous, but may also be, as Glanvil 
 logically calls it, an insidious sapping of all belief in the super- 
 natural. Thus his countrymen are not bound to prosecute the 
 Indian sorcerer on religious grounds ; while he lives under 
 laws which, instead of condemning him, interfere actively to 
 protect him from molestation, and are much more prone to 
 hang witch-finders than witches. Of course the witch is 
 punished when he takes to poisoning or pure swindling ; but 
 so long as his methods are simpty magical, that is, so long as 
 he pretends to work evil in a way not admitted to be physically 
 possible, by sticking pins in a wax figure, brewing in a 
 cauldron, burying a fowl head downwards, howling out incan- 
 tations, and the like, it is not easy for an English judge to punish 
 the man because he can make his neighbours believe that these 
 operations affect the climate, the cattle, or the health of anyone 
 against whom they are directed. The Penal Code does indeed 
 contain one section that might reach witches ; * a section 
 
 * Section 508. It punishes the he will be rendered, by some act of the 
 causing a person to do or omit any offender, an object of divine displeasure, 
 thing, by inducing him to believe that
 
 CHAI-. IV.] WITCHES IN BRITISH INDIA. 97 
 
 which, it may he remarked, merely continues the ancient ori- 
 ental distinction between hlack and white magic ; for while it 
 forhids the threatening of evil, it does not prohibit the pro- 
 mise of good, though one can be no more an imposture than 
 the other. In every village of Central India they keep a 
 hereditary servant, whose profession is to ward off impending 
 hailstorms by incantations, by consulting the motion of water 
 in certain pots, and by dancing about with a sword. If he 
 threatened to bring down the hail, he would be dealt with as a 
 witch by the public, and imprisoned as an intimidator by the 
 magistrate ; but as his intentions are beneficent, he is en- 
 couraged and supported. In short, witches in British India 
 are exposed to little professional risk except when they are really 
 mischievous; and they are under this special disadvantage 
 only, that the law need not treat them with any of the caution 
 and deference to popular feeling which protect those who claim 
 to practise religious observances, however irrational or inde- 
 fensible. For while we concede that to menace bodily harm 
 or material mischief by the most absurd devices is clearly 
 punishable, yet we find it more difficult to settle how far we 
 are to take legal notice of threats of divine displeasure issued 
 in the name of recognized divinities, although it may neverthe- 
 less show itself, like small-pox, in very substantial form. 
 
 Witchcraft is, however, a much more manageable subject 
 for modern governments than other superstitions, because the 
 delusion is more gross and palpable. So long as a witch 
 keeps to white, or even to greyish magic, it would be unfair 
 that an impartial magistracy should prosecute him hastily be- 
 cause he is a bit of an impostor. It should be remembered 
 that even the most grotesque and ridiculous operations of 
 witchcraft, the method of divining the course of a hailstorm 
 by looking at water in a row of pots, for instance, may possibly 
 contain the germ or hidden kernel of some real observation. 
 At any rate, the practice seems more likely to stimulate the 
 spirit of observation and induction than the mere watching of 
 signs and omens, or sacrifices to gods ; though Comte believes 
 that these things stimulated early physical inquiry. Chance 
 and strangeness are the very essence of an omen ; whereas 
 
 H
 
 98 WITCHCRAFT & NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. [CHAP. IV. 
 
 sorcery pretends to be in some sort an exact science. And 
 from this point of view it might possibly be affirmed that even 
 the poor aboriginal witch of the jungles, with all his sins and 
 disreputable hocus-pocus, is in his time and generation perse- 
 cuted, like Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa, in some slight 
 degree on account of his singularuty and of his superior inge- 
 nuity, or at least curiosity. He may be making a first step, 
 however stumbling and unconscious, upon a road which may 
 lead him away from abject prostration before the idols and 
 phantasms which overawe his world ; or, if he has a devil, it is 
 his own familiar, rather his servant than his master, not the 
 tyrannous hobgoblin that overawes the crowd. He is just 
 touching, though he may only touch and let go, a line of thought 
 which points, albeit vaguely and most crookedly, towards some- 
 thing like mental independence ; whereas the worshippers of 
 stocks and stones, of ghosts and demons, are only just setting 
 forth into that interminable labyrinth of speculation as to in- 
 visible and supernatural personalities which at last threatens to 
 lead modern Hindus after ages of wandering over the waste 
 ocean of their theology, in vain pursuit of phantoms and 
 meteors back again to that despised materialism of which 
 witchcraft may be only the first dim and rudimentary expression.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MISSIONARY AND NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. 
 
 Professor Max Mailer's Lecture in Westminster Abbey, December, 1873 His 
 classification of religious systems as Missionary and Non-missionary Re- 
 marks on the classification of Bralimanisni as non-missionary, not upon the 
 view that, as a proselytizing religion, it is dying or dead Brahmanism still 
 proselytizes in the sense of accepting and admitting members from the outside 
 Its spread among Non-Aryan tribes ; examples and illustrations Its 
 vitality as shown by reforming and purifying movements from within ; and 
 as an indigenous religion and social system Question as to the future of 
 Brahmanism Whether it can transmute and raise itself in accordance with 
 rising 'standards of intelligence and morality Extensive changes will pro- 
 bably be gradual Present state of Indian polytheism compared with Gibbon's 
 sketch of religion in the Roman Empire Possible difficulties and hazards of 
 a transitional period of general decay of traditional beliefs. 
 
 IN the Lecture delivered by Professor Max Miiller in West- 
 minster Abbey on the day of intercession for missions in 
 December, 1873, he counted eight real historical religions of 
 mankind. And the Lecturer went on to say that b}' study, 
 "by critical examination of the sacred books upon which all 
 these religions professed to be founded, they could be classified 
 
 and compared scientifically, A classification of these 
 
 systems into non-missionary and missionary religions was 
 directly interesting on that day of intercession for missions, 
 and was also not based on an unimportant or accidental charac- 
 teristic, but rested on what was the very heart-blood in every 
 system of human faith. Judaism, Brahmanism, and Zoroastri- 
 anism were opposed to all missionary enterprise ; Buddhism, 
 Mahomedanism, and Christianity were missionary religions 
 
 from their beginning The Brahnians never attempted 
 
 to proselytize those who did not by birth belong to the spiritual 
 aristocracy of their country ; their wish was rather to repel in- 
 truders, and they even punished those of other creeds who 
 
 H 2
 
 100 MISSIONARY & NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. [CHAP. V. 
 
 happened to be near enough to hear their prayers or to 
 see their sacrifices. The Lecturer then compared those reli- 
 gions which had missionary spirit with those " in which any 
 attempt to convince others by argument, to save souls, to bear 
 witness to the truth, is treated with pity and scorn." The 
 former were, he said, alive, the latter were dying or dead. The 
 religion of the Parsees was fast dwindling, Judaism might not 
 so rapidly vanish; but Brahmanism, although still professed 
 by 110 millions, was dying or dead, because it could not stand 
 the light of day. The worship of Siva, of Vishnu, and of the 
 other popular deities, was of the same character as, sometimes 
 more barbarous than, that of Jupiter or Apollo. It might live on, 
 but when a religion had ceased to produce champions, prophets, 
 and martyrs, it had ceased to live, in the true sense of the 
 word ; and the decisive battle for the dominion of the world 
 would have to be fought out among the three missionary 
 religions which are alive, Buddhism, Mahoniedanisni, and 
 Christianity. 
 
 It is with great deference that I venture to demur not onl}' to 
 this scientific classification, but also to the conclusions which 
 appear to be mainly drawn from it. It will be allowed that 
 inferences as to the nature and tendency of various existing reli- 
 gions which are drawn from study and exegetic comparison of 
 their scriptures, must be qualified by actual observation of these 
 religions in their popular form and working effects. And if we 
 look steadily at what is going on around us in Europe and Asia, 
 we may collect numerous facts and symptoms of which the 
 Lecture does not seem to me to have taken sufficient account. 
 To Professor Max Miiller himself the popular side of these 
 religions is of course well known; but his Lecture, taken 
 alone, seems to .encourage the error of presenting an Asiatic 
 religion as a mysterious thing, to be seen only through its 
 ancient books, as through a glass, darkly ; and to confirm the 
 inveterate modem habit of assuming all great historic names 
 to represent something definite, symmetrical, and organized 
 as if Asiatic institutions were capable of being circumscribed 
 by rules or formal definitions. Now in these days it is so 
 important for us to understand the way of growth and the
 
 X'HAP. V.] MAX MULLER S CLASSIFICATION. 101 
 
 constitution of a great antique religion; there are so many 
 practical questions connected with beliefs and the historic 
 method of inquiry which become clearer when examined by the 
 light of Eastern experiences ; and the reflex action of India 
 upon England is so likely to make itself soon felt that a few 
 words may be worth saying upon those parts of the Lecture by 
 which people in England are, in my judgment, liable to be 
 misled. 
 
 Brahmanism is enormously the most important of the reli- 
 gions classified in the Lecture as non-missionary; the other 
 two have ceased to influence the world ; they are now no more 
 than survivals of ancient faiths still preserved by scattered and 
 expatriated races. And the Lecturer, while admitting that 
 millions still worship the Hindu deities, considers that the 
 national religion in India is in a state of living death, and that 
 for the purpose of " gaming an idea of the issue of the great 
 religious struggle of the future, Brahmanism is dead and gone." 
 Now it is certain that Brahmanism, being a great polytheism, 
 differs in origin, nature, and mode of growth from a religion 
 that has arisen out of the teaching of its founder or his disciples ; 
 the former has spread naturally and unconsciously, like a huge 
 tree, while the latter makes its way by conscious design and 
 systematic exertion, like the higher physical organisms. It is 
 also to be expected that a polytheism, being the most antique 
 existing species of full grown religions, will in these da}-s be the 
 first to decay and subside. But taking things as they are now, 
 and looking upon the actual state and movement of religions 
 in India, an eye witness would still be justified in affirming 
 that this religion, although powerfully affected by social and 
 political changes so strong and sudden that they would try 
 the constitution of any national creed, is nevertheless not 
 yet dead, nor ctying, nor even dangerously ill ; and, moreover, 
 that so far from it being a non-missionary religion in the sense 
 of a religion that admits no proselytes, one might safely aver 
 that more persons in India become every year Brahmanists 
 than all the converts to all the other religions in India put 
 together. The description in the Lecture, of Brahmanism as 
 a moribund non-missionary religion, like the faith of the Jews
 
 102 MISSIONARY & NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. [CHAP. V. 
 
 or the Parsees, cannot fail to raise in England an impression 
 quite at variance with the truth. For it must fix in the minds 
 of an English audience the popular notion of an inflexible 
 stationary creed confined, like a stagnant pool inside a stone 
 basin, within a set of beliefs and customs into which certain 
 Indians are born by the accident that their parents were born 
 in it and practised the ritual duly, but into which no one has 
 for generations entered or is now allowed to enter who was 
 not thus born within the pale. But this as a definition of 
 Brahmanism would be only part of the whole truth, and not 
 the part which concerns our present discussion. If by Brah- 
 manism we understand that religion of the Hindus which refers 
 for its orthodoxy to Brahnianic scriptures and tradition, which 
 adores the Brahmanic gods and their incarnations, venerates 
 the cow, observes certain rules of intermarriage and the shar- 
 ing of food, and which regards the Brahman's presence as 
 necessary to all essential rites, then this religion can hardly 
 be called non-missionary in the sense of stagnation and exclu- 
 sive immobility, because it still proselytizes in two very effective 
 modes. 
 
 The first of these modes is the gradual Brahmanizing of the 
 aboriginal, non-Aryan, or casteless tribes. The clans and 
 races which inhabit the hill tracts, the outlying uplands, and 
 the uncleared jungle districts of India, are melting into Hindu- 
 ism all over India by a process much more rapid and effective 
 than individual conversions. Among all these aboriginal or 
 non-Aryan communities a continued social change is going 
 on ; they alter their modes of life to suit improved conditions 
 of existence ; their languages decay, and they gradually go 
 over to the dominant Aryan rituals. They pass into Brah- 
 manists by a natural upward transition, which leads them to 
 adopt the religion of the castes immediately above them in the 
 social scale of the composite population among which they 
 settle down. And we may reasonably guess that this process 
 has been working for centuries; though it is likely to have 
 been much more rapid than ever under British rule. The 
 " ethnical frontier" described in the Annals of Rural Bengal 
 is an ever-breaking shore of primitive beliefs which tumble
 
 CHAP. V.] BRAHMAXISM. 103 
 
 constantly into the ocean of Brahmanism ; and when Mr. W. 
 W. Hunter, in his Dissertation on the non-Aryan languages of 
 India, describes the gradations by which the acknowledged 
 non-Aryans of the highlands slide into low-caste Hindus of 
 the plain, he describes a transmutation that is going on all 
 over India. In Central India it has certainly gone very far, 
 with a speed that seems to increase. In the interior of the 
 Eastern Himalayas the Buddhists dispute with the Brahinans 
 over the mountain clans and the sparse families that live in 
 the habitable glens; but on the Southern slopes and in the 
 jungles that fringe the bases of the hills the Brahmans are 
 prevailing unopposed. For all these tribes, by becoming 
 Hindu, come under the Brahmans ; and wherever they have 
 succeeded so far as to found a State, as the Gurkhas founded 
 Nepal, they have established the predominancy of caste and 
 creed as a State religion. The number of converts thus 
 added to Brahmanism in the last few generations, especially 
 in this century, must be immense ; and if the word proselyte 
 may be used in the sense of one who has come, and who has 
 been readily admitted, not necessarily being one that has been 
 invited or persuaded to come, then Brahmanism might lay 
 claim to be by far the most successful proselytizing religion of 
 modern times in India. 
 
 Thus Brahmanism is all over India a necessary first stage 
 for the outlying tribes towards Indian civilization, or admis- 
 sion to the citizenship of the great Hindu community ; it very 
 rarely implies any ethical change, or even a formal abandon- 
 ment of one ritual for another, it is usually a rapid sliding 
 into Hindu customs and an attempt at social assimilation. 
 But the complete process does necessitate a considerable 
 change of worship and ways of life; for perhaps the surest sign 
 of a family's reception into Brahmanism is that whereas the 
 Brahman formerly was never called in, he is latterly found 
 officiating at domestic epochs and ceremonies, of birth, mar- 
 riage, or death. This implies conformity to Brahnianic rules 
 of eating, intermarriages, and the like, and the evolution of a 
 caste or sub-caste. If the converted family are of standing 
 among their own people, the Brahman, for a consideration
 
 101 MISSIONARY & NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. [CHAP. V. 
 
 proportionate to the emergency or complexity of the case, will 
 usually discover for them a decent Hindu pedigree, or (what 
 is much easier) a miraculous incident, which proves a half 
 savage chief or rich outcaste to be really allied to one of the 
 recognized castes. We know how readily the gods have always 
 intervened to explain away awkward incidents of birth, and to 
 provide a great man of humble origin with a parentage better 
 suited to his success in after-life. Thus the Gond chiefs of 
 the Central India highlands all now claim Rajput ancestiy, 
 and have ranked themselves in the soldier caste. In aspira- 
 tion they are now Hindus of the Hindus, some of them carry- 
 ing ceremonial refinement to the highest pitch of purism ; but 
 nevertheless they are really no better than recent parvenus from 
 the clans which still run almost wild in adjacent hills and 
 forests, and which care nothing for Brahnians or caste preju- 
 dices. It is calculated that the Bheels, a tribe widely spread 
 over Central India, must have been passing over in large 
 numbers to Brahmanism during the present century. There 
 is a tribe near Ajmer, of whom half were forcibly made 
 Musahndns, while the other half held its own non-Hindu 
 customs, and until very lately intermarried with its Musal- 
 man kindred ; but now this last mentioned half has Brah- 
 manized, and would no more marry with Musalmans than the 
 Eaja of Benares. Sir George Campbell, in his Report upon 
 his government of Bengal in 1871-72, wrote "It is a great 
 mistake to suppose that the Hindu religion is not prosely- 
 tizing ; the system of castes gives room for the introduction of 
 any number of outsiders ; so long as people do not interfere 
 with existing castes, they may form a new caste and call them- 
 selves Hindus ; and the Brahnians are always ready to receive 
 all who will submit to them and pay them. The process of 
 manufacturing Rajputs from ambitious aborigines goes on 
 before our eyes." This is one recently recorded observation 
 (noticed in the Lecture), out of many that might be quoted, 
 of the operation of that process which I have called the first 
 mode of Brahmanic propagation. Almost the whole of the 
 great province of Assam in the North-East of Bengal, con- 
 quered and settled by people from across the Eastern frontiers
 
 CHAP. V.] BRAHMAXIC PROPAGATION. 105 
 
 of India, supposed to be akin to the Siamese, is said to have 
 become Brahmaiiized during the last two centuries. It may 
 be granted that people who come in after this fashion do not 
 fulfil the meaning with which the term proselyte is used in 
 describing the operations of a professedly missionary faith, and 
 that Professor Max Miiller in his Lecture clearly used the 
 term in this, the ordinary European, meaning. Nevertheless, 
 when we undertake to estimate the vitality of a religion, and 
 its capacity for future adaptation and development (without 
 which no religion can endure long) we must consider and take 
 account of growth by agglomeration, as well as of extension by 
 missionary zeal. And it is fair to argue that a religion which 
 still possesses so much power of extension and assimilation as 
 Brahmanism, which has constantly produced reformers and re- 
 vivalists, cannot safely be set out of all calculation in forecasting 
 the religious future of Asia, a problem still so prodigiously 
 complex and obscure. 
 
 The foregoing extracts and illustrations might be amplified 
 considerably, but they serve to show that the views put forward 
 in this chapter are founded on realities of actual life around us 
 in India. The main consequence of the pacification and 
 settling down of these non-Aryans under British rule has 
 been to encourage their absorption into the Brahmanic ritual; 
 and they are also directly invited to enter in by the Brahnians, 
 to whom come great profit and repute by these additions to the 
 crowd to whom their religious ministry is indispensable. The 
 proselytes are now permitted, by the great favour of the divi- 
 nity, to enter temple courts formerly tabooed to them, and 
 to make offerings which would previously have been re- 
 jected with scorn. Their wives consult holy men who 
 would once have disdained to receive them, and are ad- 
 mitted to the full honour of private interviews ; they elect a 
 spiritual director from among the orthodox, and are enrolled 
 among his disciples. They may even bring over their humble 
 deities, and get them properly Brahinanized as incarnations. 
 It should be explained that the spiritual director is often a 
 personage very different from and morally superior to the 
 priest of a temple or the holy guardian of a shrine, dealing
 
 106 MISSIONARY & NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. [CHAP. V. 
 
 with religious questions and the consolation of troubled minds 
 much less entirely in the concrete. All these privileges uplift 
 the hearts of simple folk, and draw them into the great flock 
 of those whose only systematic belief is practically laid down 
 for them by Brahmans. 
 
 This is the first of the two modes by which Brahmanism 
 may be said to proselytize ; an acceptance of the worship of 
 the outer tribes, invitation to them to come in and conform, 
 assumption of their liturgic and spiritual direction ; in short, 
 holding open to them the gates of admission into Brahmanic 
 caste and creed. It might be argued, indeed, that Brah- 
 manism is no clear cut religion at all, in the scientific sense 
 with which the word is applied to the elaborated theologies 
 of Christianity, of Islam, and even of Buddhism, which have 
 each their founder and central doctrines, are fenced round 
 and staked out dogmatically, with proper gates for lawful 
 entry. And thus it might be contended that no real analogy 
 exists between the spiritual enthusiastic conversions to the 
 Cross or the Crescent, and this natural melting down in the 
 crucible of Brahmanism of masses of men as they emerge, 
 intellectually aimless and wandering, out of a half-savage 
 state. It might also be said that a religion which thus, half 
 involuntarily, enlarges its borders, is in no strict sense a 
 missionary religion ; and Avhen Professor Max Miiller's lecture is 
 carefully read, it becomes evident that he admits within the 
 class of missionary religions only those which make pro- 
 selytism an essential and a sacred duty. On the other hand, 
 it seems quite conceivable that an ordinary audience might 
 not have caught this distinction, while no one, I venture to 
 remark, would have inferred from the Lecture that Brahmanism 
 has still life and growth, much less that it is spreading, and 
 internally undergoing active changes that may prolong its ex- 
 istence under other forms. And this brings me to the second 
 mode of Brahmanic proselytism, if the word may be used in the 
 sense of admitting and welcoming adherents, who are not 
 actually summoned and urged to join an association. 
 
 The second mode by which I should affirm that Brahmanism 
 proselytizes is by the working of the devotees and spiritual
 
 CHAP. V. RELIGIOUS REVIVALS. 107 
 
 leaders who found new sects, and set up new lights in 
 divine matters. In a former chapter I have tried to 
 describe upon a small scale how these personages have con- 
 stantly appeared, and still appear, among the Hindus, to 
 assert new inspirations, to insist on a peculiar way of life, to 
 work wonders, and to enroll a body of disciples who gradually 
 convince themselves that their master was a personification 
 of some god. These movements are now going on all over 
 India; some of them increase and take root, others wither 
 and disappear; but it is impossible to describe as non-mis- 
 sionary a religion which permits and largely adopts all this 
 wonderful diversity and intensity of religious propagation. 
 For the Brahnians do not usually reject these sectaries, or dis- 
 own them, unless their principle is hostility to Brahinanism ; 
 on the contrary, the movement is generally adopted and 
 absorbed into Brahmanism. Nor would it be correct to say 
 that these are merely ulterior variations or changes within 
 Brahmanism itself, and therefore quite different from the 
 spirit of proselytism going forth beyond its own religion to 
 call in the outer gentiles. Many of these teachers address 
 themselves to every one without distinction of caste or of 
 creed; they preach to low-caste men and to the aboriginal 
 tribes who are just emerging out of a nomad state into a 
 settled low-caste element; in fact, they succeed largely in 
 those ranks of the population which would lean towards 
 Christianity and Mahomedanism if they were not drawn into 
 Brahmanism by some local saint or devotee. I do not assert 
 these religious reforms or revivals are essentially Brahmanic ; 
 on the contrary, I think that their aim and first impulse are 
 usually against orthodoxy, monopolies of inspiration, and 
 priestly abuses generally ; but this is the origin of every fresh 
 development which any great religion has ever taken ; and in 
 surveying the general condition of such a religion one must 
 give it credit for all its vigorous developments, heretical or 
 otherwise. Most of these movements which I am describing 
 in India have issued out of Brahmanism ; and hitherto they 
 have almost all ended in it ; the leaders are mystics or devout 
 ascetics who spiritualize the idolatry and rude superstition
 
 108 MISSIONARY & NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. [CHAP. V. 
 
 of the vulgar; but they very rarely, except in the famous 
 instances of Buddhism and the Jaina doctrines, carry any 
 large section of the people into any communion permanently 
 separate from Brahmanism. Almost invariably they end by 
 a new Brahmanic caste or sect, with peculiar doctrines and 
 divinities that elevate the low-caste disciple, and satisfy in his 
 spiritual nature just those needs which Christianity or Islam, 
 might otherwise have been called in to satisfy. And thus the 
 Brahmanic revivalists at the very least occupy the ground 
 which the more distinctly and consciously proselytizing creeds 
 from abroad could otherwise annex ; and make wholesale con- 
 versions among those classes with whom only are wholesale 
 conversions in these days possible. 
 
 For specimens of the second mode we may take the accounts 
 of the Kookas in the Punjab, whose outbreak was rather sternly 
 repressed in 1872, and of kindred manifestations. The Punjab 
 report for that year, which in this part of it reads like the 
 letter of some legate addressed to the Emperor from one of 
 the Asiatic provinces of imperial Rome, sets forth how " Ram 
 Singh, the leader of the sect, a man of considerable ability, 
 was the son of a carpenter, who gradually acquired a reputa- 
 tion of extreme sanctit} r , and even for the possession of 
 miraculous powers. As his influence and the number of his 
 followers increased, the tendency of his teaching became more 
 political," * &c. &c. ; but what first brought this sect into 
 collision with the British Government was their fanatical 
 horror at the slaughter of kine, which led them to murder the 
 butchers ; a very fair proof of the strong Brahmanic colouring 
 which pervaded this otherwise spiritual movement. Then 
 we have Hakeem Singh, who listened to the missionaries 
 until he not only accepted the whole Christian dogma, but 
 has conceived himself to be the second embodiment, has pro- 
 claimed himself as such, and has summoned the missionaries 
 to acknowledge this latest dispensation. He works miracles, 
 preaches pure morality, but still venerates the cow. In the 
 remote Eastern districts of the Central Provinces, which are 
 
 * Punjab Administration Report, 1871-72, page 214.
 
 CHAP. V.] HIXDU SCHISMS. 109 
 
 governed from Xagpore, we may collect minute information 
 regarding the life of one Ghasi Das, an inspired prophet, who 
 sojourned in the wilderness for six months, and then issued 
 forth preaching to the poor and ignorant the creed of the 
 True Name (Sdtnani). He gathered about half a million 
 people together before he died in 1850. He borrowed his doc- 
 trines from the well known Hindu sect of Satndmis ; and 
 though he denounced Brahmanic abuses he instituted caste 
 mles of his own, and his successor was murdered, not for 
 heresy, but because he aped the Brahmanic insignia and privi- 
 leges, which is of course a very different thing, according to 
 sacerdotal views, from merely adopting the rules and tenets pre- 
 scribed by Brahmans. There can be little doubt that this com- 
 munity, if left alone, will relapse into a modified Brahmanism. 
 If it be still contended that these movements are really anti- 
 Brahmanic in their direction and impulse, we have only to point 
 to the Sikhs, who began in just the same manner two or three 
 centuries ago, and whose numbers, after rapidly increasing, 
 are now beginning to diminish. As the Sikhs rise in the 
 political and social world, they are less inclined to separate 
 themselves from the general body of Hindus, though they con- 
 form to all rituals in the rough elastic fashion of warlike men 
 who, like Hector of Troy, cannot be hampered by priests and 
 augurs when there is work to be done. Other illustrations 
 might be given from the history of Hindu schisms ; and it 
 might be even affirmed that the only great impulse of religious 
 improvement which earned its followers fairly beyond 
 Brahmanic caste and ritual, is Buddhism and its satellite 
 Jainism. The other sects have merely formed separate castes, 
 and have otherwise conformed to the general outline of the 
 Brahmanic system. 
 
 Thus, if the word Brahmanisin may be taken as the broad 
 denomination of what is recognised by all Hindus as the 
 supreme theological Faculty, and the comprehensive scheme 
 of authoritative tradition to which all minor beliefs are referred 
 for sanction and to be placed properly, we may affirm that this 
 religion, so far from being dead, has increased very considerably 
 within times of which we know. It has drawn in and gathered
 
 110 MISSIONARY & NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. [CHAP. V. 
 
 up the wild tribes and the helots of India ; while all the minor 
 sectarian offshoots have hitherto been gradually bent backward 
 by popular prejudice to conform to it, or else have been obliged 
 to leave India. And while Brahmanism has spread out during 
 the last 100 years, so far as we can guess, it is probable that on 
 the same ground Islam and Christianity have contracted, yield- 
 ing to unfavourable political circumstance. By sheer force, by 
 its predominant political influence, and also of course by its in- 
 trinsic superiority over the indigenous superstitions, Islam made 
 many converts in India up to the middle of the 18th century ; 
 but its extension has naturally slackened with the rapid decline 
 and dilapidation of the political power with which the faith 
 was so closely bound up. It has had now to bear the disad- 
 vantage of too near identity with rulership, which forces Islam 
 to stake the authenticity and practical proof of its claim to 
 divine favour upon the success of unstable human institutions. 
 Of course the misfortunes of a Musalman dynasty ruling over 
 unbelievers must affect the proselytizing influence of the doc- 
 trines which are held to justify the dominion. With regard to 
 Christianity, its case is in some respects the converse to that 
 of Islam ; for there is reason to believe that Christianity has 
 suffered, as to its propagation in India, by the strange success 
 of the Christian conquerors. For a century or more the 
 English have consistently and sincerely disowned all connec- 
 tion between their politics and their religion. Colonel Dow, 
 in his Enquiry into the State of Bengal (1770), observes that 
 persecution for religion is not on the list of the Company's 
 misdeeds, and " he that will consent to part with his property 
 may carry his opinions away with freedom." But no degree 
 of energetic asseveration by a powerful government in India 
 has until very lately been supposed by its subjects to afford 
 any clue to the real intentions of tlie governors ; and so 
 Christianity for many years got all the discredit and jealousy 
 which accompanies support given by the State to a foreign 
 proselytizing religion, without getting any of the support. In 
 the days when Christianity was actually propagated and pushed 
 forward by the whole influence of an European power in India, 
 it did succeed very perceptibly. When Francis Xavier could
 
 CHAP. V.] VITALITY OF BRAHMANISM. Ill 
 
 and did bring the Inquisition to bear upon lukewarm 
 Portuguese Viceroys at Goa, and when whole tribes submitted 
 to conversion on condition of being protected by the Portu- 
 guese from the vengeance of their native princes against whom 
 they had rebelled in those days Christianity flourished and 
 took root in India; but the English never have resorted to 
 such thorough measures, and of course never will. Thus 
 Christianity was much aided by strong political support : and 
 it also did very well on its own merits when it had neither 
 political support nor connection ; but it has not advanced in 
 India since it has made political connections without gaining 
 their support. And on the whole we may conclude generally 
 that of the three great religions in India Brahinanism alone 
 has during the last 100 years added materially to its numbers ; 
 though whether such numerical additions as it has made are or 
 are not deceptive S3 r mptoms of strength and endurance may be 
 a different question. At any rate they are good evidence of 
 actual vitality, quite sufficient to warn us against consign- 
 ing Brahmanism prematurely to the cemetery of dead re- 
 ligions. 
 
 But it is not hard to understand why this should be, and 
 why Brahmanism in India is likely to take an unconscionably 
 long time in dying out utterly, instead of being, as might be 
 supposed from a cursory glance at the Lecture, already dead. 
 For, first, Brahmanism is indigenous to India ; whereas the 
 other two religions are exotics. Secondly, Brahmanism is a 
 religion of the prae- Christian old-world type, being neither a 
 State institution like Islam, nor a great Church or else a con- 
 gregation of worshippers having a common creed, like 
 Christianity. It is a way of life in itself, a scheme of living 
 so interwoven into the whole existence and society of those 
 whom it concerns, and placing every natural habit or duty so 
 entirely upon the religious basis as the immediate reason and 
 object of it, that to distinguish in Brahmanism between 
 matters known to us as sacred and profane is almost impossible. 
 This appears to be the earliest form of a religion ; and so far 
 as religion becomes marked off and eliminated out from ordinary 
 civil life as a thing different in use and nature, as a department
 
 MISSIONARY & NOX-MISSIOXARY RELIGIONS. [CHAP. V. 
 
 concerned mainly with immaterial needs and interests, and with 
 a future existence, by so far maj" we trace the development (or 
 deterioration as some might say) of the original religious idea. 
 The terms layman and ecclesiastic, with all the distinctions 
 thereby implied, indelibility of orders, monopoly of sacred minis- 
 try, Church and State existing as independent authorities are 
 all things which no Brahmanist understands in our European 
 meaning of the words. Professions and privileges are heredi- 
 tary in Brahmanism, whether they be sacred or profane, but 
 a man's religion means his customary rule of everyday life, 
 whatever that may be. A man is not a Hindu because he 
 inhabits India, or belongs to any particular race or State, but 
 because he is a Brahmanist. His whole status and social 
 identity, the signs by which he may be known and described, 
 belong to his religion. 
 
 When, therefore, we say of a religion cast in this type that 
 it is non-missionary, we mean onry that it cannot be communi- 
 cated or entered without changing one's whole manner of life 
 and habitual rules of society. And because we in England 
 have long ago lost the notion that religion has anything to do 
 with the food we eat, the clothes we wear, or the things we 
 touch; we suppose that a religion thus bound up with a 
 peculiar set of social rules, and resting not upon doctrine, but 
 on custom, birth, and status, must be incommunicable beyond 
 the society into the web of which it is thus woven. That is 
 true, but the society itself extends and absorbs, the peculiar 
 rites and theology following in second place. A tribe or indi- 
 vidual becomes Brahmanized by adopting what are held to be 
 the respectable high-bred manners and prejudices of Brahman- 
 ism, and afterward by desire to propitiate gods of a more refined 
 and aristocratic stamp, as well as more powerful, than their 
 rough-hewn jungle deities. Thus a very recent report upon 
 certain wild tracts in Northern Madras which are gradually 
 becoming cultivated and settled, mentions that the aboriginal 
 tribes are taking to infant marriages, and to burning their dead 
 instead of burying. This latter change is a sure sign of 
 Hinduizing, more sure than a mere change of gods, for the 
 proselyte is very apt to bring in his gods with him ; the
 
 CHAP. V.] POWER OF ASCETICISM. 113 
 
 Brahman polishes up both gods and worshippers, and intro- 
 duces them into decent society. 
 
 A third reason why Brahrnanisin is still paramount and 
 spreading in a country like India, particularly among the wild 
 and ignorant, is of a sort too obvious to have been noticed, if 
 Brahmanism had not been declared to be dead. It is quite 
 certain that the people of India are, as a mass, still far from 
 reaching that intellectual stage when a revelation or prophetic 
 message may, or must, be thrown back into earlier ages and 
 unfamiliar scenes ; wherefore this religion, which is continually 
 and copiously sustained by perpetual miraculous intervention, 
 and which still keeps open its gates to any quantity of new 
 prodigies and new deities, must necessarily prevail for a long 
 time against more spiritual faiths. It is impossible in India 
 to make voluntary conversion of any number perceptible 
 in so vast a population without miraculous gifts, rarely claimed 
 by, but always imputed to, a new teacher or saint. Devotion 
 and asceticism impress because they are found to connote 
 influence with heaven, rather than as ethical examples. Francis 
 Xavier, the one successful modern missionary of multitudinous 
 Christian conversions in India, was both an ascetic and worker 
 of miracles. He knew well, as Lacordaire says, the main source 
 of success by missionaries to be that strong certitude in their 
 cause which is only attested to simple folk by vigorous self- 
 devotion and incredible labour for no visible reward. It would 
 never have occurred to him that evangelization could be 
 attempted by any force weaker than spontaneous enthusiasm 
 and emotional power. And it is yet to be seen whether the 
 most conscientious efforts of salaried preachers to do their duty 
 can avail much ; or whether a decent middle class education, 
 such as is now given in the Scotch Mission Schools, will 
 prepare heathen folk for embracing the Gospel. Xavier 
 " usually went on foot and without shoes, living only on roasted 
 rice, which he begged as he went on ; and slept on the ground 
 with a stone under his head ; " * in fact, he lived in India like 
 an Indian ascetic ; and being also an extraordinary character, 
 he soon acquired the fame of wonder-working. He raised a 
 
 * Life and Letters of S. Francis Xuvic;-, Volume I. page 161. Coleridge. 
 
 I
 
 111. MISSIONARY & NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. [CHAP. V. 
 
 youth from the dead at Travancore, when on the spot a large 
 number were converted ; the act was selected with other miracles 
 by the Auditors of the Rota upon whose report the Bull of 
 canonization was issued, as resting upon incontrovertible evi- 
 dence, formally tested and judicially examined. 
 
 Therefore, to recapitulate what has just been said, Brahman - 
 ism still lives and is propagated in India faster than any other 
 religion, for these three principal reasons, namely, 
 
 That it is indigenous, the produce of the soil and of an 
 environment that still exists. 
 
 That it is a social system, and a very elastic one ; while 
 the people in India as a body still need a religion 
 which, like Brahmanism, provides them with social 
 rules, with laws of custom as well as of conduct. 
 
 That it encourages and is nourished by a constant miracu- 
 lous agency working at full pressure, and by relays of 
 divine embodiments ; while in the present intellectual 
 state of the population in India no religion will be 
 widely embraced without visible miraculous cre- 
 dentials. 
 
 And it may be fairly conjectured that these three character- 
 istics are likely to keep Brahmanism alive in India for several 
 generations to come. No one need doubt that it is gradually 
 becoming purged and refined, but this is a process through 
 which all popular religions pass ; and they are not always ex- 
 tinguished by it. The more cruel and indecent rites of 
 Brahmanism have hitherto owed their reformation principally to 
 ordinances of the English police, who have suppressed suicide, 
 self-mutilation, and other unsightly or immodest spectacles. 
 But because Brahmanism has been purged by human statute, 
 it by no means follows that the religion is dying or even dange- 
 rously ill from what is sometimes thought healthy medicine ; 
 and no religion ever possessed greater elements of elasticity or 
 alterative capacities. The worship of Siva and Vishnu is said, 
 and truly, in the Lecture, to be still in many cases of a more 
 degraded character than the worship of Jupiter, Apollo, and 
 Minerva. No one knows better than Professor Max Miiller the
 
 CHAI-. V.] THE FUTURE OF BRAHMAXI3M. 115 
 
 multiform changes which the worship and attributes of the 
 Hindu triad have undergone, or the endless variety of concep- 
 tions and personifications under which they have been already 
 adored. And remembering that Vishnu and Siva are only 
 different refractions of the idea of divinity seen through the 
 prism of popular imagination, there appears no reason why 
 they should not go on changing toward a higher evolution, as 
 the people emerge out of abject idolatrous terror of their gods. 
 Supposing India to have been left to work out its own destiny 
 as an Asiatic country unconquered by Europe, the process might 
 have been a very long one indeed, starting from the point at 
 which Brahmanisni now stands. Under European stimulants 
 it will probably be very much abridged ; but there is the reli- 
 gion still flourishing before our eyes like a green bay tree, and 
 one cannot positively affirm that it is likely soon to vanish and be ' 
 no more seen. That it may altogether melt away and dis- 
 solve in the course of time, may be conjectured to be its not 
 improbable destiny. On the other hand it is not impossible 
 that Brahmanisni may be able gradually to spiritualize and 
 centralize its Pantheon, reduce its theology to a compact 
 system, soften down its marvels by symbolisms and inter- 
 pretations, discard ' dogmatic extremes,' and generally to bring 
 itself into accordance with improved standards of science and 
 intelligence. There is hardly a religion which does not go 
 through this process, or which maintains without revision the 
 uncompromising commands or mystic utterances of its founders. 
 And it is a matter of surprise that scientific observers should 
 have recognized the long course of development which other 
 religions undergo, should admit that the religion of Zoroaster 
 and Judaism are still alive, after so many centuries, and such 
 tremendous calamities, and yet should also declare Brahmanism, 
 which provides rites and beliefs to 150 millions, to be dead 
 because its earlier forms (what are sometimes called the coarser 
 conceptions of popular religion) are sloughing off. 
 
 "When a religion," said the Lecturer, "has ceased to pro- i 
 duce defenders of the faith, prophets, champions, and martyrs, 
 it has ceased to live." This is a bold and far reaching sentence, 
 which must have sounded through the long drawn Gothic aisles 
 
 i 2
 
 116 MISSIONARY & NOK-MISSIONAUY IIELIGIOXS. [CJIAV. V. 
 
 of Westminster Abbey with a strange echo in the minds of 
 many hearers among the crowd who were assured that, judged 
 by this infallible criterion, Brahmanism was dead, and who may 
 have asked themselves how many religions could stand such a 
 test of vitality. Brahmanism, at any rate, has at this moment 
 many prophets and champions ; it has no martyrs because the 
 British Government not only refuses obstinately to persecute any 
 one, or to let any one persecute his neighbour, but absolutely puts 
 down self-immolation as a public nuisance. Our police drag 
 people from under Jagannath's car, and fine the whole town- 
 ship if a man kills or mutilates himself. Human sacrifices are 
 still perpetrated under the cloaks of mysterious unaccountable 
 murders ; and there would be plenty of martyrdom if the 
 Magistrates would wink at it, but they do not. As for cham- 
 pions, the Kookas belong to our own day and have sealed their 
 testimony ; and there are thousands of tall Rajputs who would 
 like nothing better than to take up sword and buckler in de- 
 fence of their patron divinity, if exposed to insult, or of any 
 other sacred institution. The prophets and inspired teachers 
 of purified Brahmanism are very numerous, the saints and 
 semi-divine personages still appear ; so that, although orthodox 
 Brahmanism may not deserve credit for all these movements, yet 
 any one who surveys India must acknowledge that Brahmanism, 
 tried by this criterion, is decidedly alive. 
 
 Now I have thought that it might be worth while thus to 
 enlarge upon what seems to me to be the very premature inter- 
 ment of Brahmanism in Westminster Abbey ; because there is 
 no country in the world which can bear comparison with India 
 for the study of that science of religion which the Lecturer 
 announced. No other country contains three great historic 
 religions (of which two are on a vast scale), and has propa- 
 gated a fourth, the largest of all. Therefore it is probable 
 that on the plains of India, if anywhere in Asia, will be fought 
 out that decisive battle of creeds for the dominion of the world 
 which the Lecture predicts. When, therefore, we are told that 
 Brahmanism, which holds these plains in force and strong 
 array, is dead, and that the decisive struggle lies between "the 
 three missionary religions, Buddhism, Mahomedanism, and
 
 CHAP V.] MISSIONARY WORK. 117 
 
 Christianity," I own some surprise at this rendering of the 
 actual situation, and at this forecast of the religious future. 
 From the view point of missionary enterprise it seems a miscal- 
 culation of the power and position of the enemy. If, indeed, 
 the victory is to be gained by that kind of missionary activity 
 which is explained to consist in persuading people to abandon 
 small theologic feuds, to drop the galling chains of creeds and 
 distinct formulas, and to rely upon gradual intellectual expansion 
 into the pure morality which the Lecture proposes as the real 
 end in view of all reasonable missions, then it might be agreed 
 that Brahmanism is likely to accommodate itself to this opera- 
 tion more easily than sharpset dogmatic systems. How this end 
 can be consistent with the professed aim of missionary work is 
 not quite plain ; nor can one easily perceive how the mission- 
 ary, who is by his calling a prophet, champion, or martyr (else 
 is his religion dead) can be instructed to go about making him- 
 self acceptable to every decent heathen moralizer whom he 
 meets, cheerfully discovering points of agreement, good- 
 naturedly sinking little points of doctrinal difference which 
 breed strife, and keeping somewhat in the background the 
 positive articles of Christian faith. It maybe conjectured that 
 the more earnest missionaries will even yet hardly agree with 
 the Lecture that the essentials of their religion are not in the 
 creeds but in Love ; because missionaries are sent forth to 
 propound scriptures which say clearly that what we believe or 
 disbelieve is literally a burning question. But admitting the 
 pacific solution to be probable, then it will affect all religions 
 equally, and the decisive battle will never be fought at all. On 
 the other hand, if there is to be a great Armageddon of jarring 
 creeds, no battle-field is so likely as India ; and those who go 
 to war there must for many a day take Brahmanism into their 
 strategic calculations. 
 
 The purport of this essay, therefore, is not to take any share 
 in such a vast speculation as would be the attempt to trace the 
 future course of Asiatic religions, but merely to remonstrate 
 against a scientific forecast which begins by striking Brah- 
 manism out of the calculation. There is nothing in the struc- 
 ture or present state of Brahmanism which need bring final
 
 118 MISSIONARY & NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. [CHAP. V. 
 
 dissolution upon this religion with fatal rapidity, or that need 
 prevent its undergoing the same modifications, mystifications, 
 and spiritual quickening which have preserved other Asiatic 
 religions. Qualified observers have thought that we might at 
 any time witness a great Brahrnanic reforming revival in India, 
 if some really gifted and singularly powerful prophet were to 
 arise among the Hindus. Certainly the reform must come 
 soon, for extraordinary political and social changes must 
 always shake violently the fabric of a religion belonging to 
 other times and circumstances. And it is most unsafe to 
 venture even a conjecture as to the form or direction which 
 the inevitable changes in Indian ideas must take, because the 
 situation is so unprecedented; for the effect of suddenly bring- 
 ing India into full rapport with the foremost of European 
 nations cannot be estimated by this generation. We cannot 
 say what may be the result of letting loose upon the country 
 all the ideas and levelling forces which are engendered by a 
 democratic European nation, and which at present tend to 
 substitute a rather cynical utilitarianism for the traditional 
 prestige of capricious kings and priests, and of the gods whom 
 they made in their own image. To these forces Buddhism 
 and Mahomedanism, the religions called missionary, are quite 
 as much exposed as Brahmanism ; nor can one perceive why 
 Northern Buddhism should not be as much affected externally by 
 observation and experience as the Brahmanic doctrines ; while 
 Islam has dangers of its own. Brahmanism must undoubtedly 
 make haste to change its outward features, economise its lavish 
 wonder-working, and concentrate its divine essences ; but one 
 would imagine that no religion was ever better qualified for 
 protecting itself by various transformations, or better fitted 
 with the necessary machinery. Whenever the modern forces 
 come into widely effective play upon Asia, what chance will 
 Buddhism and Islam have of withstanding them, which Brah- 
 manism may not have also ? Or what prospect will there be 
 of any great arena being left in which the dominion of the 
 world can be staked as the prize of a tournament among reli 
 gions clad in the armour and using the weapons of our ances- 
 tors ? The state and movement of religion in India have
 
 CHAP. V.] HISTORIC ANALOGIES. 119 
 
 always widely influenced the whole of Eastern Asia ; and, so 
 far as India is concerned, such a tournament is not likely to 
 coine off while the country forms part of the British empire, 
 and continues to learn English. It is far more probable that 
 the masses will for generations remain in a kind of simplified 
 Brahrnanisin, which will accommodate itself to altered material 
 circumstance and to higher moral notions. The educated and 
 reflective classes can hardly be expected to enter any dog- 
 matic system of faith. Brahmoism, as propagated by its 
 latest expounders, seems to be Unitarianism of an Euro- 
 pean type, and, so far as one can understand its argu- 
 ment, appears to have no logical stability or locus standl 
 between revelation and pure rationalism ; it propounds either 
 too much or too little to its hearers. Looking back 
 at the history of such religions, and looking round at the 
 present situation of India, we may well doubt whether for 
 centuries to come any beliefs or deities hostile to Brahmanism 
 will prevail among the masses which inhabit the vast inland 
 provinces, the pagan multitudes that always are so slow to 
 quit their indigenous superstitions, so reluctant to drive forth 
 the parting genius from haunted spring and tangled thicket, 
 and to make 'Peor and Baalim forsake their temples dim.' 
 That these superstitions will be perpetually toning down and 
 becoming civilized with the general civilization of India is a 
 matter of course ; but whether they will be replaced by a com- 
 plete adoption of any other religion is very questionable, 
 though the great precedent of Christianity in the Koman 
 Empire cannot be disregarded, despite the wide divergencies 
 of ages and circumstances of every kind. The use of historic 
 analogies as a guide to the interpretation of current affairs 
 requires great caution ; and Burke says truly that one must 
 avoid treating history as a repertory of cases and precedents 
 for a lawyer. Nevertheless resemblances political, social, and 
 religious between the Roman Empire and British India are 
 incessantly catching the fancy of Anglo-Indians at the present 
 day. The sketch given in Gibbon's second Chapter of the 
 state of religion in the Empire during the second century of 
 the Christian era might be adopted to describe in rapid outline
 
 120 MISSIONARY & NON-MISSIONARY RELIGIONS. [CHAP. V. 
 
 the state of Hinduism at the present day. The tolerant super- 
 stition of the people "not confined by the claims of any specu- 
 lative system ; " the " devout polytheist, whom fear, gratitude, 
 and curiosity, a dream or an omen, a singular disorder, or a 
 distant journey, perpetually disposed to multiply the articles 
 of his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors ; " the 
 "ingenuous youth alike instructed in every school to reject 
 and despise the religion of the multitude ; " the philosophic 
 class who "look with indulgence on the errors of the vulgar, 
 diligently practise the ceremonies of their fathers, and devoutly 
 frequent the temples of their gods ; " the " magistrates who 
 know and value the advantages of religion as it is connected 
 with civil government ; " all these scenes and feelings are 
 represented in India at this moment, though by no means in 
 all parts of India. Seventeen centuries ago the outcome and 
 conclusion of all these things in Europe and Asia Minor was 
 Christianity, which absorbed all the nations of the Empire as 
 they "insensibly melted away into the Roman name and 
 people ; " * though even in the heart of the Empire paganism 
 took five or six centuries to disappear. But history does not 
 repeat itself on so vast a scale ; the seasons, and the intel- 
 lectual condition of the modern world, are unfavourable to 
 religious flood-tides ; it is incredible that Islam or Buddhism 
 should ever again invade or occupy a great country, possessing 
 any civilization, and the mind of Europe is turning to other 
 things more exciting in these days than religious proselytism. 
 It may be even doubted whether Brahmanisni has to fear 
 destruction at the hands of the three great missionary religions 
 of the Lecture, though it is quite possible that more difficult 
 and dangerous experiences than wholesale religious conversion 
 are before India. Little penetration is needed to anticipate 
 the intellectual and moral effects of a state of transition, when- 
 ever the traditional forms of religious belief shall come to have 
 fallen into universal discredit with the reflective and influential 
 classes, who may have found nothing to substitute for these 
 beliefs but a superficial instruction; while at the same time 
 
 * Gibbon, Volume I. Chapter II,
 
 CHAP. V.] A POSSIBLE FUTURE. 121 
 
 the rapid advance of prosperity, and the opening df a new 
 world of material needs and allurements, shall have made men 
 restless and discontented. These things may be still far dis- 
 tant in India, where European ideas have as yet touched only 
 the outskirts of our dominion, and are only appreciated in a 
 kind of second-hand unreal way by the artificial classes which 
 are politically bound up with the English rule to which they 
 owe their existence. Nevertheless our successors may one day 
 be reminded of the picture drawn in the forcible passage which 
 here follows, and which brings this chapter to its conclusion : 
 
 " But epochs sometimes occur, in the course of the existence of a nation, at 
 which the ancient customs of a people are changed, religious belief disturbed, 
 and the spell of tradition broken ; while the diffusion of knowledge is yet 
 imperfect, and the civil rights of the community are ill secured, or confined 
 within very narrow limits. The country then assumes a dim and dubious shape 
 in the eyes of the citizens ; they no longer behold it in the soil which they 
 inhabit, for that soil is to them a dull inanimate clod ; nor in the usages of their 
 forefathers, which they have been taught to look upon as a debasing yoke ; nor 
 in religion, for of that they doubt ; nor in the laws, which do not originate in 
 their own authority . . . They entrench themselves within the dull precincts of 
 a narrow egotism. They are emancipated from prejudice, without having acknow- 
 ledged the empire of reason ; they are animated neither by instinctive patriotism 
 nor by thinking patriotism . . . but they have stopped half way between the two 
 in the midst of confusion and distress."* 
 
 * Democracy in America, De Tocqueville (Reeve's translation), Volume I. 
 Chapter X1Y.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ON THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. 
 
 Difference between earliest and latest ideas on relations between Religion and the 
 State Controversies in Europe over the question Separation between re- 
 ligion and civil government is becoming a recognized principle in Europe, 
 while the contrary is still the rule in Asia I slamitic institutions Position of 
 the Chinese government, and its method of dealing with the three official 
 religions of China Confucian, Buddhist, Taouist, all independently estab- 
 lished as separate creeds Public worship of the Chinese, rites performed by 
 Emperor The contents of the Pekin Gazette illustrate the attitude of the Gov- 
 ernment toward religion, and explain its influence Posthumous honours and 
 titles bestowed on deceased persons, their deification by order of Government 
 Titles and rewards given to divinities for public services, instances quoted 
 Control exercised by the State over Buddhist incarnations, cases cited from 
 Gazette Intellectual condition of a people which sees no clear distinction 
 between the unseen and the visible world, between gods and men Danger of 
 too close connection between religion and the State. 
 
 ONE important difference between the earlier and the latest 
 principles of government is marked by the changes which have 
 taken place in men's ideas on the subject of the proper rela- 
 tions between the ruler and the priesthood, the State and the 
 Church, the civil government and the ecclesiastical bodies. In 
 times when all authority necessarily claimed to derive from a 
 divine mandate, when laws were supernaturally delivered, and 
 when crimes might be most effectively treated as sins against 
 the gods, it was natural that the ruler should assume religious 
 as well as civil supremacy; that he should take on himself, 
 wherever he could, the visible headship of the external worship; 
 and that he should employ his power to obtain command of 
 spiritual forms and institutions. We know that the Roman 
 Emperors long kept in their own hands the chief pontifical 
 office, until the sacred or hierophantic functions of the sove- 
 reign vanished, in Europe, with paganism. Then, in the Middle 
 Ages, came the long struggle between the ecclesiastical and the
 
 CHAP. VI.] CONTROVERSIES IN EUROPE. 123 
 
 civil powers ; when the Papacy had concentrated x and brought 
 into focus all the independent spiritual authority of Western 
 Christendom, and declared absolute separation between the 
 dominions of the Church and of the State. But between 
 spiritual and temporal matters, as they affect the daily life and 
 conduct of the people, the distinction is in practice hard to 
 draw, and harder to maintain. The attempt to partition off 
 such things into two provinces, and to place each province 
 under an independent and co-ordinate authority, was inevitably 
 followed by incessant and fervent discussion and contest over 
 the right and recognisable border that should divide two com- 
 plicated and very ill-defined jurisdictions. The course and 
 development of this conflict, which prevailed throughout 
 Europe in various forms, have been very different in different 
 countries ; the English Reformation, which restored the 
 Church as a national institution, is a notable instance of the 
 manner in which some of the nations which broke away from 
 Roman Catholicism recurred to the earlier principle of giving 
 supremacy to the State's ruler. It may perhaps be said that 
 from the time when the Church attempted to mark off her 
 share in the government of mankind into a separate and inde- 
 pendent department, the controversy over the precise range 
 and limits of that department has never ceased. And the 
 general result, in the most civilized countries, is that while 
 the ecclesiastical power has in these latter days been disarmed, 
 and can no longer uphold any pretensions to concurrent au- 
 thority within the domain of civil administration, on the other 
 hand the civil power is rapidly withdrawing from its ancient 
 claims to headship and overlordship in matters religious or 
 ecclesiastical. The civil government interferes very reluc- 
 tantly indeed in questions of doctrine ; it still maintains, 
 under such laws as may be existing, what M. Paul Bert, the 
 French Minister, has recently termed a general police of wor- 
 ship ; but the tendency is towards repealing any laws which 
 throw this duty upon the administration. The ruling power 
 no longer looks to the religious bodies, as such, for support ; 
 but on the contrary is anxious rather to disown than to rely 
 upon an alliance with any particular form of religion. The
 
 3 24 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. VI. 
 
 view now predominant is that which was set forth in Macaulay's 
 essay on Mr. Gladstone's book on Church and State, where the 
 reviewer argues that a government in its public and collective 
 capacity has no more to do with religion than a railway com- 
 pany, and that if, as was maintained in the book, "the states- 
 man must be a worshipping man," it would be equally reasonable 
 and expedient to attach the same condition to the chairmanship 
 of the railway direction. In short, politics and theology, find- 
 ing that they cannot work together, have agreed to stand apart, 
 desiring to have as little to do with each other as may 
 be possible ; and upon some compromise of this kind peace 
 is now generally concluded, in the most advanced societies, 
 except between the extreme and irreconcilable partizans in 
 either camp. There may still be found in Europe a Church 
 party that would break in the State to the Church's harness, 
 and a political party that would give no quarter to ecclesiasti- 
 cism; but on the whole it is now becoming an established 
 principle in Western Europe, that a complete and formal sepa- 
 ration between religion and civil rulership is essential to any 
 rational administration either of the State or of the Church. 
 The temporal sovereigns decline, so far as they can, interposi- 
 tion in spiritual affairs ; the only spiritual potentate who 
 still maintains pertinaciously his right to intervene in the 
 temporal government of Christians, has, chiefly for this very 
 reason, been recently deprived of his own temporalities ; 
 and the main current of modern opinion sets towards dis- 
 establishment, disendowment, suppressing budgets des cultes, 
 cutting the States clear of their connection with Churches, 
 and taking up an attitude, in regard to religious institutions, 
 of irresponsibility and more or less respectful unconcern. 
 So that the earlier ideas on this subject are now not only 
 rejected, but reversed; to the principle of union between 
 the secular and spiritual authorities is succeeding the principle 
 of divorce. 
 
 But if it is true that European ideas on the relations between 
 Church and State are reaching this climax, this makes it very 
 well worth while to bear in mind that in the non-Christian 
 world the earlier notions on this subject predominate, and
 
 I 
 CHAP. VI.] % iSLAMITIC INSTITUTIONS. 125 
 
 materially influence societies. Three out of the great Govern- 
 ments of Europe England, France, and Eussia rule over 
 large numbers of non-Christian people, and are in constant 
 relation with lion- Christian States; and some of the many and 
 strange difficulties besetting this position are connected with 
 the incident that in Asia and Mahomedan Africa the temporal 
 ruler is generally expected to do what in Western Europe he is 
 generally denounced for doing, to assume, that is, a direct and 
 practical authority over the administration of religious affairs ; 
 while the statesman is undoubtedly expected to be a worshipping 
 man. Moreover, these difficulties, where Islam is concerned, 
 have not missed appreciation at Constantinople ; for the 
 Sultan has lately been disclosing some anxiety about the 
 spiritual unity of Islam, and is showing a disposition to employ 
 his claims to the Kaliphate as a means of taking upon himself 
 the functions left vacant by the disabilities of a non-Mahome- 
 dan ruler in Mahomedan countries. And the mere fact that 
 the Turkish Sultans, with no pretensions to sacred character 
 or descent, have for some centuries been able to impose them- 
 selves as Kaliphs upon a very large part of the Mahomedan 
 world, proves how closely the spiritual headship is bound up, 
 outside Europe, with temporal dominion. It is, and must be, 
 the policy of a native Asiatic ruler to secure and maintain this 
 union of forces ; since, so long .as he stands outside and dis- 
 connected from the spiritualities, he is in a dangerously imper- 
 fect condition ; he leaves in other hands a lever that may be 
 used to upset him, and he is cut off from the control and 
 direction of an active, never-resting machinery, always at work 
 among his people. Of course an Asiatic sovereign may and 
 does govern people of various creeds, as in India ; and it may 
 happen, though the case is rare, that he himself professes 
 exclusively the creed of a minority. But in this latter case 
 (which almost always indicates recent and incomplete conquest) 
 the position of a native ruler is unstable ; while, on the other 
 hand, the more effectually he can combine with his secular sove- 
 reignty an acknowledged authority over and control over the 
 religious organization, the stronger and more solid is his 
 dominion. The most obvious and well-known illustration of
 
 126 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. VI. 
 
 tliis principle is to be seen in the rapid rise and the complete 
 predominance for centuries of Mahomedanism as a ruling power 
 throughout the greater part of Asia. For it is manifest that 
 the early successes of Islam were due to the sudden appear- 
 ance, in a part of the world divided by great schisms or petty 
 local creeds, of a series of leaders who impersonated the full 
 idea of a theocracy, and who united more completely and 
 effectively than ever before or since in the world's history, the 
 two momentous forces of military and religious enthusiasm. 
 
 But the institutions of Islam are, after all, barbarous through 
 their very simplicity; while its intolerant monotheism is a 
 peculiar production of Western Asia. It may be more in- 
 teresting to look much further eastward, and to examine the 
 relations of the civil government to religion in a countiy where 
 creeds and rituals still preserve their primitive multiformity, 
 where they all have, nevertheless, free play, and where the 
 ruler finds it possible and advantageous to preside over all of 
 them. Nowhere is this better seen than in that Empire which 
 has not only attained, as a government, the highest level yet 
 reached by purely Asiatic civilization, but is at once the oldest 
 of Asiatic empires, and the most likely to outlast all others now r 
 existing, the Empire of China. 
 
 The Chinese Government is singular in Asia as represent- 
 ing a kind of modern Conservatism. No other great Asiatic 
 State ever got beyond the simplest forms of arbitrary sove- 
 reignty ; whereas in China the governing class has for centuries 
 been endeavouring to stand still at a remarkably forward stage 
 of administrative organization long ago attained ; and this is 
 not the immobility of mere superstition and ignorance, as in 
 the case of the nations around, but it is apparently due to a 
 deliberate mistrust of progress beyond the point already 
 reached. This feeling is probably much more justifiable in 
 Asia than in Europe ; for until the incoherent groups of dif- 
 ferent races and religions which make up the population of an 
 Asiatic Empire become moulded into some soil of national 
 conglomerate, they form a very shifty foundation for elaborate 
 political buildings. A well-knit and long-established European 
 nation may play fast and loose with its institutions, and amuse
 
 CHAP. VI.] CONSERVATISM IX CHINA. 127 
 
 itself with new economical principles and experiments in govern- 
 ing ; may allow chronic revolt to run on in a province, on the 
 chance of its wearing itself out, and may be indifferent to the 
 general weakening of the executive power, and to the relaxing of 
 the bonds of empire, which may ensue. But Asiatic constitutions 
 cannot stand such treatment, and rulers are obliged to be 
 much more cautious in handling rough conglomerate masses 
 of tribes and sects. Nor can it be denied that civilization, 
 whatever be its benefits to Asia, acts as a disintegrating force 
 among the first principles which lie at the base of all Asiatic 
 governments, where the corner-stone is usually the divine right 
 of kings. However this may be, the Chinese have certainly 
 succeeded in organizing scientific methods of administration 
 without disturbing primitive ideas; an experiment of great 
 interest to the English, who have before them a problem not 
 altogether dissimilar. China has had, moreover, the good 
 fortune of lying beyond the full sweep of the destructive waves 
 of Mahomedan invasion, which spent their force on her 
 extreme frontier ; so she escaped the deluge which has sepa- 
 rated all Western Asia into two distinct periods, and has 
 operated, wherever it spread, a complete interruption of 
 political continuity. And while her religions have thus re- 
 tained their natural variety, and have escaped being crushed 
 out or overlaid by the dead levelling power of Islam, China 
 has attained this superiority over India that she succeeded 
 centuries ago in bringing her religious doctrines and wor- 
 ships into practical co-operation with her secular organiza- 
 tion. It would seem as if the lavish fertility with which 
 Indian soil produces religious ideas and forms has hindered 
 them from being turned to account and built up into any great 
 religious system; or else that India has never had a native 
 government large and strong enough to organize Brahmanism 
 as a foundation and support of its authority, as the Chinese 
 have enlisted their ancient pantheon into the State's service ; 
 while it does not appear that Indian religions have ever been 
 pressed into the service of morality. The only great State 
 religion and organized Church which ever throve in India 
 was Buddhism; and it is precisely this religion which, after
 
 128 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. VI. 
 
 its mysterious break up in India, found a permanent home 
 and an immense though distorted development as the greatest 
 established religion of China. Yet Buddhism is only one 
 among others, for the Chinese Government seems, perhaps 
 alone among civilized States, to have solved the problem of 
 maintaining simultaneous relations, close and sympathetic, 
 with several established official religions. In European States, 
 wherever uniformity of belief can no longer be preserved, the 
 State usually finds it impossible to identify itself with several 
 rival creeds, and very inconvenient to remain on good terms 
 with one particular creed, whereupon it withdraws as much 
 as possible from connexion with any of them. In Mahomedan 
 countries this difficulty is forestalled b}' diligently stamping out 
 all creeds but one wherever this is possible. But in China, so 
 far as can be judged from written accounts, the peculiarity is 
 that the State is not only tolerant and fairly impartial to a 
 multiplicity of creeds and worships (for that is seen everywhere 
 in Asia beyond the pale of Islam), but that at least three 
 established religions are fostered and sedulously patronised 
 by the Government according to their specialities and respec- 
 tive values in use, for the great purposes of the orderly ad- 
 ministration of the Empire, and Hie upholding of the national 
 traditions of conduct and morality. Nowhere is the principle 
 of adapting the motive power of religion to the machinery of 
 administration carried out so scientifically as it appears to be 
 in China. The vast area and the immense population of the 
 Empire afford ample room for several religions ; the sj'stem of 
 government finds employment and a congenial atmosphere for 
 them all. The tradition-of the Imperial Court is to keep the 
 Emperor's person in august and majestic seclusion ; the prac- 
 tice is to set out all their administrative proceedings and acts 
 of State under imposing formularies and high-sounding moral 
 ordinances, keeping the inner mechanism of the State secret 
 and mysterious. All this system harmonizes with and favours 
 the policy of associating religion with every department of the 
 public service, and of identifying the laws of the Government 
 with the decrees of Heaven. The State interposes itself as 
 much as possible between the people and their gods, the
 
 CHAP. VI.] THREE GREAT RELIGIONS. 129 
 
 Emperor claims to be the authorised charge d'affaires or chief 
 agent and intercessor for his country with the Supreme Powers. 
 And the Chinese Government has this advantage, that although 
 its dynasty is to some degree foreign, it is nevertheless not so 
 far ahead of or apart from the prevailing intellectual standard 
 among its subjects that it cannot recognise or treat with reli- 
 gions of low or incongruous types without offending the public 
 opinion of some influential body among its subjects. A Chris- 
 tian or Mahomedan Government can at most accord unwilling 
 recognition to creeds of a totally different species. But the 
 Chinese Imperial Government seems able to work with and 
 to derive support from at least three great religions of very 
 diverse character : the Confucian system, the Buddhist 
 Church with its Orders, and the Taouist worship of innu- 
 merable magical genii and Nature gods. 
 
 All accounts of China agree generally in describing these 
 three forms of religion as existing separately and indepen- 
 dently, although they have influenced and coloured one 
 another. And if this be their condition (although no one 
 can feel sure of understanding religions who has not been 
 among the people who practise them) it seems certainly 
 remarkable that in China, which possesses an ancient and 
 comparatively uninterrupted civilization, and a highly cen- 
 tralized government, the various beliefs and worships should 
 not have coalesced, in the course of many centuries, into some 
 comprehensive national religion. Even in India, where the 
 whole country has never fallen under complete political cen- 
 tralization, and where everything has aided to prevent the 
 regular growth of one religion, all the indigenous rituals and 
 theologic ideas are more or less grouped under the ample 
 canopy of Brahmanism, which has an easy pantheistic method 
 of accommodating all comers. And in other countries some 
 sort of general religion almost invariably develops itself accord- 
 ing to circumstances ; it selects, rejects, improves, and com- 
 bines the elements of the various creeds and worships which it 
 gradually supersedes ; and the more it predominates, the faster 
 it annexes or absorbs. There may remain formidable schisms 
 or parties, worshipping different gods, or widely at variance on
 
 130 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. VI. 
 
 points of doctrine, yet one broad band of religious affinity 
 usually brings them all together under some primary denomina- 
 tion. But in China this process does not seem to have taken 
 place ; the State is uniform and highly centralized, while there 
 are three principal religions, distinct in character and origin, 
 all living in concord together and in intimate association with 
 the Empire. The different religious ideas and doctrines that 
 have from time to time sprung up in China, or have been 
 transplanted thither, have not become assimilated, but remain 
 apart in separate formations. The philosophic Confucianism, 
 embodying the teachings of a great moralist and statesman, the 
 magnificent hierarchjr of Northern Buddhism, with its church, its 
 orders, its deified abstractions, and its metaphysical doctrines; 
 and Taouism, with its adoration of stars and spirits presiding 
 over natural phenomena, of personified attributes, divine 
 heroes, local genii, and the whole apparatus of anthropo- 
 morphism all these expressions of deep moral feeling, reli- 
 gious speculation, and superstitious wonder, jumbled together 
 like everything in Asia without regard to inconsistencies or 
 absurdities, seem to prevail and flourish simultaneously in 
 China. Mr. Edkins, in his book on religion in China,*. tells 
 us that we have there these three great national systems work- 
 ing together in harmony. Three modes of worship, he says, 
 and three philosophies, have for ages been interacting on each 
 other. They are found side by side not onty in the same 
 locality, but in the belief of the same individuals, for it is a 
 common thing that the same person should conform to all 
 three modes of worship ; and the Government willingly follows 
 the same impartial practice. In a countiy of such ancient 
 civilization one would have expected that what has taken place 
 in other countries during the last two thousand years would 
 have happened to the religions of China, that they would have 
 undergone some process of fusion, and would have been run 
 into the mould of some general type, however loose and inco- 
 herent. Of the great historical religions that have arisen in the 
 world, each has annexed several countries ; very rarely, if ever, 
 
 * Religion in China, by Joseph Edkins, D.D. 1878.
 
 CHAP. VI.] CONFUCIANISM AND BUDDHISM. 131 
 
 <lo we find two of them established on equal terms in the same 
 country. It is only in China that we find two mighty religious 
 potentates such as Confucius and Buddha reigning with co- 
 ordinate authority over one nation, and their ritual mingled 
 with the adoration of the miscellaneous primitive divinities, 
 who have elsewhere been usually extirpated, subdued, or re- 
 fined and educated up to the level of the higher and paramount 
 religious conceptions. For, although the Chinese religions seem 
 to have modified each other externally, and to have interchanged 
 some colouring ideas, no kind of amalgamation into one spiri- 
 tual kingdom appears to have ensued ; it is at most a federation 
 of independent faiths united under the secular empire. Whereas 
 in other countries the chief religion is one, but the interpre- 
 tations of it are many, so that the faith is a moral system, a 
 mysterious revelation, or a simple form of propitiating the 
 supernatural, according to each man's feelings or habits of 
 thought; in China a man may go to different religions for 
 specialities of various sides or phases of belief. Confucianism 
 gives the high intellectual morality, fortified by retrospective 
 adoration of the great and wise teachers of mankind, and based 
 on family affections and duties, but offering no promises to be 
 fulfilled after death, except the hope of posthumous memorial 
 veneration. Buddhism gives metaphysical religion of infinite 
 depth, with its moral precepts enforced by the doctrine of 
 reward or punishment, according to merits or demerits, 
 acting upon the immaterial soul in its passage through 
 numberless stages of existence. It contributes imposing cere- 
 monial observances, the institution of monasticism, and a 
 grand array of images and personified attributes for worship 
 by simple folk who have immediate material needs or 
 grievances. Buddha himself, having passed beyond the circle 
 of sensation, is inaccessible to prayer, yet out of pity for men 
 he has left within the universe certain disciples who, albeit 
 qualified for Nirvana, have consented to delay for a time their 
 vanishing into nothingness, in order that they may still 
 advise and aid struggling humanity. Both Confucius and 
 Buddha seem rather to have despised than denied the ordinary 
 popular deities, and to have refrained, out of pity for weaker 
 
 K 2
 
 132 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. YL 
 
 brethren, from open iconoclasui. Taouism has rewarded both 
 these great teachers by apotheosis, into a pantheon which 
 appears to be filled by every imaginable device, by personifi- 
 cations of everything that profits or plagues humanity, of 
 natural phenomena, of human inventions, of war, literature, 
 and commerce, and by the deification of dead heroes and sages, 
 of eminent persons at large, and of every object or recol- 
 lection that touches men's emotions or passes their under- 
 standing. It is worth notice that the three persons who 
 founded these three separate and widely divergent religions 
 appear all to have lived about the same time, in or near the 
 sixth century B.C. And the impartial veneration accorded to 
 them by the Chinese is shown by their being worshipped to- 
 gether, as the Trinity of the Sages. 
 
 Let us for a moment see by what means the Chinese Govern- 
 ment identifies these religions with the State's administration and 
 with the reigning dynasty. If the Government is of any one par- 
 ticular religion more than another, it is, we are told, Confucianist ; 
 since the literary and intellectual sympathies of the official 
 classes are preferentially with a sj T stem of moral philosophy 
 and practical wisdom. Nevertheless the public worship of 
 Taouist spirits is elaborate and carefully regulated. There are 
 three regular State services during the year, in the spring and 
 at the solstices ; while special functions take place upon any 
 great public event, the accession of a new Emperor, and victor}', 
 or a calamitous visitation. All this is analogous to the religious 
 customs of other countries, with the difference that in China 
 the national prayers and sacrifices are offered up, not by chief 
 priest or ecclesiastics, but by the Emperor himself, who also 
 performs by deputy, through his civil subordinates, similar 
 offices throughout the kingdom. The powers of the air, the 
 great spirits of earth and heaven, are invoked by the State's 
 ruler to administer the elementary forces for the general benefit 
 of the country, precisely as the meanest of his subjects implores 
 some obscure deity to bless or save him individually. The 
 Emperor's style of address to the spirits of Earth and Heaven 
 is lofty. To these two spirits alone he styles himself 
 " subject ;" and in making sacrifices to the Earth he offers
 
 CHAP. VI.] TAOUISM. 133 
 
 the following prayer : " I, your subject, son of Heaven by 
 imperial succession, dare to announce to the imperial Spirit 
 of the Earth that the time of the summer solstice has arrived, 
 that all things living enjoy the blessing of sustenance, and de- 
 pend upon it for your efficient aid. You are ranked with 
 imperial Heaven in the sacrifices now presented." Not less 
 important than the oblation to spirits is the worship of ancestors 
 (prescribed by the injunction of Confucius, but probably an 
 immemorial usage) which the Emperor celebrates with due 
 solemnity, setting forth an example of filial piety, and at the 
 same time claiming for the dynasty all the reverence due to the 
 hereditary father of his people. Three of the greatest of pre- 
 ceding emperors are included, as a special distinction, in the 
 sacrifices to earth and heaven ; the rest are annually adored 
 in the imperial Temple of Ancestors. " I dare (the Emperor is 
 made to say, after reciting his pure descent) to announce to my 
 ancestors that I have with care, in this first month of spring, pro- 
 vided sacrificial animals as a testimony of unforgetting thought- 
 fuliiess ; " and the prayer contains the titles of all the deceased 
 sovereigns addressed. The tablets of all the deceased emperors 
 and empresses are set out in pairs, h3 r mns are sung, and viands 
 and rich garments are offered. There are also minor rituals 
 for the imperial worship of the gods of land and grain, with 
 whom are included, as honoured guests, the deifications of two 
 statesmen celebrated in past times for the promotion of 
 Chinese agriculture. It is manifest that these stately official 
 liturgies, giving elevated expression to popular superstitions, 
 and presenting the sovereign as high steward of the mysteries, 
 must exercise great influence over the devout multitude, and 
 must give the State large control over the religions themselves. 
 But here again the peculiarity is that we see the primitive ideas 
 preserved, exalted, and utilised by a cultivated and enlightened 
 Government ; not a barbarous or backward Oriental State, but 
 one that makes treaties with Europe, sends out ambassadors, 
 and conducts its affairs upon perfectly equal terms with all 
 civilized nations according to a very distinct and serious policy 
 of its own. 
 
 If we desire to understand how, and to what extent, the
 
 134 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CnAr. YL 
 
 Chinese Government uses its religious position and influence, 
 and brings what may be called its spiritual supremacy to bear 
 upon regular administration, we cannot have better evidence 
 than is contained in the Peking Gazette, which has for some 
 years been officially translated into English. This gazette is, 
 to quote from a preface to the volume for 1874, " the daily 
 record of Imperial decrees and rescripts, and of reports or 
 memorials to the throne, together with a brief notice of Im- 
 perial and official movements, to which the name of Peking 
 Gazette is given by Europeans ; " it has an official status, and 
 is circulated to all provincial administrations. If such an in- 
 stitution as a Gazette were found in any other Asiatic country, 
 one could hardly be wrong in taking it to be a very recent im- 
 portation from Europe ; but the Chinese, we are told, were 
 publishing their Gazette (styled Miscellaneous, or Court, An- 
 nouncements) many centuries ago. The Peking Gazette an- 
 nounces all acts of State, regulations, decrees, orders on im- 
 portant cases, and ceremonial proceedings of the Imperial 
 Government; and it is certainly unique among Monitcnrs and 
 official publications of that kind in its incessant and impressive 
 illustration of the relations of the Chinese State with the 
 established religions. The grand functions of Imperial wor- 
 ship are of course all formally ordained and reported for 
 general information by edicts, and by Orders of the Board of 
 Sacrifices ; and the Gazette contains many orders allotting to 
 the princes and other high officials the different temples at 
 which they are to do duty. But the strange and interesting 
 phenomenon is to find, in such a modern- sounding publica- 
 tion as a Government Gazette and Court Circular, the deities 
 figuring, not occasionally but very frequently, in every depart- 
 ment of official business, and treated much as if the} r were 
 highly respectable functionaries of a superior order, promoted 
 to some kind of upper house, whose abilities and influence 
 were nevertheless still at the service of the State. Those who 
 hold the first rank, with very extensive departments specially 
 connected with the general administration, are recognised as 
 State Gods, such gods as those of war, literature, or instruc- 
 tion having pre-eminent position. There is also, it is under-
 
 CHAP. VI.] EEWAEDS GIVEN TO DEITIES. 135 
 
 stood, a distinction between the gods who are occupied with 
 the material or physical concerns of the country, and those 
 who preside over intellectual and moral needs. But beside 
 and below these chief office-bearing deities, there are evidently 
 very numerous gods of the counties and boroughs,- to whom 
 the Imperial edicts secure regular and proper worship, whereby 
 their influence is enlisted upon the side of Government ; while 
 the provincial officers are expected regularly to visit all those 
 registered as State Gods, much after the fashion in which Euro- 
 pean prefects are supposed to pay attention to persons of local 
 influence. All these deities seem to be rewarded, decorated, 
 promoted, or publicly thanked by the Supreme Government 
 according to their works, with due gravity and impartiality. 
 The God of "NVar, whose department may have increased in im- 
 portance in these days of great armaments, was judiciously 
 raised, by a decree of the last Emperor but one, to the same 
 rank with Confucius, who had before occupied the first place 
 in the State Pantheon. Constant reference is made in the 
 Gazettes to the performances of the minor deities, and they 
 seem to be all co-operating with the prefects or the magistracy 
 in grappling with administrative difficulties ; insomuch that 
 local government appears to consist of a coalition between 
 local deities and provincial officers, who divide the responsi- 
 bility, and share praise or blame. Whatever may be the posi- 
 tion of the more privileged and aristocratic class of governing 
 livinities, the minor Chinese deity is not allowed to sit with 
 his hands folded, like Buddha, or to indulge, like the gods of 
 later Hinduism, in grotesque amusements or disreputable 
 caprices, or to decline responsibility for storms and earth- 
 quakes, on the plea that such casualties are part of some plan 
 beyond man's present understanding, which will all come right 
 in the end. On the contrary, the condition on which the 
 Chinese Government patronises the Pantheon is evidently 
 that it shall make for morality, support the cause of order, 
 and assist, promptly and efficaciously, in preventing or com- 
 bating such calamities as floods, famine, or pestilence. And 
 since in China the State deities, at any rate those who 
 represent outlying places and provinces, are not sent to the
 
 136 STATE AND RELIGION IX CHINA. [CHAF. VI. 
 
 Pantheon by popular election, as elsewhere throughout Asia, 
 hut are appointed by the Government, it is obvious that they 
 must be in some degree under ministerial influence. A re- 
 markable personage, whether he be eminent for bravery, virtue, 
 public charity, or any other notable characteristic, may be 
 honoured after death by deification at the hands of the Imperial 
 Court ; whereby the State rewards a distinguished public ser- 
 vant or private benefactor, and at the same time retains his 
 interest and goodwill in ' another place,' and in a higher and 
 broader sphere of usefulness. 
 
 To begin with the ordinary and numerous decrees acknow- 
 ledging the good services of deities. " The Governor-General 
 of the Yellow River (says the Gazette of November, 1878) re- 
 quests that a tablet may be put up in honour of the river god. 
 He states that during the transmission of relief rice to Honan, 
 whenever difficulties were encountered through shallows, wind, 
 or rain, the river god interposed in the most unmistakable 
 manner, so that the transport of grain went on without hin- 
 drance. Order : Let the proper office prepare a tablet for the 
 temple of the river god." 
 
 " A memorial board is granted," says the Gazette of April, 
 1880, " to two temples in honour of the god of locusts. 
 On the last appearance of locusts in that province last 
 summer, prayers were offered to this deity with marked 
 success." 
 
 February, 1880. A decree ordering the Imperial College of 
 Inscriptions to prepare a tablet to be reverentty suspended in 
 the temple of the Sea Dragon at Hoyang, which has manifested 
 its divine interposition in a marked manner in response to 
 prayers for rain. In another Gazette the Director- General 
 of Grain Transports prays that a distinction be granted to 
 the god of winds, who protected the d} r kes of the Grand Canal ; 
 whereupon the Board of Rites is called upon for a report. 
 Also the river god is recommended for protecting a fleet carry- 
 ing tribute rice ; and the god of water gets a new temple by 
 special rescript. In fact, decrees of this kind, which merely 
 convey public recognition of services rendered by the State 
 gods, appear in almost every issue of the Gazette.
 
 CHAP. VI.] POSTHUMOUS HONOURS. 137 
 
 The following decrees refer to the process of qualification 
 for divine rank : 
 
 " The Governor of Anwhei forwards (November, 1878) a petition from the 
 gentiy of Ying Chow, praying that sacrifices may be offered to the late Famine 
 Commissioner iu Honan, in the temple already erected to the memory of his 
 father. The father had been Superintendent of the Grain Transport, and had 
 greatly distinguished himself in operations against some rebels. The son had 
 also done excellent service, and the local gentry had heard of his death with 
 great grief. They earnestly pray that sacrifices may be offered to him as well 
 as to his father. Granted. " 
 
 "A decree issued (May, 1878) sanctioning the recommendation that a temple 
 to Fuh Tsung, a statesman of the' Ming dynasty, may be placed on the list of 
 those at which the officials are to offer periodical libations. The spirit of the 
 deceased statesman has manifested itself effectively on several occasions, when 
 rebels have threatened the district town, and has more than once interposed 
 when prayers have been offered for rain." 
 
 The Gazette of June, 1880, expresses the Imperial regrets 
 at the death of the Commander-in-Chief in Chihli, and gives 
 him an obituary notice. 
 
 "He was indeed a brave, loyal, and distinguished officer. During the time 
 he served as Commander-in-Chief he displayed a high capacity for military 
 reorganization. We have heard the news of his death with profound commise- 
 ration ; and we command that the posthumous honours assigned by law to a 
 Commander-in-Chief be bestowed on him ; that a posthumous title be given 
 him, and that the history of his career be recorded in the State Historiographer's 
 office. We sanction the erection of temples in his honour at his home in Hunan, 
 and at the scenes of his exploits." 
 
 "October 27tli. A decree sanctioning the erection of a special temple to a 
 late Commandant of the Forces, who was killed at Tarbajatai." 
 
 These last quoted decrees, selected out of many similar 
 ones, throw much light upon the process of the evolution of 
 deities, under State supervision, in China. We know that in 
 other countries, notably in India, the army of deities is con- 
 stantly recruited by the canonization and apotheosis of great 
 and notorious men ; but in other parts of Asia this is usually 
 done by the priests or the people. In China a paternal 
 bureaucracy superintends and manages the distribution of 
 posthumous honours, beginning with honours of much the 
 same kind as those given in Europe to celebrities, and 
 gradually rising through the scale of ancestral worship, sacri- 
 fices, temples, and celebration by the public liturgies, to the
 
 138 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. VI. 
 
 full honours of recognised and successful divinity. It is easy 
 to perceive how the formal bestowal of posthumous honours, 
 in their first stage not unlike our State funerals and monu- 
 ments, with memorial tablets, rnausolea, and titular dis- 
 tinctions of a sacred character, must attract the religious 
 feelings of the multitude, and stimulate the world-wide pro- 
 pensity towards adoration of the dead. The Government 
 has therefore no difficult}* in promoting the spirits of deceased 
 notables to the superior grades of divinity, whenever this 
 may seem expedient ; and has only to anticipate and direct 
 public opinion by a judicious selection of qualified personages. 
 In this way the Emperor, himself a sacred and semi-divine 
 personage, seems to have gradually acquired something like a 
 monopoly of deification, which he uses as a constitutional 
 prerogative, like the right of creating peers. And the special 
 value in China of posthumous honours is that they have a 
 natural tendency to qualify the recipients for this higher 
 promotion to the grade of divinity. 
 
 The system of posthumous distinctions is not confined to 
 the recognition of eminent services rendered officially, or in 
 a private capacity, to the public. The State in China occupies 
 itself directly with morality as well as with religion ; and any 
 person whose conduct has been meritorious or exemplary 
 may be reported, after death, to the proper board or college, 
 which decrees appropriate marks of approbation. Cases of 
 filial and conjugal devotion are constantly reported by the 
 provincial authorities; also instances of devoted widowhood; 
 there is one example of reward sanctioned to a young lady 
 who died of grief at the death of her betrothed ; and another 
 fiancee who starved herself to death for the same reason gets 
 posthumous approbation. In all these instances the virtuous 
 deeds of the persons mentioned are solemnly rehearsed by the 
 Gazettes ; while, on the other hand, the neglect of filial duties 
 is properly stigmatized. In April, 1878, the Censor reports 
 an individual who, besides wearing a button to which he was 
 not entitled, " continued to perform .his official duties after 
 his mother's death, and wore no mourning for her." A dis- 
 tinguished spirit may often obtain further advancement by
 
 CHAP. VI.] TITLES CONFERRED ON SPIRITS. 139 
 
 diligent wonder-working. A decree of 1878 deals with a 
 petition that a girl who died many years earlier may now be 
 formally deified, upon the ground that whenever rain has 
 failed, prayers offered up at the shrine of the girl angel have 
 usually been successful. Whereupon an official inquiry is 
 made into the earthly history of this lady ; and the report 
 shows that "during her childhood she lived an exemplary 
 life, was guiltless of a smile or any kind of levity, but on the 
 contrary spent the livelong day in doing her duty," refused to 
 marry, and addicted herself to religious exercises. On her 
 death the people built her a temple, and found her very 
 efficacious in seasons of drought. The memorial urges that 
 she has now earned a fair claim to be included in the calendar, 
 and to enjoy the spring and autumn sacrifices. And the 
 Board of Ceremonies, after due deliberation, records this 
 official status. 
 
 But the Government not only bestows on deceased persons 
 its marks of posthumous approbation and rank in the State 
 Heaven ; it also decorates them with titles. The Gazette of 
 May, 1878, contains : 
 
 "A decree conferring a great title upon the dragon spirit of Han Tan Hien, in 
 whose temple is the well in which the iron tablet is deposited. This spirit has 
 from time to time manifested itself in answer to prayer, and has been repeatedly 
 invested with titles of honour. In consequence of this year's drought .... 
 prayers were again offered up, and the provinces (mentioned) have been visited 
 with sufficient rain. Our gratitude is indeed profound, and we ordain that the 
 Dragon Spirit shall be invested with the additional title of 'the Dragon Spirit of 
 the Sacred Well. ' " 
 
 Another spirit had already obtained the title of " Moisture- 
 diffusing, beneficial - aid - affording, universal - support - vouch- 
 safing-Prince ;" and receives additional titles in a Gazette of 
 1877. And a decree of an earlier date refers to a request 
 submitted by a provincial governor, recommending that in- 
 consequence of aid given in maintaining certain river embank- 
 ments by the canonized spirit of a former Governor-General, 
 he be included for worship in the temple of the Four Great 
 Golden Dragon Princes, and that a title of honour be con- 
 ferred by the Emperor upon this divinity. Apparently the 
 Board of Ceremonies, carefully hoarding its resources for the
 
 140 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. VI. 
 
 encouragement of divinities, had admitted the Governor- 
 General's spirit to the Dragon Temple, but had reserved the 
 title " pending further manifestations of divine response." 
 The spirit, thus put 011 his mettle, acquitted himself so well 
 during the next flood time, that his case was again laid before 
 the Emperor in a fresh report, which gave in detail repeated 
 proofs of the spirit's interposition when the banks were in 
 peril. The case is referred to the Board of Ceremonies " for 
 consideration," December 7th, 1874. 
 
 It may be worth while to repeat that in all this system the 
 remarkable feature is not that notoriety in life-time should 
 lead to posthumous worship and divination, or that a deity 
 should continue to increase in reputation in proportion as 
 prayers to his temple are successful. The point is that the 
 Government should have thus successfully laid hands on and 
 systematized the immense power which is given by the direc- 
 tion and control of that deep-rooted sentiment toward the 
 dead which leads to their adoration a power that has else- 
 where almost invariably passed from the earliest mystery men 
 to the superior priesthoods, and which the priesthood has 
 usually been able to make its own. If, as Mr. Edkins tells 
 us, the common people believe that the Emperor has the 
 power to appoint the souls of the dead to posts of authority 
 in the invisible world, just as he does in the visible empire, it 
 is manifest that such a prerogative confers illimitable range 
 upon the Imperial authority. Thus the system of posthumous 
 honours and appointments not only harmonizes with and 
 satisfies the deepest feelings of the people, but it gives to the 
 Government a hold upon them through their beliefs not 
 altogether unlike the influence which the doctrine of purgatory 
 may have given the Church in the darkest of the middle ages. 
 Moreover, the system has this advantage over the European 
 custom of giving peerages and distinctions during life, that it 
 is more prudent and economical. In Europe we honour and 
 reward the posterity of an eminent person ; in China they 
 not only honour the man himself after death, but it is well 
 known that they also honour his ancestors, who require no 
 hereditary pensions, and can never discredit their posterity.
 
 CHAP. VI.] THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS. 141 
 
 In December, 1878, we find a provincial governor proposing 
 that in recognition of the conspicuous charity during a famine 
 displaj-ed by Brigadier- General Chen Ling, he and his ancestors 
 for two generations may have the first rank bestowed on them. 
 Also that memorial arches may be put up to two old ladies, 
 the mothers of high military officers, who have been generous 
 in a similar way. " Granted by rescript. Let the Board take 
 note." 
 
 We can understand how it may have been comparatively 
 easy for the State to manipulate and utilise in this way the 
 simple and common superstitions of popular Taouism, giving 
 the humble deities the benefits of official patronage, and 
 honouring the higher deities according to their rank and 
 prestige in the country. Whether seriously or cynically, the 
 Government evidently thinks fit to fall in with and humour 
 the anthropomorphic fancies of its subjects; and the policy 
 is probably a very good one for keeping the gods in hand, and 
 for preventing their concentration into some too powerful a 
 divinity by fostering diversities of worship. The system of 
 civil administration in China is very broadly based upon the 
 principle that the honours and emoluments of the governing 
 body are open to all classes of the people according to merit ; 
 and the same principle of la carriere ouverte aux talents seems 
 to be applied to the honours obtainable after death. To 
 adapt and utilise for State purposes the worship of ancestors, 
 and the deification of famous men which developed out of this 
 commemoration of ancestral spirits, was no arduous task for 
 a government of literati and philosophers, ruling over a people 
 to whom the difference between life and death, between the 
 phenomenal and the spiritual existence, is far less clear and 
 striking than to modern minds, and is in fact merely shaded off 
 as in the foreground and background of a picture.* But it 
 might have been expected that Buddhism, one of the three 
 organized religions of the world, with set doctrines and tra- 
 ditions, with its monastic orders and successive embodiments 
 of spiritual chiefs, would have held even the Chinese Govern- 
 
 * "The sleeping and the dead 
 Are but as pictures." Macbeth.
 
 142 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. VI. 
 
 ment at arm's length. The visible Church of Buddhism un- 
 doubtedly enjoys much independence in China ; in Mongolia 
 the Lamas have great political influence, in Tibet itself the 
 Imperial Government allows the Grand Lama to do much as 
 he likes, and the provincial administration is in his hands. 
 There are many instances in the Gazettes of the sedulous 
 care taken by the central Government at Pekin that its politi- 
 cal residents at Lhassa shall pay due reverence to Lamaism, 
 that is, to the priesthood representing the dogma of emana- 
 tions from Buddha, which become incarnate by spiritual succes- 
 sion in the Dalai Lama and other chiefs of the Buddhist 
 hierarchy. A Gazette of 1874 publishes a despatch from an 
 Imperial Resident in Tibet, reporting his arrangements for 
 proceeding in person, with guard of honour and escorts, to 
 escort -the primate of Mongolian Buddhism, who has recently 
 succeeded to his office by embodiment, from Lhassa, where he 
 had appeared in the flesh, to his post at Urga near the 
 Eussian frontier, a great distance. And it might well be sup- 
 posed that an established and richly endowed hierarchy, under 
 a sacred chief who has also large governing powers in his own 
 province, would decline to submit its spiritual operations to 
 the revision and censorship of the State. Yet we find that 
 in the matter of the incarnations, the central mystery and 
 essential dogma of -Northern Buddhism, which furnishes 
 the process by which all successions to the chief spiritual 
 offices are managed, the Imperial Government interferes au- 
 thoritatively, calls for reports, and issues the most peremptory 
 orders. The Gazettes of 1876 contain three decrees illustrat- 
 ing the attitude of the State towards the lords spiritual of 
 Lamaism, who, it should be understood, are also very power- 
 ful officials. The published papers begin with abstracts of an 
 official letter from the Resident, or political chargtf d'affaires 
 on the part of the Empire at Lhassa, the capital of the pro- 
 vince which enjoys, as has been said, home rule under the 
 hierarchic administration of the Grand Lama. A report had 
 been received by the Tibetan Council that the Dharma Raja, 
 or chief of religious law, had reappeared by metempsychosis 
 in a certain person at a place in Mongolia, where he had been
 
 CHAP. VI.] BUDDHIST INCARNATIONS. 143 
 
 discovered and identified in due form this being the accepted 
 method by which the priests make their selections for such 
 offices, and maintain the spiritual succession by transmigration 
 of souls. The Tibetan Council reports, after proper inquiry, 
 that this new birth turns out to be the reappearance of a reli- 
 gious chief who had in a former life behaved very badly indeed, 
 and had been degraded for scandalous misconduct. Neverthe- 
 less the Council certifies that the present embodiment is per- 
 fectly authentic, and they earnestly implore the Emperor to 
 sanction it, one of the reasons being that in his penultimate 
 life, that is, in the existence preceding the life which he had 
 led so badly, this very person had done good service to the 
 State. They promise that he shall henceforward confine him- 
 self to religious practices, and shall not again meddle with 
 worldly affairs. 
 
 For the State to deal with such metaphysical processes as 
 these would seem to European administrators a somewhat for- 
 midable assumption of authority over things spiritual, involv- 
 ing delicate and somewhat mysterious problems of government. 
 However, on the Tibetan petition there is only a brief order, 
 " Let the Department consider and report to Us." The 
 second decree sets out the report of the Mongolian superin- 
 tendency, stating that the re-embodiment is perfectly authen- 
 tic, but showing cause why, for this very reason, it should not 
 be allowed ; and repeating that the person who has ventured 
 to come to life again is no other than one Awang, who was de- 
 graded and punished for a heinous offence in the year 1845, 
 banished from Tibet, subjected to rigorous surveillance, and 
 placed on the official list of those " from whom, the privilege 
 of successive births into the world is withdrawn for ever." 
 His conduct, it appears, had been so intolerably disgraceful 
 that it was ordered that " on his decease, whether this should 
 occur at his place of banishment or at home, he should be for 
 ever forbidden to reappear on earth in human form, as a warn- 
 ing to those who bring disgrace upon the Yellow Church ; " 
 and in 185-1 he died while under surveillance. Lastly, we 
 have the final orders on the case pronounced by Imperial re- 
 script, upholding the previous sentence, and deciding authori-
 
 144 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. VI. 
 
 tatively that the re-embodiment is not to be permitted. Ob- 
 viously the Government has no notion of allowing an offender 
 of this degree to elude surveillance by a temporary retirement 
 into incorporeal existence, or to whitewash himself by the 
 simple subterfuge of a fresh birth. The case seems to have 
 been important, and the decision must have caused some ex- 
 citement in Lhassa, for vague rumours of trouble caused by an 
 unauthorised incarnation spread as far as India, through the 
 Buddhist monasteries on the Indian slopes of the Himalayan 
 range separating Tibet from Bengal. 
 
 It seems, indeed, that prohibition to reappear is not an un- 
 common exercise of control by the Government over disorderly 
 Lamas ; for in another case, where a spiritual dignitary had 
 been dismissed and transmigration interdicted, a lenient 
 view is taken, and the sentence is rescinded on petition 
 of appeal, after the appellant's death (be it noted) at 
 Pekin. "We decree that, as is besought of us, search 
 may be made to discover the child in whose body the 
 soul of the deceased Hucheng has been reborn, and that he 
 be allowed to resume the government of his proper Lamasery." 
 All these proceedings afford evidence of the extraordinary 
 rigour with which the Imperial Government seems to exercise 
 its supremacy over all matters spiritual ; and they are curious 
 as illustrating the little deference paid to religious suscepti- 
 bilities whenever the public service, or the police of the 
 Empire, or morality generally, is concerned. The Chinese 
 Government surrounds itself with fictions and formulas ; it 
 seems to encourage every possible development of superstition, 
 and to let the people be priest-ridden and spirit-ridden to any 
 extent, on the understanding that the State is always master, 
 whether of priests, spirits, or deities. There is nothing un- 
 natural in a despotic ruler wishing to hold this attitude ; 
 although it is very rare that he succeeds in doing so, or that, 
 as seems to be the case in China, the people and even the 
 priests acquiesce thoroughly in the arrangement. But all 
 these things are to be explained by the peculiar religious 
 atmosphere of Asia (as once of the whole primitive world), in 
 which forms and fictions are real and yet unreal, familiar and
 
 CHAP. VI.] STATE CONTROL OF RELIGION. 115 
 
 yet mysterious, and where the gods are mixed up with actual 
 everyday life, not separated off from the world of humanity by 
 vast distances of space, or known through traditions of what 
 happened long ago. Where infinite and various supernatural 
 agencies are incessantly abroad upon earth and at work, it 
 becomes obvious to the practical sense of mankind that 
 unless they submit to some kind of regulation society can 
 hardly go on; and thus the civil ruler, who is after all 
 immediately responsible for keeping things in order, is al- 
 lowed some reasonable and reverent latitude in dealing with 
 the national divinities. Some compromise or concordat is 
 almost always discovered, whereby a modus Vivendi is arranged 
 between the spiritual and temporal powers ; although, as has 
 been said alread}-, in China it is very striking that the pre- 
 dominance should be so much on the temporal side. But in 
 order to appreciate properly the patronizing or (if necessary) 
 unceremonious ways of the Chinese Government towards 
 spiritual or divine manifestations, we have to recollect that 
 a belief or doctrine such as that of transmigration does not 
 usually harden into the consistency of a mysterious dogma, 
 or become the exclusive property of theology, until it has 
 passed far beyond the range of everyday popular experience. 
 So long as these ideas about the gods, or about the re- 
 embodiment of souls, are being actually applied to account 
 for or to conceal events and actions that go on all round 
 us, they are subject to the wear and tear of practical life ; and 
 they can be, and are, constantly modified to suit varying cir- 
 cumstances and emergencies. While they are in this loose, 
 flexible stage, a strong and shrewd Government can seize 
 the occasion of shaping them to its own purposes. It is clear, 
 indeed, that unless some such control were insisted upon, a 
 Government would be exposed to all kinds of trickery and 
 imposture, such as probably underlies the system of Lamaist 
 embodiments ; and could be met at every turn by pretensions 
 to immunity from administrative discipline, based on claims 
 to divine or sacred character. To deny such a character, or 
 to uncover and prosecute the impostors would shake the whole 
 edifice, and might drag the civil power into controversy be-
 
 146 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. VI. 
 
 tween the police and the priests as to the identity of a reap- 
 pearance, wherein the police would lose all locus standi, being 
 manifestly incompetent to distinguish between true or false 
 divinity ; while the position of the priest would be impregnable. 
 So the Chinese prefer to act as if the spiritual or divine 
 character of a mauvais sujet should make no difference to the 
 authorities ; and the people would probably think much less 
 of a ruler who should take a religion of this kind too seriously, 
 when they themselves are by no means blind to its practical 
 working. Various reverential fictions are occasionally invented 
 to save the reputation of deities or spiritual personages when- 
 ever their privileges are being pushed so far that to yield 
 implicit deference to supernatural manifestations would be 
 clean against plain reason and common sense. Of course any 
 considerable coup d'ttat against factious or obstructive divinities 
 must be a stroke needing great resolution and an eye for the 
 situation, but it can be clone, as the Chinese example shows, 
 by a consistently devout and religious Government, when neces- 
 sary for the preservation of order, and the proper conduct of 
 public business. 
 
 To modern habits of thought, which conceive a great gulf 
 set, or a blank wall standing, between life and death, between 
 the body and the spirit, the human and the divine, this gro- 
 tesque intermixture of religion with municipal government, of 
 miracles with police regulations, must appear strange and 
 bewildering. The epigram that was supposed to have been 
 written up over the place in Paris where the convulsionist 
 miracles were suppressed by royal ordinance 
 
 " De par le roi, defense a Dieu 
 De faire miracle en ce lieu," 
 
 reads in European history as a very profane jest, but ap- 
 parently it might be accepted in earnest, as emanating from 
 proper and uncontested authority, if it were issued on a similar 
 occasion by the Board of Worship or of Ceremonies in China. 
 The fact seems to be that the mass of the Chinese are still in that 
 intellectual period when, in regard to the conditions of their 
 existence, and to the nature of the agencies and influences which
 
 CHAP. VI.] VETO OVER RE-EMBODIMEXTS. 147 
 
 surround them, men's ideas are altogether hazy and indefinite. 
 The Emperor lives far away at Pekin, shrouded in semi-divine 
 mystery, making himself heard at intervals by his majestic ordi- 
 nances, or seen occasionally at high altars in the performance of 
 some stately ceremonial. Between him and his ministers on the 
 one hand, and the gods of heaven and earth on the other hand, 
 there can he to the multitude little or no difference of kind, and 
 not much of degree. Such doctrines as those of transmigration 
 and re-embodiment obviously tend to deepen the cloudy confu- 
 sion which hangs over the frontier separating the phenomenal 
 from the unseen world. That world is not a bourne whence no 
 traveller returns, but only a stage in the circle of existence, a 
 place where you change forms as costumes are changed behind 
 scenes, and whence you may come forward again to play a 
 different part in a different character or mode of being, or in 
 a subsequent act of the same drama. And beneath all this 
 stage play of the natural imagination there probably lies the 
 Pantheistic feeling that perceives the substantial identity of 
 divinity with every act and phase of nature, with men and 
 spirits indifferently. One can comprehend how a higlity- 
 organised State could take firm grasp of all these shifting and 
 anarchic ideas, and retain command over them as a natural 
 incident of supreme rulership, without giving offence to its 
 subjects, indeed with their full approbation. It may be sup- 
 posed that this position must add immensely to the moral 
 authority of the reigning dynasty ; and that, for example, the 
 strange power of veto exercised over re-embodiments must be 
 very useful in a country where ambitious and turbulent cha- 
 racters set up as revivals of precedent gods, or heroes, or 
 prophets. In different forms, indeed, the practice is universal 
 throughout Asia ; in Mahornedan countries it constantly shows 
 itself in the expectation of coming prophets or Imams; in 
 India there are continually circulating papers which proclaim 
 the advent of some miraculous personage, with a mission to 
 revive some creed by forming a new and purified govern- 
 ment. Nor indeed would any ordinary revolt or disturbance 
 go far unless its leader assumed a religious character, mission, 
 or motive. Even in British India a new embodiment can still 
 
 L 2
 
 148 STATE AND RELIGION IN CHINA. [CHAP. VI. 
 
 give some little trouble, as we have seen very recently from a 
 newspaper account of an attack made by a new sect upon the 
 Jugunath temple. In India the matter was simply one for the 
 police ; and the Courts will have kept carefully clear of any 
 opinion as to the spiritual status or antecedents of the sect's 
 leader ; whereas in China the authorities would probably have 
 pronounced the embodiment not false or counterfeit, but simply 
 contraband, and they would have ordered him out of the world 
 back into antenatal gloom, as if he had been a convict returned 
 from beyond seas without proper permission. 
 
 Whether the Chinese nation is naturally, or by reason of the 
 teachings of Confucius and the higher Buddhism, more inclined 
 to connect religion with morals than elsewhere in Eastern Asia, 
 or whether the Chinese Government, which has undoubtedly 
 realised the enormous value of outward morality to an adminis- 
 tration, has really succeeded, by persistent supervision, in 
 maintaining in all external worships a general show of morality 
 and propriety, it is hardly safe to conjecture. But all observers 
 appear to agree that in China the public practices and the 
 acknowledged principles of religion are decent and ethically 
 tolerable, which is more than can be said for all rites and 
 doctrines in adjacent countries. And it is not difficult to see 
 how the Buddhistic dogma of promotion by merit through 
 various stages of existence must have worked in with the system 
 of open competition for official employ, which in China binds 
 up all classes of the people so closely with the State's adminis- 
 tration. So also the systems of re-embodiment and deification 
 serve to keep up the prestige and dignity of the Great Pure 
 dynasty, for the Emperors of previous dynasties are not only 
 worshipped as gods, but they may reappear and reign again, 
 occasionally, in the person of later sovereigns, thus attesting 
 the divine right and the true succession of the present family. 
 On the other hand, all these devices for identifying the Govern- 
 ment with the prevailing religion have one weak side : a religion 
 may fall, and by its fall may drag down the dynasty. How 
 dangerous to the Empire may be a religious uprising founded 
 on a principle that escapes from or rejects the traditional State 
 control, has been proved to the present generation by the
 
 CHAP. VI.] THE TAIPIXG INSURRECTION. 149 
 
 Taiping insurrection, which is stated by all accounts to have 
 derived its religious character and fervour from the mis- 
 understood teachings of Christian missionaries. The enthu- 
 siasm of the new sect at once took a political form, and the 
 leader, as usual, credited himself with a divine mission to 
 seize temporal dominion, according to the invariable law of 
 such movements in Asia, whereby the conqueror always 
 claims religious authority, and the religious enthusiast declares 
 himself ordained for political conquest. The whole atmosphere 
 became rapidly charged with fanatic energy of a type more 
 characteristic of Western than of Eastern Asia. Tai Ping, 
 the leader, denounced idolatry, condemned the Taouist and 
 Buddhist superstitions, and proclaimed fire and sword not only 
 against the creeds, but against the dynasties that encouraged 
 them. Probably nothing is more perilous to a Government 
 that has incorporated the elder and milder religions into its 
 system, and has soothed them and lulled them into tame and 
 subordinate officialism, than an assault upon those very 
 religions by a wild and ardent faith suddenly blazing up in the 
 midst of them. The fabric of conservative government is 
 threatened at its base ; the more it has leant upon the old 
 creeds the greater its risk of falling ; and this is evidently the 
 vulnerable point of the whole principle of using religion as 
 bulwarks to the State. A great ruler, like Constantine, 
 may have the address and foresight to save his govern- 
 ment by going over to the winning side in tune, but this 
 has been rare in all ages and countries ; while in Asia 
 strong religious upheavals still shatter dynasties and subvert 
 empires.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ON THE FORMATION OF SOME CLANS AND CASTES IN INDIA. 
 
 Early history of nations runs back to a tribal period Keference to this period in 
 European history The Native States of Central India, which have been left 
 outside the great empires of India, are still in the state of tribal formation 
 Description of this state of society, no nationalities, the people are classed in 
 clans and sects, by kinship or worship Examples of grouping by consan- 
 guinity and by religion Description of the structure and development of a 
 consanguineous group Circles of affinity Connection between lowest and 
 highest groups, non- Aryan tribes, predatory tribes, half blood and pure blood 
 clans Influence on a clan of the original founder or leader Effect upon social 
 formations of religious ideas, rise of sects, and their transition into castes 
 Narrowing of circle of affinity Possible connection of these early phases of 
 society with latest European forms. 
 
 THE accounts of the origin of nations generally run back to 
 a period, either of authentic history or accepted tradition, when 
 the people of a country appear to have been grouped and 
 ranked in tribes. The precise constitution of these tribes at 
 the time when history opens has of course varied much in 
 different countries ; but almost everywhere the original source 
 and explanation, if not always of the tribe, yet of the interior 
 groups which make up the tribe, is assumed to have been 
 kinship among all the members. The superstructure that is 
 gradually built up on this foundation is shaped by political 
 and social circumstances ; the cement of the building is usually 
 religion. Of the best-known tribal periods the general aspect 
 is veiy similar in all ages and countries ; the prevailing feature 
 is a great diversity of forms and usages ; and a piecemeal and 
 patchwork distribution of mankind into political and social 
 compartments. These pieces and patches gradually amalga- 
 mate and are fused into larger masses of people and better- 
 defined territories ; very slowly when they are left to them-
 
 CHAP. VII.] EARLY HISTORY OF NATIONS. 151 
 
 selves, often very rapidly under the violent compression and 
 levelling forces of great conquests. Rome, itself formed out 
 of a conflux of tribes, was of course the great consolidator of 
 tribal atoms in Europe and Western Asia ; and when Home 
 had declined and fallen, her Western provinces relapsed for a 
 time into their primitive confusion. Their condition is de- 
 scribed by Guizot in his Lectures on the Civilisation of France, 
 where he sketches the period before Karl the Great attempted, 
 and for his time accomplished, the task of restoring Imperial 
 unity in the West. Nothing appears settled, nothing definite 
 or uniform according to modern notions ; territorial frontiers 
 are constantly shifting and changing ; distinct nations, in the 
 proper sense of the word, exist nowhere ; hut instead there is 
 a jumble of tribes, races, conquering bands, heaven-born chiefs 
 of languages, customs, and rites. Out of this confusion 
 Guizot undertakes to extract and exhibit the elements which 
 have been gradually fused into the two or three supreme 
 political ideas and institutions which divide modern civilisa- 
 tion, and one important element is found in tribal manners and 
 usages. 
 
 Now, when one passes from those parts of India which have 
 long been under great centralizing governments, down into the 
 midland countries which have never been fairly conquered by 
 Moghals, Marathas, or Englishmen, the transition is probably 
 very much the same as the change would have been from a 
 well-ordered province of Imperial Home into lands still under 
 the occupation and dominion of powerful barbarian tribes. In 
 these regions of India so often invaded and thrown into dis- 
 order, but never subdued the population has remained in a 
 much more elementary and incoherent stage than in the great 
 fertile plains and river-basins of Mahomedan India, where 
 empires and kingdoms have been set up on a large scale, and 
 powerful religious communities have been organised. In fact, 
 the tribal period has here survived, and has preserved some of 
 its very earliest social characteristics, while it still mainly 
 influences the political formation. The surface of the country 
 is marked off into a number of greater and lesser divisions, 
 which we English call Native States, some of these very
 
 152 THE FORMATION OF CLAXS AND CASTES. [CHAP. VII. 
 
 ancient, others quite modern ; most of them mixed up and 
 interlaced in territorial patchwork and irregularity of frontiers, 
 very much as they were left fifty years ago at the end of the 
 stormy time which followed the dissolution of the Moghal 
 Empire. Geographical boundaries, however, have no corre- 
 spondence at all with distinctive institutions or grouping of 
 the people, and have comparatively slight political significance. 
 Little is gained toward knowing who and what a man is by 
 ascertaining the State he obeys or the territory he dwells in, 
 these being things which of themselves denote no difference of 
 race, institutions, or manners. Even from the point of view 
 of political allegiance, the government under which a man may 
 be living is an accidental arrangement, which the British 
 Viceroy or some other distant irresistible power decided upon 
 yesterday and may alter to-morrow. Nor would such a change 
 be grievous unless it divorced him from a ruler of his own 
 tribe or his own faith; in other respects there is little to 
 choose among governments in central India, which are simple 
 organisms without the complicated functions of later develop- 
 ment, being mainly adapted for absorbing revenue by suction. 
 The European observer accustomed to the massing of people 
 in great territorial groups, and to the ideas (now immemorial 
 in the West) contained in such expressions as fatherland, 
 mother-country, patriotism, domicile, and the like has here 
 to realise the novelty of finding himself in a strange part of the 
 world, where political citizenship is as yet quite unknown, and 
 territorial sovereignty or even feudalism only just appealing. 
 For a parallel in the history of Western Europe he must go 
 back as far as the Merovingian period, when chiefs of barbaric 
 tribes or bands were converting themselves into kings or 
 counts ; or, perhaps, he should carry his retrospect much fur- 
 ther, and conceive himself to be looking at some country of 
 Asia Minor lying within the influence of Rome at its zenith, 
 but just outside its jurisdiction. He gradually discerns the 
 population of central India to be distributed, not into great 
 governments, or nationalities, or religious denominations, not 
 even into widespread races such as those which are still 
 contending for political supremacy in Eastern Europe ; but into
 
 CHAP; VII.] STBAT1FICATION OF SOCIETY. 153 
 
 various and manifold denominations of tribes, clans, septs, 
 castes and sub-castes, religious orders, and devotional brother- 
 hoods. And the peculiarity is that these distinctions are not, 
 as in later forms of society, subordinated to the primary 
 relations of a man to his fatherland, his nation, or his State ; 
 but are still maintained as the first and most important facts 
 which unite and isolate the people. We have here a good oppor- 
 tunity of investigating what is obviously the survival of a very 
 rudimentary stage of society, which has existed more or less 
 throughout the world, and which may possibly be turned to 
 account for illustrations of the obscurest and most remote parts 
 of the history of nations. 
 
 In attempting to give some very concise and yet tolerably 
 intelligible description of this remarkable stratification of 
 society among the clans and sects of central India, we may say 
 that the whole is traversed by two ideas in unbroken continuity, 
 and that all the predominant institutions arrange themselves 
 upon two Lines. The essential characteristics of a man's state 
 of life and position among his people, those which settle who 
 he is and where he belongs, are his kinship and his religion ; 
 the one or the other, sometimes both. Of these two words, 
 the fonner varies wonderfully (as we shall see hereafter) in its 
 scope. It may sometimes include the whole of a very nume- 
 rous clan widely dispersed, and sometimes it may mean no 
 more than three or four degrees of agnatic consanguinity. The 
 latter word should always be taken in its primary sense of a tie 
 of common belief or worship, which binds together a set of 
 people ; expressing the fact of such a union rather than the 
 reason or devotional sentiment of it. If, now, having laid hold 
 of these two facts, we look around us in central India and try 
 to perceive how they have been worked out, we shall find the 
 simplest and earliest expression of them hi two institutions the 
 pure clan by descent and the religious order ; the brotherhood 
 by blood and the spiritual brotherhood ; those to whom a common 
 ancestry, and those to whom a common rite or doctrine, is 
 everything. The best examples of the class first named may 
 be found among the petty Rajput chiefs who live down in the 
 far western States upon the confines of the great salt and
 
 154 THE FORMATION OF CLANS AND CASTES. [CHAP. VII. 
 
 sandy plains that stretch from the Aravalli Hills towards the 
 Indus. One of these may come to visit the camp of an English 
 officer, girt with sword and shield, having the usual tail of 
 clansmen with their whiskers knotted over the top of then- 
 heads. The first greeting may probahly he made in Homeric 
 style, by inquiring after his name, parentage, and people ; when 
 he will proceed at once to answer after the same fashion, 
 naming his clan, the branch to which he belongs, his family, 
 and lineage, and being as particular about his eponj'inous 
 ancestor as if he were a Dorian Herakleid. If he be interro- 
 gated, according to incongruous modern notions, as to the 
 State which claims him as subject, he will indeed admit that 
 he dwells within the territorial authority of a dominant ruler, 
 whose orders he obeys when there is no help for it. But this 
 ruler is only a powerful chief, who has reached the stage of 
 territorial sovereignty ; and if our friend is of the ruler's clan, 
 he may go on to explain that his eponym was elder brother of 
 the chiefs eponym, many centuries ago ; whence it is obvious 
 that he himself, coming from the elder stock, owes no proper 
 allegiance to a younger branch of the family. Or he may be 
 of a different clan, or his forefathers came in by an earlier 
 tribal invasion : all these being good primitive reasons for 
 asserting, in theory, a kind of privilege against the pretensions 
 of territorial administration, of revenue demands, and meddle- 
 some officials generally. For leagues around the soil is pos- 
 sessed by his brothers, of the same stock with his own, to whom 
 the ultimate source of all ideas upon things political, social, 
 and even religious is that same eponymous heroic ancestor, 
 who is talked of with a certitude that would have impressed 
 Niebuhr. Here, in the head of the main stock of a pure- 
 blooded clan, we have the primeval aristocrat, fairly represent- 
 ing, perhaps, the earliest ancestors of long-haired Merovingian 
 kings : or even the remote forefathers of Highland chiefs now 
 become Scottish dukes, of ancient Armorican nobles in 
 Brittany, and Spanish grandees with Gothic blood in their 
 veins ; the founders of that peculiar institution, the noblesse 
 of blood, inheriting rank and formal privileges by a title as 
 good as their sovereign's hereditary right to reign.
 
 CHAP. VII. j GROUPING BY KINSHIP. 155 
 
 Secondly, we may take, as the simplest expression of 
 spiritual brotherhood, a specimen of persons \vho claim no 
 kindred at all. A boy may be noticed, sitting by the roadside, 
 who can be known at once to belong to a religious order by the 
 large trident painted in a special fashion on his forehead, 
 having for vestments only a light martingale of yellow cloth 
 around the loins. Being questioned as to his circumstances, he 
 explains that he has forgotten his people and his father's 
 house, that his parents both died of cholera a year or so back, 
 whereupon his uncle sold his sister into a respectable family, 
 and presented the boy to a mystic who had had a new reve- 
 lation, and was developing a religious fraternity thereupon. 
 To that fraternity he now belongs, and all other ties of blood 
 or caste have dropped away from him. Or if one questions in 
 like manner any strange pilgrim that comes wandering across 
 central India from the shrines upon the Indian Ocean towards 
 the head-waters of the Ganges in the Himalayas, he may 
 describe himself simply as the disciple of some earlier saints or 
 sage, who showed the Way ; the path by which one may best 
 hope to seek out a higher spiritual life, or absorption, or 
 release in some shape from this unintelligible world. The 
 point to be remarked is that he undertakes no other definition 
 of himself whatever, and declines all other connections or 
 responsibilities. 
 
 It is thus that the exceedingly primitive state of things still 
 surviving in the middle regions of India may enable us to 
 observe and register in their simplest forms two institutions 
 which play a great part in all archaic societies the grouping 
 of men by their folk and their faith, by kinship and worship. 
 As these institutions are certainly the roots from which society 
 has grown up all over India, we have here the means of tracing 
 up from very low down in their growth the course which they 
 have followed in that country, whereby we may come to under- 
 stand better how the combination and crossing of two pre- 
 dominant ideas have worked out in India perhaps the most 
 singularly complicated pattern of society that exists any- 
 where. The inquiry may also have some bearings upon the 
 processes by which, all over the world, the primitive groups
 
 156 THE FORMATION OF CLANS AND CASTES. [CnAP. VII. 
 
 of men have been formed, dissolved, or absorbed into larger 
 civilisations. 
 
 Taking first, then, kinship or consanguinity, we find that 
 among the Rajput clans of central India the sentiment still 
 maintains its widest, and what is probably its most primitive, 
 development; for the feeling of kindred evidently dwindles 
 and contracts, through obvious causes, as civilisation brings 
 other ties. In the combination of modern European society 
 it is of little importance even within the narrow sphere of 
 families, and throughout the greater part of India it is merely 
 an important social element; but among the clans it is the 
 supreme consideration. It must be remembered that in all 
 pure Hindu society the law which regulates the degrees within 
 which marriage is interdicted, proceeds upon the theory that 
 between agnatic relatives conmibium is impossible. And as by 
 an equally universal law no legitimate marriage can take place 
 between members of two entirely different castes or tribes, we 
 have thus each member of Hindu society ranged by the law of 
 intermarriage, first, as belonging to an outer group within 
 which he must marry ; and, secondly, as belonging to an inner 
 group of agnatic kinsfolk among whom he must not marry. 
 This is the normal and typical structure of Hindu society ; it 
 is distributed primarily into tribes or castes, and secondarily 
 into clans or families. It is with these last-mentioned secon- 
 dary groups that we are now concerned, since they clearly 
 embody the idea of kinship ; and their shape and composition 
 may best be explained by calling each group a circle of affinity, 
 described by the radius of descent from the central point of 
 one common ancestor, real or reputed, so that all persons 
 swept within this circumference are barred from intermarriage. 
 Now of course this formation is of itself no way abnormal, 
 since every table of prohibited degrees places persons within a 
 similar ring-fence and interdict; but we begin to appreciate 
 the immense influence of the idea of kinship on primitive 
 minds when we perceive that widespread and numerous clans 
 in central India are nothing else but great circles of affinity, 
 including, perhaps, a hundred thousand persons who cannot 
 lawfully intermarry. It becomes worth while to look round
 
 CHAP. VII.] CIRCLES OF AFFINITY. 157 
 
 and try to make out how these very curious groups formed 
 themselves, and what is their place in the general order of the 
 society to which they belong, what is their connection and 
 relation with other stages of growth. 
 
 As to the formation, the accounts preserved among the clans 
 of how they conquered and settled in the lands follow a well- 
 known course of tradition ; and their narratives resemble pre- 
 cisely what has been handed down of tribal migrations and 
 expeditions under kings and heroes in the early history of 
 Europe, or in the Old Testament. All that can be gathered 
 regarding the way in which these central Indian clans origi- 
 nated, and the source from which they spread, corroborates 
 the abundant evidence which we already possess upon the 
 beginning and development of such communities. Whereas 
 in modern times great men of action found dynasties or noble 
 families, which transmit the founder's name down along the 
 chain of direct lineage, so in prehistoric ages men of the same 
 calibre founded clans or septs, in which not only the founder's 
 actual kinsfolk who followed his fortunes were enrolled under 
 his name, but also all those who had any share in his enter- 
 prises, who took service with him, or got lands by joining his 
 companj T . Thus was established in central India the stock 
 group of a clan, that organized and maintained itself as a circle 
 of affinity which has gone on widening or contracting under 
 various fortunes, until we find it at its present dimensions. 
 Now although this phenomenon of a whole community asso- 
 ciated upon the reputed basis of a common descent is of itself 
 not peculiar, being indeed almost universal among ancient 
 societies, yet the instances of a tribe or clan preserving in full 
 working order a pure genealogic structure are rare in all 
 history, and especially rare is a specimen which has survived 
 in the midst of later formations. It is even more uncommon 
 to find a clan, among which common ancestry actually operates 
 as an impassable bar to intermarriage, realising this kinship 
 of all its members with a strength that withstands political 
 separation. For there is evidence that in other countries and 
 ages separation from the authority of the patriarchal chief 
 dissolved the bond of kinship, as union under one chief had
 
 158 THE FORMATION OF CLANS AND CASTES. [CHAP. VII 
 
 originally produced it. Yet a clan of pure Rajputs is often 
 scattered abroad under half-a-dozen different rulers, of its own 
 tribe or of alien race, but nevertheless continues to hold mar- 
 riage between any two persons of the clan to be incest. More- 
 over, each pure-blooded Rajput clan now acts strictly upon 
 its assumption of affinity, and employs none of the devices 
 which must necessarily have been allowed in the earlier 
 stages of its growth for recruiting its body from outside. It 
 is impossible to suppose that all the members of a large clan 
 are really descended from one stock; but whatever fictions 
 were formerly permitted in order to keep up the strength, 
 none are now tolerated, and the clan relies for reproduction 
 entirely upon the marriage of males with the women of cognate 
 clans, never bringing in or adopting any one that has not 
 been actually born within the circle. On the other hand, a 
 certain depletion goes on through the occasional cutting off 
 of blemished families or individuals, who have not kept up 
 their pedigree without flaw, who contract irregular marriages, 
 or who in any way suffer a custom to creep in which is con- 
 demned by the strict law of the clan. For example, the 
 custom of manning a deceased brother's wife, which is a 
 recognized duty among some Indian tribes or castes, but is 
 contrary to the law of the clans, has crept in among one at 
 least of them ; and the effect has been to detach a sept from 
 the rest of its brotherhood. 
 
 Here, then, in the pure genealogic clans of central India, 
 we have a very perfect specimen of the circle of affinity in 
 large type, containing a whole multitude of people tightly 
 bound together as brethren by the tradition of lineage. We 
 may assume this to be a very early phase of the tribal institu- 
 tion, since almost all the tribes of which history gives any 
 particulars appear to have taken actual kinship and a common 
 descent as the basis for their superstructure, religious or 
 political, and all tradition recurs to this as the original t} r pe. 
 Nevertheless a little reflection upon and observation of the 
 constitution of the pure clan will convince one that it is by no 
 means the most primitive form. These rigid rules of kinship 
 and intermarriage are excellent for preserving a clan's purity
 
 CHAP. VII.] PREDATORY TRIBES. 159 
 
 when it has reached its grand climacteric, and is on the road 
 towards transmuting itself into a patrician gens, or into an 
 aristocracy. But they are far too stiff and cramping to be 
 endured while the group is struggling for predominance and 
 territory; they would certainly hinder more than help; nor, 
 as has heen said above, is it possible to believe any great 
 clan to have really and literally descended from a few families. 
 What, then, were the actual forces and circumstances which 
 produced the pure clan as it now exists ? If we are to search 
 for traces of the process of the gathering together of the 
 group before it becomes a clan of descent, we must examine 
 the still more primitive societies which exist below and around 
 the clans in the same region. 
 
 Let us move our camp from the north-western plains, where 
 we met our Herakleid, toward the low hill-tracts and endless 
 jungles of scrubby woodland which run for hundreds of miles 
 across the- centre of India, on the south of the more open 
 country settled by the great Aryan clans. Here is the place 
 of meeting of what is called a Border Puncliciyat, which means 
 a meeting of arbitrators, under the presidency of one or two 
 English officers, upon the marches of two or three native 
 States to inquire into and settle cases of raids, and to award 
 compensation for injuries and losses, among the half-savage 
 tribes along these borders. The tract is mainly peopled by 
 the aboriginal tribe of Bheels, and the head-man of a Bheel 
 village is being examined touching a recent foray. A very 
 black little man, with a wisp of cloth around his long ragged 
 hail-, stands forth, bow and quiver in hand, swears by the 
 dog, and speaks out sturdily : " Here is the herd we lifted ; 
 we render back all but three cows, of which two we roasted 
 and eat on the spot after harrying the village, and the third 
 we sold for a keg of liquor to wash down the flesh. As for 
 the Brahman we shot in the scuffle, we will pay the proper 
 blood-money." A slight shudder runs through the high- 
 caste Hindu officials who record this candid statement; a 
 sympathetic grin flits across the face of a huge Affghan, who has 
 come wandering down for service or gang robbery into these 
 jungles, where he is to the Bheels as a shark among small pike;
 
 160 THE FORMATION OF CLANS AXD CASTES. [CHAP. VII, 
 
 and it is clear that we have got into a stratum of society far 
 below Aryan or Brahmanic prejudices. The pure clansman, 
 the descendant of heroes and demigods, now looks down with 
 patrician disgust upon the wild Bheel, who is very rough in 
 his practical views upon the subject of marriage, food, and ritual 
 generally ; yet there still exists in this outlying country the 
 clue, elsewhere entirely lost, of a remote connection between 
 the two societies. If we analyse the population of the wilder 
 tracts in central India, we discover that it is largery composed 
 of an intricate medley of tribal groups, all strongly dashed 
 with a strain of non-Aryan blood, and perceptibly differen- 
 tiated in their form or stage of growth. These differences 
 appear to be due mainly to the variety of the needs and dis- 
 tractions of predatory life among the wolds, where cultivation 
 is scarce and communication difficult; but they also imply 
 distinctions of descent and origin, though something may also 
 be ascribed to the peculiarities naturally produced by segrega- 
 tion among separate hill ranges. All these tribes subdivide 
 into manifold sections, and even the lowest have a loose forma- 
 tion of clan ; but the chief whom the pure Bheel really 
 acknowledges is merely the most powerful person in his 
 neighbourhood, whether the headman of a strong village or 
 a petty territorial lord of many villages. The Bheels proper 
 are the aborigines, that is, the earliest known inhabitants, 
 the relics of tribes who undoubtedly held all this country 
 before the migrations into central India of the Aryan 
 Rajputs. They represent the lowest and oldest stratum 
 of the population, and may be taken to represent gener- 
 ally the barbarian type before the earliest civilisations had 
 brought in ideas and prejudices about food, worship, and 
 connubium. So far as can be ascertained, the Bheels are all 
 subdivided into a variety of distinct groups, a few based on 
 a reputed common descent, but most of them apparently 
 muddled together by simple contiguity of habitation, or the 
 natural banding together of the number necessary for main- 
 taining and defending themselves. Next above these in the 
 social scale come the tribes of the half-blood, claiming paternal 
 descent, more or less regular and distant, from the Aryan
 
 CHAP. VII.] COMPOSITE GROUPS, 161 
 
 clans, and having their society framed on a rather less indis- 
 tinct outline of the real clan ; and again above the half-bloods 
 come predatory clans, of a very mixed and obscure origin b}- 
 descent, which rank in the order by which they gradually ap- 
 proximate more and more to the customs and ritual of the 
 pure clan. So that we might make out roughly, in central 
 India, a graduated social scale, starting from the simple 
 aboriginal horde at the bottom, and culminating with the pure 
 Aryan clan at the top ; nor would it be difficult to show that 
 all these classes are really connected, and have something of a 
 common origin. The most valuable, to the observer, of the 
 intermediate communities are groups of which it is not easy to 
 say whether they are degradations from the upper ranks or 
 promotions from the lower ranks. They usually assert them- 
 selves to be fallen patricians, but they are probably derived 
 from both sources. A very little observation will show that 
 such degradations and promotions still go on constantly. If 
 a lower group multiplies and acquires wealth, it begins at once 
 to ape the fashions of the group immediately above it, precisely 
 after the manner of English society ; if a family belonging to 
 the higher groups has ill-luck, or shocks public opinion irre- 
 mediably, it subsides perforce and herds with its inferiors. 
 Now these composite groups are very useful as links in the 
 chain of sociologic evolution. They appear to be formed out 
 of the fortuitous association of people banded together under 
 the combining effects of various accidents and interests of 
 some common misfortune, peculiar object, custom, or pressing 
 necessity and their mode of life is usually predatory; the)' 
 are the roving species, not yet extirpated in half-civilised coun- 
 tries, which prey upon their settled and peaceable fellow-crea- 
 tures. 
 
 If we place one of these groups under analysis, we find that 
 it has already attained the normal formation of very numerous 
 inner circles of affinity within a tribal circle. But these inner 
 circles, which at a later stage have hardened into the clear-cut 
 ring of pure clanship, are in their intermediate state such 
 loose coalitions that the progress of building the separate cells 
 of the social honeycomb under the outer hive of a tribal desig-
 
 162 THE FORMATION OF CLANS AND CASTES. [CHAP. VII. 
 
 nation can be actually watched going on. One of the most 
 widespread and formidable of these impure groups in central 
 India is that of the Meenas, who are famous robbers and 
 caterans ; and an opportunity has been taken of examining it 
 closely. This name represents four great sections of one 
 tribe, which inhabit four different and distant tracts, and 
 are evidently fast separating off into alien clans by reason of 
 distinct habitation. Each section is of course distributed off 
 into manifold circles of affinity, and these circles being in 
 various phases of growth and consistency, can mostly be traced 
 back by the clue of their names or other characteristics to 
 their real distinction of origin. In one section alone there 
 are said to be 146 gots or different stock families, of whom 
 some claim descent from a cross between Meenas and Brah- 
 mans, others for the most part from a cross with pure Rajputs. 
 Some of them preserve the name of the higher clan or caste 
 from which the founder of the circle emigrated and joined the 
 Meenas, some names denote only the founder's original habita- 
 tion, while other circles bear the names of notorious ancestors. 
 "We can perceive plainly that the whole tribe is nothing else 
 tut a cave of Adullani which has stood open for centuries, and 
 lias sheltered generation after generation of adventurers, out- 
 laws, outcasts, and refugees generally. It is well known from 
 liistory, and on a small scale from experience of the present 
 day, how famines, wide desolating invasions, pestilences, and 
 :all great social catastrophes, shatter to pieces the framework of 
 Oriental societies, and disperse the fragments abroad like seeds, 
 to take root elsewhere. Not only have these robber tribes 
 received bands of recruits during such periods of confusion, so 
 common in Indian history, but there goes on a steady enlist- 
 ment of individuals or families whom a variety of accidents or 
 offences, public opinion or private feuds, drives out of the pale 
 of settled life, and beyond their orthodox circles. Upon this 
 dissolute collection of masterless men the idea of kinship 
 begins immediately to operate afresh, and to rearrange them 
 systematically into groups. Each new immigrant becomes one 
 of the Meena tribe, but he nevertheless adheres so far to his 
 .origin and his custom as to insist on setting up a separate
 
 C'HAr. VII.] THE SUPPLY OF WIVES. 163 
 
 circle under the name of his lost clan, caste, family, or lands. 
 Where an Englishman, settling perforce at Botany Bay or 
 spontaneously in Western America, kept up familiar local asso- 
 ciations by naming his homestead after the county town in his 
 old country, a Rajput driven into the jungles tries to per- 
 petuate the more primitive recollection of race. Several fresh 
 groups have been formed b} r the Meenas within the last few 
 years, under stress of the frightful famine which desolated 
 Rajputana in 1868, when starving families were compelled to 
 abandon scruples of caste and honesty, to steal cattle and to 
 eat them. 
 
 Another fact worth notice is that the state of the wife-market 
 and the facilities for the supply of brides have a direct influence 
 upon the rate at which the circles of affinity, thus formed upon 
 the basis of origin, again subdivide and reunite within the 
 tribe-circle. This phenomenon was expounded with much 
 candour to the present writer by a leading Meena. In times 
 of misrule, when the country-side is disordered, women are 
 easily captured by the robber clans. From what caste or class 
 a girl may have been ravished is of no consequence at all to a 
 clan of this sort (though to a Rajput this would make all the 
 difference), for she is solemnly put through a form of adop- 
 tion into one circle of affinity in order that she may be lawfully 
 married into another a fiction that would now be quite inad- 
 missible among the pure clans, though it is good enough law 
 for the Meenas, who split heads more neatly than hairs. 
 Nevertheless this fiction looks very like the survival of a custom 
 that may once have been universal among all clans at a more 
 elastic stage of their growth, for it enables the circles of affinity 
 within a tribe to increase and multiply their numbers without 
 a break, while at the same time it satisfies the conditions of 
 lawful intermarriage. But in these latter days of orderly 
 government in central India under British supervision the 
 raiding grounds of the Meenas have been sadly curtailed, and 
 women are not so easily captured or retained after capture. 
 Hence the Meenas are being forced back upon the resources of 
 their own tribe for the supply of wives ; and as one circle may 
 have too many girls while another has too few, the theologians 
 
 M 2
 
 THE FORMATION OF CLANS AND CASTES. [CiiAr. VII. 
 
 of the tribe are called in to discover orthodox reasons why two 
 members of the same circle may intermarry. The device, 
 however, by which this is effected is always by breaking up 
 one circle of affinity upon some plausible ground of distinct 
 ancestry, and re-forming it into two separate circles, with pedi- 
 grees properly disjoined, whereby is contrived a more con- 
 venient and productive distribution of marriageable females. 
 
 The present writer has carefully examined the ingredients 
 and composition, in different parts of India, of several of these 
 irregular tribes, which are neither pure clans of descent nor 
 castes, but seem to be in a state of transition. There is a 
 tribe in South West Rajputana called the Grassias, separate 
 from the Bheels, and ranking next above them in social order, 
 which is obviously of artificial and composite formation. The 
 word Grassia means a chief who has the right to collect dues, 
 originally of the nature of black-mail, from certain villages or 
 upon certain lands or roads ; and with this sense the name is 
 still in common use in certain parts of India. But here, 
 in Rajputana and the adjacent hills, it means a group of 
 people, who have their internal circles of affinity upon 
 the model of a regular clan ; and the Grassia is probably 
 of mixed Rajput blood, possibly in some cases he may be a 
 pure Rajput stock detached and isolated in the backwoods. 
 AVe may conjecture the designation to have been extended 
 to the original Grassia chief's kinsfolk and retainers, perhaps 
 also to the people who settled on his land and became 
 attached to him in various ways ; so that after this manner it 
 became applied to a separate set or association of men living 
 apart with the same habits and interests. Other half-blood 
 tribes, somewhat higher in the social scale, are the Meos and 
 the Mers ; the former are now Mahomedan, but still keep up 
 their circles of affinity; the latter claim Rajput lineage. 
 There is also a widely spread tribe of professional thieves 
 which is evidently by origin nothing more than an association 
 for the purpose of habitual robbery ; but even these people 
 pretend to a remote descent from Rajputs, and shape their 
 internal society upon the pattern of the clan. And the Bun- 
 garas, a clan which does all the carrying trade in the wild
 
 CHAP. VII.] INFLUENCE OF ORIGINAL FOUNDER. 165 
 
 parts of India, are made up by contingents from various other 
 castes and tribes, which have at different times joined the 
 profession. So that it may be affirmed generally that all 
 these intermediate groups have the same character of aggre- 
 gation from miscellaneous stocks, with inner circles of 
 affinity more or less numerous and orthodox. Upon the 
 evidence gathered it may not be too rash to hazard the 
 theory that in the conflux and consolidation of these groups 
 we can trace the working of the regular processes by which 
 tribes and clans are first formed, and of the circumstances 
 which favour and oppose growth. Let any cause drive 
 together a collection of stray families which have been cut off 
 from different stocks, the law of attraction groups them into a 
 tribe, banded together by force of circumstances, \>y living in 
 the same place and in the same way ; while the law of exogamy, 
 or marriage outside kinship, immediately begins to work each 
 family into a separate circle of affinity, and at the same time 
 strings together all these circles upon the tribal band of union, 
 like rings on a curtain-rod. If one of these circles has a great 
 run of success, if the group happens to produce a man of 
 remarkable luck and capacity, it may widen and develop to any 
 extent, and may become a clan. The prestige of a famous 
 leader, especially if he be a broken man out of a patrician clan 
 of descent, brings to his standard all the roving blades of the 
 country ; his kinsmen may leave their villages to join him 
 upon the rumours of his success ; and the hardy Bheel, ambi- 
 tious to shine in the company of a noble Aiyau captain, invalu- 
 able as a scout and a guide in the forests, attaches himself to 
 the association. David, son of Jesse, in his cave, a valiant 
 man of the pure clans, with his gathering of men in debt and 
 distress, and his hard-fighting kinsmen, the sons of Zeruiah, 
 is the type of the personages who first create a group, and 
 then push forward their particular circle of affinity until it 
 expands into a clan. We know that David did become an 
 eponymous ancestor of the first order, supplanting to a great 
 degree the original tribal founder; but he did not develop a group 
 of his own because he fought his way back to the chiefship of his 
 own tribe ; and the Semitic clan of descent is, accurately speak-
 
 166 THE FORMATION OP CLANS AND CASTES. [CHAP. TIL 
 
 ing, of a different variety from that which is now being described. 
 From companionship in war and venture the band soon closes 
 up into the idea of kinship, assuming the name and entering 
 the circle of its leader, who after death becomes the eponym- 
 ous ancestor, while his repute keeps the circle together by 
 preserving a common name and pride of descent. So long as 
 these advantages give predominance in war this circle com- 
 mands the market for wives, and is less tempted to split up 
 into sections or otherwise to break the strict rule which pro- 
 hibits marriage within itself. And, lastly, its prosperity soon 
 brings it under the patronage of Brahmans and of the strict 
 canon law, whereby it gradually acquires the dignity of ortho- 
 dox prejudices, and its loose customs are stereotyped by divine 
 sanction. Thus in the incessant struggle for existence among 
 barbarous races certain conditions of origin and environment 
 have favoured the predominance of selected groups ; so that 
 the perfect clan may represent the great oak of a forest, which 
 is the fortunate survivor of a thousand acorns, saplings, and 
 trees, which have succumbed to various misfortunes at various 
 stages of growth. A vast number of rudimentary clans must 
 have been cut off or disqualified early in their formation by 
 one or another of the innumerable calamities which beset 
 primitive mankind, or by some impediment or accident which 
 broke the circle of affinity or fatally reduced its strength. 
 War, famine, and pestilence are great disintegrating powers ; 
 the blood is corrupted, the genealogy is lost, the brethren are 
 scattered abroad to take to new habits of life and unauthorised 
 means of subsistence, to strange gods and maimed rites. 
 These broken groups re-form again like a fissiparous species ; 
 the leading emigrant, exile, or outcast may become the start- 
 ing point for a fresh circle of affinity ; but they are lost to the 
 clan, and lose way in the struggle. And as the great majority 
 of these circles fade away in outline, or break up again into 
 atoms before they can consolidate, there goes on a constant 
 decomposition and reproduction of groups at different stages, 
 whence we get at the extraordinary multitude of circles of 
 affinit}-, all alike in type and structure, but differing widely as 
 to their radius of prohibited degrees, which make up the
 
 CHAT. VII.] PROCESS OF AGGREGATION. 167 
 
 miscellany of Indian society. Within the outer circle of 
 castes, as distinguished from tribes, all the affinity circles 
 are necessarily smaller, for reasons that will he touched upon 
 presently. 
 
 It must he explained that this theory of the growth and 
 decay of clans is drawn from a good deal of actual minute 
 observation of what is still going on in the wilder regions of 
 India. There is, of course, good historic evidence for believing 
 that some of the Aryan clans were full grown when they first 
 entered India, though the fact is hardly demonstrable ; but the 
 theory is supposed to apply to the beginning of a clan any- 
 where. What can be still noted of this process of aggregation 
 of diverse families into circles of affinity does at any rate throw 
 some light upon a question which is raised both by Maine in 
 his "Ancient Law," and by Mr. McLennan in his " Primitive 
 Marriage." How, it is asked, has it come to pass that in those 
 primitive societies which assume as their basis a common 
 descent from one original stock one so constantly finds traces 
 of alien descent ? How came a variety of alien groups to 
 coalesce into a local tribe ? The fiction of male adoption is 
 suggested as the answer, but such adoption from alien stocks 
 is quite unknown throughout India, where the adoption of a 
 son is always made within the circle of affinity, ordinarily from 
 the nearest kindred. The real explanation may, perhaps, be 
 indicated by what we see in the hills and wolds of central 
 India, where the different stocks congregate by force of cir- 
 cumstances, and tend to form a tribe, and clans within a tribe, 
 under the name and prevailing influence of the most successful 
 groups. 
 
 It has already been suggested that a group in its earlier 
 stages pushes itself forward among and above other groups by 
 the great advantage of possessing a vigorous leader who be- 
 comes a famous ancestor. So great is this advantage, that 
 there is probability in the surmise that all the pure clans now 
 existing in central India have been formed around the nucleus 
 of a successful chief. Certainly that is the source to which all 
 the clans themselves attribute their rise ; and this view fits 
 with an analogy that runs through all ancient tradition and
 
 158 THE FORMATION OF CLANS AND CASTES. [CHAP. VII. 
 
 authentic history of the first gathering and amalgamation, 
 whether of men into a tribe, or of tribes into a kingdom or 
 empire. To borrow Carlyle's words, the perplexed jungle of 
 primitive society springs out of many roots, but the hero is the 
 tap-root from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished 
 and grown. In Europe, where the landmarks of nationalities are 
 fixed, and the fabric of civilisation firmly entrenched, people 
 are often inclined to treat as legendary the enormous part in 
 the foundation of their race or their institutions attributed 
 by primitive races to their heroic ancestor. Yet it may be 
 difficult to overrate the impression that must have been pro- 
 duced by daring and successful exploits upon the primitive world, 
 where the free impulsive play of a great man's forces is little 
 controlled by artificial barriers or solid breakwaters, and the 
 earth in its youth lies spread out before him, where to choose. 
 In such times, whether a group which is formed upon the open 
 surface of society shall spread out into a clan or a tribe, or 
 break up prematurely, seems to depend very much on the 
 strength and energy of its founder. It is like throwing stones 
 into a lake, which make small or great circles according to the 
 stone's size. Throw in a big stone, and you start a vigorous 
 widening circle with sharp outline, just as the splash made in 
 the early world by a mighty man of valour created a powerful 
 expanding circle of affinity. Throw in a pebble, and you have 
 a circle faintly outlined and soon exhausted, like the kinship 
 of an obscure ancestor. Then we can conceive how disruption 
 and combination would both be constantly at work. Half-a- 
 dozen minor groups or circles of affinity might be quietly 
 developing into tribes or clans, when a big boulder like Cyrus, 
 or Alexander, or Jinghiz Khan conies crushing into the middle 
 of the lake, overwhelming or absorbing all of them, only to be 
 formed again when these high waves of world-conquest shall 
 have again begun to subside. The captivities of the Jews are 
 examples of the way in which many a tribe of descent must 
 have been shattered. Ezra on his return to Jerusalem mourns 
 over the unlawful intermarriages of the people of Israel, the 
 priests, and even the Levites, with the alien tribes, " so that 
 the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those
 
 CHAP. VII.] RULES OF INTERMARRIAGE. ]69 
 
 lands; " and the genealogies of those who came up out of the 
 captivity were carefully overhauled. Certain families could 
 not show their father's house, and their seed, whether they were 
 of Israel; these were probably the children of the captivity, born 
 in exile, and they seem to have been excluded from the brother- 
 hood; while in other cases the true Israelites were readmitted 
 into the tribes on promising to put away their strange wives. 
 This careful inquiry into the genealogy of a clansman whose 
 family has been long settled at a distance is constantly prac- 
 tised among the Rajputs ; though if the Pathaii emperors had 
 transported a clan into central Asia it is doubtful if any would 
 have ever got back into their circle of affinity after an absence 
 of nearly a century. But a tribe of Israel intermarried within 
 its own circle, and could therefore settle its own marriage 
 questions ; whereas a Rajput has to satisfy the genealogic 
 scruples of a different clan. Ten of the tribes of Israel thus 
 disappeared for ever, unless we place faith in the tradition, 
 of itself not improbable, that they are the ancestors of the 
 Afghans ; and in the same manner there are traces all over 
 India of tribes lost or extinct, some of them cut off within 
 historic times by the pitiless sweep of some Pathan invader's 
 scimitar. But then again, in the confusion and anarchy of the 
 dilapidation of these huge top-heavy Asiatic empires, some 
 daring chief of just such a loose predatory tribe as we now see 
 gathered in the central Indian hills, issues out with his kindred 
 band and gets a name and a territory ; so that in the incessant 
 flux and change of Asiatic institutions the whole history of the 
 ascent from the cave of Adullam to the chiefship of a clan, to 
 the rulership over tribes, and sometimes to empire over a great 
 territory, is constantly repeating itself. 
 
 I have said already that the strict rules of intermarriage 
 which distinguish the pure central Indian clan of descent are 
 too rigid for a good working institution ; and indeed they 
 seem to have been modified, on social or political grounds, 
 all over the world by the clans which have developed further. 
 The Israelites clearly modified some custom of marriage 
 beyond the clan, and permitted intermarriage with the clan, 
 in order that the inheritance of daughters should not go out
 
 170 THE FORMATION OF CLANS AND CASTES. [CiiAV. VII. 
 
 of the clan by exogamy.* The Rajput never gives lands with 
 . his daughters, except possibly a lii'e interest in the revenue ; 
 and he adheres to his genealogies with a stringency that is 
 politically and socially unhealthy. Looking to the actual 
 condition and relative strength at this moment of the pure 
 and impure clans, some good judges are inclined to believe 
 the pure Rajputs to be an exhausted tribe which is reaching 
 its term, and that impure clans like the Meenas, which up to 
 very lately were adding to their number and strength by 
 enlisting all the hardy outlaws and venturous men of the 
 country, would, if the tribes were left to fight it out among 
 themselves, gradually push forward and subdue or expel the 
 Rajputs, who are now dominant over the Meenas. The 
 impure clans are rough and unscrupulous ; the pure clans are 
 shackled by all kinds of jealousies and punctilio, by luxurious 
 vices and the pride of race. These things not only touch the 
 spirit and physique of a clan ; they tend directly to diminish 
 its number. The very poor clansmen cannot marry their 
 daughters ; while the rich clansmen have too many wives, 
 being incessantly importuned to take a portionless daughter, 
 if only for the name of the thing, off the hands of a poor and 
 proud neighbour. Hence the deplorable rarity of heirs among 
 the leading Rajput. families, and the direct encouragement to 
 two ruinous social practices, female infanticide and polygamy. 
 There is probably a natural tendency in the pure clan of 
 descent, as in the exclusive aristocracies, to become enervated 
 after passing its grand climacteric, when the tie of blood 
 which united the early conquering bands becomes too tight 
 for the free spread of a settled community, until it is over- 
 thrown and superseded by a more vigorous group in its earlier 
 and therefore more elastic stages, with prejudices and pro- 
 hibitions not yet stereotyped. If some such revolution were 
 even now to bring an impure clan into predominance in central 
 India, it is prett}- certain that the new lords of the dominion 
 would at once proceed to set up as patricians, to cluster 
 
 * See Numbers xxxvi. The divisions of the Israelites appear to have 
 belonged to the species of genealogic clans, though in compliance with usage 
 they are sometimes called tribes in this paper.
 
 CHAP. VII.] TRIBAL REVOLUTIONS. 171 
 
 round eponyms, to lay down the straitest rules about purity 
 of blood, and to settle down under Brahmanic direction on 
 the lines of a pure-blooded race. For the predilection of all 
 these rough clans towards becoming particular and ortho- 
 dox as they rise in the Indian world is very marked ; being 
 due, of course, to the increasing pressure of the Brahmanic 
 atmosphere as they ascend. 
 
 After this manner, in prehistoric days, the impure clan may 
 have been constantly developing into the pure clan, drawing 
 closer the lines of patrician kinship and of religion as it 
 worked its way upward ; while again the pure clan, having 
 reached its full as an institution, begins to decline and give 
 place to younger groups under more capable leaders than the 
 effete descendants of ancient heroes. But the time for such 
 tribal revolutions has gone by in India, because the sur- 
 rounding world has advanced too far ahead of these primitive 
 peoples cooped up in the central regions. The only political 
 speculation now worth making regarding the clans, is how 
 these antique groups will manage to melt themselves down 
 in the crucible of civilisation, and to join the general asso- 
 ciation of modern India. At the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century the clans showed symptoms of feudalising, under the 
 influence of events similar to those which transformed Europe 
 during the break-up of the Carlovingian Empire. At the 
 end of that century the Rana of Oodipoor, whose ancestor 
 had the leadership of all the clans, was reduced to the 
 condition of the last of the Merovingians. All the clans 
 would have been broken up politically if the English had not 
 interfered ; and it is now very hard to guess whether the 
 ruling chiefs will preserve separate political States, when the 
 clan may merge into an aristocracy of the general population ; 
 or whether the great old families will filter through the Fergus 
 Mclvor phase of cultured chieftainship into an hereditary 
 nobility of the empire. 
 
 Thus far we have been tracing the development and the 
 operation upon primitive society of the unmixed idea of 
 kinship. Undoubtedly, as has been suggested already, kinship 
 as an institution in India has been fostered and cemented by
 
 172 THE FORMATION OF CLANS AND CASTES. [CHAP. VII. 
 
 the influence of a powerful religion. Perhaps only in India 
 have the religious notions common to all early polytheisms 
 been concentrated in the hands of a great Levitic tribe, 
 the Brahrnans, who have for centuries undertaken to in- 
 terpret the divine rules and provide the sanctions upon which 
 every Asiatic society necessarily rests. And as the marriage 
 law lies at the foundation of society, this of course has fallen 
 specialty under Brahmanic jurisdiction, so that the prevail- 
 ing customs and sentiments of a tribe, which may have been 
 originally formed according to practical needs and experi- 
 ments at a level below the Brahmanic atmosphere, become 
 hardened into sacred laws as they emerge into orthodox 
 latitudes. Yet Brahmanism chiefly registers and confirms ; 
 being itself an inorganic sort of religion, it has never at- 
 tempted any sweeping reforms of the rude tribal customs, 
 such as are introduced everywhere by Christianity or Islam. 
 It is remarkable how completely, from Bosnia to Rajputana, 
 religious antipathy exterminates the sympathy of race, when- 
 ever the two principles come into collision. And Islam in 
 India has a very distinctive effect upon early institutions it 
 crushes out the innumerable sects and rituals of heathendom, 
 and -abolishes among its proselytes their Gentile marriage 
 laws. Some of the half-blood tribes of Central India, which 
 were converted by the Mussulman emperors, have struggled 
 hard against this process ; and up to this day they have clung 
 in a most curious wa} r to their ideas of kinship, though they 
 are now being rapidly absorbed under one uniform canon. 
 
 But although Brahmauisin, so far as it is systematically 
 administered, operates as a cement to the rude edifice of primi- 
 tive kinship, yet the working of religious ideas among the 
 population is a mighty agent in what Sir H. Maine has called 
 the " trituration " of Hindu society. We know that the word 
 Hindu denotes no common religious denomination, but com- 
 prises a vast multitude of Indians who have for ages been 
 absorbed, beyond all other people upon earth, in attempting to 
 decipher the way of the gods with mankind and the tokens of 
 divinity ; and who still continue, everywhere 
 
 "En-are, atque viain palautes quaerere vitae."
 
 CHAP. VII.] RISE OF SECTS. 173 
 
 "While the higher intellects, like Buddha, are disgusted equally 
 with the ways of gods and of men, and only desire to e*scape 
 out of sensation into the silence, the crowd still stands gazing 
 at the heavens. Among a people with this turn of mind new- 
 worships and new sects have incessantly arisen. Now it 
 appears that a religious body with some distinctive object of 
 worship or singular rule of devotion has usually (though not 
 invariably) come to split off into a separate group, which, 
 though based upon a common religion, constructs itself upon 
 the plan of a tribe. The common faith or worship forms the 
 outer circle, which has gradually shut off a sect not only from 
 intermarriage but even from eating with outsiders; while inside 
 this circumference the regular circles of affinity have estab- 
 lished themselves independently, just as families settle and 
 expand within the pale of a half-grown tribe. Each body of 
 proselytes from different tribes and castes has preserved its 
 identity as a distinct stock, keeping up the fundamental pro- 
 hibition against marriage within the particular group of com- 
 mon descent. But with some other group of the sect it is 
 essential to marry ; and thus in the course of time has been 
 reproduced upon a basis of common belief or worship the 
 original circle of a tribe, beyond which it is impossible to 
 contract a legitimate marriage. "Where the sect has hardened 
 into a caste, it is quite impossible for any one to marry beyond 
 it; but where the sect is of recent formation, difference of 
 religious belief is not so absolute a bar ; and under the juris- 
 diction of English law there is a growing tendency toward 
 disregarding the impediment, at any rate the courts are in- 
 clined to discourage it. It seems certain, for example, that 
 two or three generations ago the Sikhs, who are a religious 
 sect by origin, only intermarried with Sikhs ; but they are 
 now known to marry often with others who, though not of 
 their rite, are of their original tribe. And a man can now 
 adopt or relinquish any special form of Brahmanic worship, or 
 even Jainism, without prejudice to his status ; although in the 
 case of a great banker who imported from South India a very 
 unusual ritual, the question was undoubtedly raised. On the 
 other hand, several instances could be given of sects having
 
 174 THE FORM ATI OX OF CLANS AND CASTES. [CHAP. VII. 
 
 gradually rounded themselves off into complete castes, neither 
 eating nor marrying with any beyond the pale. 
 
 We can thus make out an analogy between the process of 
 the formation of a tribe and that of some of the religious 
 castes. It has been already said that a wild tribe seems to 
 grow out of a collection of recruits from the settled communi- 
 ties, who either from necessity or a love of adventure join 
 together under some notable leader. So likewise in the 
 spiritual world a sect often begins with a gathering of 
 venturesome thinkers or enthusiasts, who leave the trodden 
 paths of religion and set up for themselves with a few fol- 
 lowers ; to whom sometimes repair outcastes, persons excom- 
 municate, publicans and sinners, and other such who have 
 good reasons for quitting the caste-circle in which ihey were 
 bom. In Northern India there are several of these purely 
 sectarian castes whose origin can be historically traced back 
 to a famous personage, often a good fighter as well as preacher, 
 who is now the semi-divine head-centre of the caste. Within 
 at least one of these castes the idea of affinity has woven during 
 the last three or four centuries a wonderful network of sepa- 
 rate groups, deriving from the various clans, castes, or families 
 of the proselytes who at sundry times and in divers places have 
 joined the sect. These perfect specimens of the development 
 of a caste from a sect are not common ; there are many petty 
 sects which, although more or less insulated by their peculiar 
 doctrine, never attain the scale of a caste, and which seem to 
 owe their low development to the obscurity of their founder, 
 probably some casual outcaste. It will be understood that a 
 Hindu who, having broken the rules of his caste, is dismissed 
 beyond the rim of his outer circle, finds himself altogether at 
 sea, with no social anchorage whatever. He has neither 
 nationality, tribe, clan, caste, or family ; he is literally in an 
 indescribable condition. The best resource for a religious 
 outsider of this sort, who does not take to " the hills of 
 the robbers," is to start a religion of his own, and to get 
 others to join him. If he be of the mystic turn of mind, 
 he can have a call, and can turn the flank of orthodoxy by 
 opening out direct intercourse with a god ; he can show a new
 
 CHAP. VII.] RELIGIOUS CASTES. 175 
 
 light which in the dim religious twilight of India attracts rest- 
 less souls as a lantern brings moths out of the summer dark- 
 ness. If, as often happens, he is rather crazy and fanatic, he 
 ma}- do precisely what mad Thoni did fifty years ago in the 
 Kentish woods within sight of Canterbury Cathedral pro- 
 claim himself an incarnation, lead a body of wild rustics into 
 some brawl, and get himself killed. He may then become a 
 local saint, with a petty group of distinctive worshippers. 
 But it needs a great enthusiast or illumine to found a caste; 
 a very great one may go near to founding a nationality, as is 
 shown by the example of the Sikhs ; and the greatest of all 
 these Indian spiritualists, Sakya Gotarna, changed the religion 
 of Eastern Asia. 
 
 It will be understood that this paper only touches upon the 
 subject of castes which seem to originate out of peculiarities 
 of worship and belief, and has nothing to say about that very 
 large class of castes which are formed out of association in 
 professions, trades, or crafts. One thing worth noticing, how- 
 ever, is that the Brahmans, whom most people would assume 
 to be a religious caste par excellence, betray symptoms of being 
 by origin a caste by profession or calling. For though the 
 Brahman caste is now a vast circle inclosing a number of 
 separate Levitic tribes, which again are subdivided into num- 
 berless family groups, yet several of these tribes appear to 
 have developed out of literary and sacerdotal guilds. Indeed, 
 one distinctive tenet of the Hindu Broad Church, which rests 
 (I am told) upon passages quoted from the Vedas, affirms that 
 Brahnianism does not properly come by caste or descent, but 
 by learning and devotional exercises. This is now laid down 
 as an ethical truth ; it was probably at first a simple fact. 
 There is fair evidence that several of these Brahrnanic tribes 
 have at different periods been promoted into the caste circle by 
 virtue of having acquired in some outlying province or king- 
 dom (where Brahrnaus proper could not be had) a monopoly of 
 the study and interpretation of the sacred books ; and hamng 
 devoted themselves for generations to this profession, at last 
 graduated as full Brahmans, though of a different tribe from 
 the earlier schools. Some glimpse of the very lowest rudi- 

 
 176 THE FORMATION OF CLANS AND CASTES. [Cn.u>. VII. 
 
 mentary stage of a Levitic caste (that is, a caste with a spe- 
 ciality for ritual and interpretation of the sacred books) may 
 still be obtained in the most backward parts of India. The 
 Meena tribe, which has already been mentioned, is as to its re- 
 ligion in the ordinary state of slow transition toward Brah- 
 manism ; the superior section, which lives northward toward 
 Delhi, being under the ministry of accommodating Brahman s, 
 while the clans of the remote south-west are beef- eating and 
 utterly excommunicate. These last-mentioned clans have got 
 attached to them a Levitic tribe of their own, as Robin Hood 
 had his Friar Tuck, who perform the essential social rites and 
 expound the caprices of divinity. "The story of this tribe's 
 origin, according to the Meenas, is that most of these families 
 are descended from pure Brahmans who have from time to 
 time been persuaded or forced by some wild chief or captain 
 of the pure clans to officiate in a human sacrifice ; and that, 
 having thereby quite forfeited their pure caste, they became 
 degraded, and were driven forth to minister into the tribes be- 
 yond the pale. This story must not hastily be set aside as 
 improbable, for the tradition of human sacrifice is still so 
 powerful in that part of India, that within the last two years 
 a whole tribe of Bheels has fled to the hills upon the rumour 
 that a Rajput chief intended to celebrate his accession as ruler 
 by sacrificing one of them ; and human sacrifice was un- 
 doubtedly practised in the backwoods of India up to the end 
 of the last century by others beside the aboriginal tribes. 
 These Meena Levites appear to be a collection of all kinds of 
 waifs and cuttings from the upper religious castes ; they may 
 possibly rise in respectability as their clients get on in the 
 world ; and one might almost hazard the speculation, though 
 it will be received with horror in certain quarters, that they are 
 something like a Brahmanic tribe in faint embryo. 
 
 The attempt has now been made to describe what may be 
 observed, by looking at Indian society in a very primitive and 
 unsophisticated state, of two processes of social growth the 
 formation of tribes and clans under the working of the simple 
 idea of kinship, and the formation of sectarian castes, with in- 
 terior kindred groups, under the more complicated working of
 
 CHAP. VII.] XARKOWIXG OF CIRCLES. 177 
 
 the ideas of kinship and religion combined. It would seeni to 
 be a reasonable theoiy that the caste, as an institution, is of a 
 later formation than the tribe. For, so far as the actual course 
 of things can be watched, in early and wild times a tribe or 
 clan regularly throws off another tribe or clan after its own 
 kind, as swarms come out of a wild bees' nest, the state of 
 the world being favourable to the existence of such groups. 
 But there comes a later period when the pressure of powerful 
 dj-nasties and the rise of industrial bodies render tribal 
 formations no longer possible, driving men into peaceful 
 pursuits, and swallowing up petty warlike independencies. 
 In the western world these agencies rapidly obliterated 
 the tribes, and gradually produced the modern populations, 
 pounded up and measured out into nationalities, with their 
 circles of affinity narrowed down to the immediate family. In 
 India religion seems to have stepped in as the tribal institu- 
 tions dissolved, and to have strung all the kindred groups 
 upon the circle which we call caste. "Within a caste the inner 
 circles of affinity survive, but in a stunted condition as com- 
 pared with a clan within a tribe, it being obviously impossible 
 that in tin's altered phase of society the kindred groups should 
 continue to hold together by descent from a common stock. 
 The folk take to various occupations, inhabit different places, 
 contract strange marriages, worship other gods ; the ups and 
 downs of a more complicated life break short the pedigree, 
 sever the kinship, and rub off the patronymic; the distant 
 branches of a family fall out of sight, and the long genealogies 
 of the clan give place to the comparatively narrow tables of 
 prohibited degrees which prevail among castes. Then the 
 trade, or the profession, or the common ritual becomes the 
 bond of union instead of descent or political association ; and 
 thus the mixed population of India may have rearranged itself 
 into castes, propelled into those grooves by the archaic and 
 inveterate exclusiveness of primitive Asiatics regarding mar- 
 riage and food. You must not many one of your own blood, 
 but neither must you marry a stranger of unknown descent and 
 foreign habits ; your caste means those with whom you may 
 safely intermarry and share food, without risk of incurring
 
 178 THE FORMATION OP CLASS AND CASTES. [CHAP. VII. 
 
 some unlucky taint which may give you much trouble in this 
 existence and the next. 
 
 Whether the new ideas encouiaged (if not generated) every- 
 where by English rule in India are not dissolving, in their 
 turn, the castes as well as the tribes, may be a remote specu- 
 lation worth hinting at. The spread of what we may call 
 mysticism in certain pails of India has been much noticed by 
 the natives themselves, and by very competent observers among 
 the missionaries. One of these last (Mr. Shoolbred, of Ajmere) 
 writes, in a valuable paper upon religious and social movements, 
 that " the surface-drifting of the semi-Hinduized classes 
 toward orthodoxy is nothing in comparison with the current 
 which is setting in among the people toward sects and secret 
 societies that disown caste prejudices about bodily purity and 
 distinctive ceremonial." This tendency of religious enthusiasm 
 to shake off the restraints of traditional external forms, and to 
 prefer the vague disorderly suggestions of spiritual freemasonry 
 and inward grace, is a known symptom of the decline of priestly 
 influence, and of the rise of a kind of democracy in religion, 
 which, if it spreads, will soon disintegrate the Indian caste. 
 
 This'very condensed account of the condition and tendencies 
 of social matters in an outlying part of India may possibly be 
 useful to those who are working by the comparative method at 
 the foundations of history and sociology generally. It may have 
 some bearings upon much that has recently been written about 
 early institutions in Europe. Here in India, for instance, can 
 still be seen primitive sets of people who never came under the 
 arbitrary despotism of a single man, and among whom no 
 written law has ever been made since the making of the world. 
 Yet these people are not loose incoherent assemblages of 
 savages, but are very ancient societies, restrained and 
 stringently directed by custom and usage, by rules and rites 
 irresistible. " The Greeks," writes Mr. Freeman, "were the 
 first people who made free commonwealths, and who put the 
 power of the law instead of mere force and the arbitrary will of 
 a single man;" and whatever impression this passage might 
 convey to the students for which it was written, others might 
 hastily infer from it that in the ancient world men were all
 
 CHAP. VII.] EARLY PHASES OF SOCIETY. 179 
 
 lawless or under despotisms until the Greeks invented free 
 institutions. Perhaps it may be suggested that what the 
 Greeks did invent is political citizenship and rules of conduct 
 under State sanction. Between the clans and the common- 
 wealths the difference is not so much between lawlessness and 
 free institutions, as between the primitive man, whose social 
 and political customs are as much part of his species as the 
 inherited habits of an animal, and the highly civilised man, who 
 consciously chooses his own laws and form of government ac- 
 cording to expediency and logic. Politically speaking, the 
 extremes of two systems may be seen by contrasting those 
 tribal States of Central India which are presided over each by 
 a chief of the eldest family of the oldest stock in the clan, with 
 the United States of America, founded upon and held together 
 by a written constitution setting forth abstract rights. In the 
 Indian State we have the rigid circle of affinity hedging in the 
 political privileges of a dominant clan, and resting upon close 
 marriage rules ; in the American State we see citizenship open 
 to any foreigner who applies for it, absolute equality before a 
 written code, and often a most liberal law of divorce. Whether 
 across the wide interval which separates the earliest and latest 
 phases of Aryan institutions may still be traced any connected 
 filiation of ideas is a speculation not to be entered upon here ; 
 possibly the theory that the peculiar demise of the French 
 kingship followed a rule of the law of inheritance among the 
 Salian tribe, is the most notable European instance of the 
 distorted survival of a tribal custom. 
 
 " The forms of the Juden Gesse, rousing the sense of union 
 with what is remote, set him musing on the two elements of 
 our historic life which that sense raises into the same region of 
 poetry the faint beginnings of ancient faiths and institutions, 
 and their obscure lingering decay." This is what was suggested 
 to Daniel Deronda by the scene in the synagogue at Frankfort; 
 and the passage touches the way of thought into which English- 
 men are led in India, by looking around them at the actual 
 institutions and worships of a primitive people, and endeavour- 
 ing to see clearly among what manner of men they find them- 
 selves. One seems to be catching at the beginnings of 
 
 N 2
 
 ISO THE FORMATION OF CLANS AND CASTES. [CHAP. YIL 
 
 European nations, and to discern a little less dimly what the 
 ancient generations of one's own folk were thinking about in 
 the foretime, and what motives or conceptions, now extinct in 
 Western Europe, presided over the infancy of some of the 
 ideas and institutions which lie at the roots of European 
 society.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE RAJPUT STATES OP INDIA. 
 
 Political institutions of Rajpiitana preserved by the English Description of the 
 country called Rajputana, its boundaries, and the States which it includes 
 Origin and development of Rajpiit States and the dominant clans Brief 
 retrospect of their history during the time of the Moghal empire ; connection 
 of the ruling families with the Emperors Effect on Rajputana of period of 
 anarchy duiing 18th century when the empire collapsed The States rescued 
 from destruction by the English Government Extinction of predatory rights 
 by Lord Hastings, and his establishment of permanent peace Examination 
 of the constitution of a Rajput State and of the nature of its organization : 
 the Chief is the head of a clan, and the descendant of the State's founder 
 Rules of succession to chiefship and customary practice of selection ; the 
 hereditary right subject to condition of fitness Policy of English Government 
 in disputed cases Subordinate chiefs and landholders, their rights and obli- 
 gations Tenures not feudal, but according to tribal usages and privileges of 
 kinship Primogeniture Marriage customs Religious movements Foster- 
 age Remarks on the character and durability of these institutions. 
 
 ONE of the popular notions in England and Europe regarding 
 the establishment of the English empire in India is that our 
 conquests absorbed nationalities, displaced long-seated dynas- 
 ties, and levelled ancient .nobilities. These are some of the 
 self-accusations by which the average home-keeping English- 
 man justifies to himself the indulgence of sitting down and 
 casting dust on his head whenever he looks back upon the 
 exploits of his countrymen in India an attitude which is 
 observed by foreigners with suspicion or impatience according 
 to their insight into English character. Yet it would be easy 
 to prove that one important reason why the English so rapidly 
 conquered India was this, that the countries which fell into 
 our hands had no nationalities, no long-seated ruling dynasties, 
 or ancient aristocracies, that they had, in fact, no solid or perma-
 
 1 82 THE EAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 nent organization of the kind, but were politically treasure trove, 
 and at the disposal of the first who, having found, could keep. 
 The best proof that in these countries the English destroyed 
 no organized political institutions is the historical fact that in 
 the countries which they annexed none such had been left for 
 them to destroy. On the other hand, where indigenous 
 political institutions of long standing do still exist, it is the 
 English who have saved them from destruction ; and this may 
 best be illustrated by giving some description of the only con- 
 siderable region of India in which such institutions still prac- 
 tically survive, having resisted for centuries the incessant 
 attacks of Mahomedan invaders, and the crushing weight of 
 the Moghal empire. That these institutions did not at last 
 topple over and disappear toward the end of that long storm 
 of anarchy which swept the length and breadth of India for a 
 hundred years after the death of the Emperor Aurungzeb in 
 1707, is mainly due to their protection at the last moment by 
 the English, who may thus claim at least the credit of having 
 rescued the only ancient political structures in Northern 
 India which their predecessors had been unable to de- 
 molish. 
 
 The region to which we refer is that which is now called, in 
 the administrative nomenclature of the Indian empire, Rajpu- 
 tana; and, by the natives of India, Rajasthan, or the country 
 of the Chiefs. It is the region within which the pure-blooded 
 Rajput clans have maintained their independence under their 
 own chieftains, and have in some instances kept together their 
 primitive societies, ever since the dominion of the Rajputs 
 over the great plains of North- Western India was cast down 
 and broken to pieces seven centuries ago by the Musulman 
 irruptions from Central Asia. The first Musulman invasions, 
 found Rajput dynasties ruling in all the chief cities of the 
 North and over the rich Gangetic plains Eastward to the con- 
 fines of modern Bengal at Lahore, Delhi, Kanauj and 
 Ayodhya. Out of these great cities and fertile lands the 
 Rajput Chiefs were driven forth Southward and Westward into 
 the central regions of India, where a more difficult country 
 gave them a second line of defence against the foreigners. And
 
 CHAP. VIII.] THE COUNTRY DESCRIBED. 183 
 
 this line they have held not unsuccessfully up to the present 
 day. The boundaries of their actual territory are not easily 
 defined without a map, though no boundaries of political terri- 
 tory in India have varied so little in historic times. After the 
 earliest Mahornedan conquests the Rajput country seems to 
 have extended (speaking roughly) from the Indus and the 
 Sutlej on the West and North-West, right across the Indian, 
 continent Eastward up to the vicinity of the Jumna River at 
 Agra and Delhi, and Southward until it touched the Vindhya 
 range of mountains. This great central region had for its 
 natural barriers on the West and North- West the desert, on 
 the East the rocky broken tracts which run along West of the 
 Jumna, and on the South the passes and woodlands of the 
 Vindhya mountains. And though in many parts of this 
 country, to the South and South-East especially, the dominion 
 of the Rajputs has been overlaid by Mahornedan or Maratha 
 usurpations, yet everywhere Rajput septs or petty chiefships 
 may still be found existing in various degrees of independence. 
 And there are, of course, Rajput Chiefs outside Rajputana 
 altogether, though none of political importance. But Rajpu- 
 tana proper, the country still under the independent rule of 
 the most ancient families of the purest clans, may now be 
 understood generally to mean the great tract that would be 
 crossed by two lines, of which one should be drawn on the 
 map of India from the frontier of Sind Eastward to the gates 
 of Agra; and the other from the Southern border of the 
 Punjab Government near the Sutlej Southward and Soutli- 
 Eastward until it meets the broad belt of Maratha States under 
 the Guicowar, Holkar, and Scindia, which runs across India 
 from Baroda to Gwalior. This territory is divided into nine- 
 teen States, of which sixteen are possessed by Rajput clans, 
 and the Chief of the clan or sept is the State's ruler. To the 
 Sesodia clan, the oldest and purest blood in India, belong the 
 States of Oodeypoor, Banswarra/Pertabgarh and Shahpura; to 
 the Rathore clan, the States of Jodhpoor and Bikanir; Jeypoor 
 and Ulwar to the Kuchwaha, and so on. 
 
 Of these States the highest in rank and the most important 
 politically are the States of Oodeypoor, Jodhpoor and Jeypoor.
 
 184 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAI-. VIII. 
 
 The ancestors of the family which now rules in Oodeypoor 
 were hereditar}' leaders of the clan which has held from time 
 immemorial, from a date before the earliest Mahomedan inva- 
 sion, the country which now forms the territory of their Chief; 
 the Chiefs of Jodhpoor and Jeypoor are the descendants of 
 families who gave princes to the tribes that were dominant in 
 Upper India before the Musulmans came. In fact, all these 
 States have very much the same territorial origin ; they are 
 the lands which a clan, or a sept, or a family, has seized and 
 settled upon, and have managed to hold fast through centuries 
 of warfare. And what we know of the manner in which these 
 States were founded gives a very fair sample of the movements 
 and changes of the primitive world. When the dominant 
 Rajput families lost their dominion in the rich Gangetic plains, 
 one part of their <;lan seems to have remained in the conquered 
 country, having submitted to the foreigner, cultivating in 
 strong communities of villages and federations of villages, and 
 paying such land tax as the ruler could extract. These com- 
 munities still exist and flourish in British India, where there 
 are very many more Rajputs than in Rajputana. Another part 
 of the clan, probably the near kinsmen of the defeated Chief, 
 followed his family into exile, and helped him to carve out 
 another, but a much poorer, dominion. They discovered a tract 
 just productive enough to yield them food, and wild enough to 
 shelter them from the great armies of the foreigner. Here the 
 Chief built himself a fort upon a hill ; his clansmen slew or sub- 
 dued the tribes they found in possession of the soil, and the 
 lands were all parcelled off among the Chief's kinsfolk, the 
 indigenous proprietors being subjected to payment of a land tax, 
 but not otherwise degraded. Having thus made a settlement 
 and a city of refuge, the Chief and his Rajputs started upon 
 an interminable career of feuds and forays, striving eternally 
 to enlarge their borders at the cost of their neighbours. When 
 the land grew too strait for the support of the Chiefs family, 
 or of the sept, that is, when there were no vacant allotments, a 
 landless son of the Chief would assemble a band and set forth 
 to make room for himself elsewhere. If he was lucky, he 
 found his room ; if not, the family was rid of his company ; in
 
 CHAP. VIII.] THE DOMINANT CLAXS. 185 
 
 either event he was provided for. In this way the whole 
 country of Rajputana was occupied by the clans and septs 
 which we now find there ; and their territories are now called 
 by us States ; but these States are constitutionally quite unlike 
 any others in India. For while everything else in the political 
 order of India has changed, the Rajput States have managed 
 to preserve unaltered much of their original structure, built up 
 out of the needs and circumstances of primitive life. The 
 strain of incessant warfare in which these tribal sovereignties 
 were engaged from their foundation centuries ago until the 
 English peace of 1818, has served to keep tight the bonds 
 which held them together, without being violent enough to 
 break them asunder. Of course the original type has under- 
 gone some modifications; towns have grown up round the 
 ancient forts ; the lands of each sept have gradually, and by 
 constant friction, rounded themselves off into distinct terri- 
 tories ; and the Chiefs have in some instances succeeded in 
 modernizing their status toward the likeness of territorial 
 sovereignt} r . But on the whole there are probably few. or no 
 political fabrics having any pretence to be called States, in any 
 part of historic Asia, which have suffered so little essential 
 change between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries, a period 
 which for Rajputana was one long war-time, from the first 
 inroads of the Ghaznevi kings to the final pacification of 
 Central India by the military and political measures of the 
 English Governor-General, Lord Hastings. 
 
 During these seven centuries or so the Rajput clans had 
 various fortunes. The kings of the early Musulman dynasties 
 in Northern India pierced their country from end to end by 
 rapid rushing invasions, plundering and ransoming, breaking 
 the idols, and razing the beautifully sculptured temples, Budd- 
 hist and Brahmanic. But so long as the object of these 
 incursions was mere booty or fanatical slaughter, there was not 
 much to be got out of the interior of Rajputana. The Chiefs 
 retired to their fortresses, great circuuivallations of the broad 
 tops of scarped hills, with three or four lines of defence, 
 strongholds which cost the enemy a siege of some twelve or 
 eighteen months, with the grand finale of a desperate sally
 
 186 THE EAJPUT STATES OF IXDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 en masse upon your lines by the garrison, without hope or 
 fear, dressed in saffron garments, drunk with opium and with 
 the hloocl of their own womankind. The victor in obstinate 
 and dangerous conflicts of this kind found himself paying rather 
 dear for a warlike triumph ; and as for conquest in the sense 
 of establishing permanent dominion, the country was not worth 
 the trouble of holding it against the clans and their faithful 
 allies, the aboriginal non-Aryan tribes of the jungle. So early 
 as the end of the twelfth century, nevertheless, the Maho- 
 medans had discovered the great importance, as a point 
 d'appui in the middle of the Rajput country, of Ajniere, a 
 city lying at the foot of an almost impregnable hill fort, well 
 watered for these arid tracts, in a situation at once strong,, 
 central, and most picturesque. The fort was taken by the 
 Afghan King Shahab-ud-din at the end of the twelfth century, 
 and on the crest of the hill the traveller is still shown a grave- 
 yard thick with mounds, where are said to He the bones of the 
 faithful Islamites who fell in the storm,* or in the massacre by 
 which the Rajputs celebrated the fort's recapture a few years- 
 later. Since then Ajmere has been lost and won several 
 times ; its possession being the symbol of political predomi- 
 nance in Rajputana ; for it is a Castle Dangerous which no- 
 government could hold in the midst of the clans without 
 powerful supports and the prestige of military superiority. 
 The Moghal Emperors made it an imperial residence in the 
 seventeenth century ; in the confusion of the eighteenth 
 century the Rajputs got it again for a while, but soon had to- 
 yield it to the Maratha chief Sindhia, then at the height of his 
 fortunes. By him it was ceded, with the lands adjoining, to- 
 the British in 1818 ; and thus for six centuries or more, with 
 a few intervals, Ajmere has contained the garrison by which 
 the masters of India have enforced their paramount jurisdic- 
 tion over the "unruly clans of Rajputana. 
 
 But if we except this important occupation of Ajmere, the 
 
 * It is called the Ganj Shahid, or dan fortress of ancient renown that is- 
 
 granary of martyrs (semen fidei) ; but properly fitted out for the satisfaction 
 
 we are bound to add that this edifying of devout pilgrims, 
 memorial is shown in every Mahome-
 
 CHAP. Till.] HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. 187 
 
 Mahornedan inroads made little lasting impression upon the 
 Rajput countries up to the end of the fourteenth century. 
 The capture of even the chief stronghold of a clan, as of 
 Chitor the citadel of the Sesodias, was only one of the more 
 famous incidents, marked by unusual carnage, of constant war. 
 AVhen, however, the empire of the Toghlak dynasty at Delhi 
 went to pieces ahout the close of the fourteenth century, two 
 Musulman kingdoms were set up, independent of Delhi, in the 
 Southern Provinces of Guzerat and of Malwa. These powers 
 wrested from the Rajputs their most fertile dominions in the 
 South and South- West, and thus confined the free clans 
 still more closely within their natural barrier of hills, wood- 
 land, or waste. Henceforward the territory which they have 
 permanently possessed has been mainly defined by one or both 
 of two conditions comparative poverty of production, or diffi- 
 culty of access. For a short interval of the sixteenth century, 
 indeed, the talents and valour of the famous Rana Sanga of 
 Oodeypoor, the Chief of the Sesodia clan, once more enlarged 
 the borders of the Hajpiits ; and obtained for them predomi- 
 nance throughout Central India. This was the leader who in 
 1527, at the head ,of all the cavalry of the united clans (said 
 to have numbered 100,000 horsemen), encountered the Emperor 
 Baber near Agra on the Eastern frontier of Rajputana, and was 
 defeated after a furious conflict. Baber's victory established 
 the empire of the Moghals, as it is popularly called in India as 
 well as in England. After his death the struggle for empire 
 between Baber's family and the Afghan Sher Shah, which 
 lasted up to the accession of the great Akbar in 1560, allowed 
 the rival clans of the Sesodias and the Rathores, under their 
 Chiefs at Oodeypoor and Jodhpoor, to rise successively to pre- 
 dominance among the Rajputs, and to obtain greater poh'tical 
 power than has ever since been held by any Chief. But the 
 Emperor Akbar represented the power of the Moghal empire 
 at the full, wielded by one man of singular ability both in civil 
 and military affairs. He undertook to subdue and settle 
 Rajputana systematically ; he recovered Ajmere ; Chitor, the 
 citadel of the premier Chief of the eldest clan, was again 
 besieged and taken with the usual desperate sortie and
 
 188 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 massacre of the defenders ; the other chiefs were overawed and 
 conciliated. Akbar took to wife the daughters of two great 
 Rajput families ; he gave their sons high rank in his army, 
 and succeeded in enlisting the Rajputs (except only the proud 
 Sesodia clan) not only as tributaries but as adherents. After 
 him Jehangir made Ajniere his headquarters;* the Rajput 
 princesses became the wives and mothers of Moghal Emperors ; 
 the Chiefs entered the imperial service as governors and 
 generals ; they sent their regular contingents to join the army, 
 and the headlong charges of their Rajput cavalry became 
 famous in the wars of the empire. The Emperors Jehangir 
 and Shah Jehan were both sons of Rajput mothers ; their kin- 
 ship with the clans helped them powerfully in the contest 
 which every Emperor had to pass through before he could 
 succeed to the throne, while the strain of Hindu blood softened 
 their fanaticism and mitigated their foreign contempt for the 
 natives of India. But Aurungzeb, the son of Shah Jehan, 
 was a Mahomedan by fuH parentage, and a bigoted Islamite by 
 temper ; the Rajputs had fought hard on the side of his elder 
 brother Dara against his usurpation, and the Sesodia Chief had 
 actually intercepted a daughter of the Rathore family who had 
 been betrothed to Aurungzeb. So he made bitter war, though 
 very unsuccessfully, on the Sesodias and in Rajputana gene- 
 rall}', whereby he had thoroughly alienated the clans before he 
 died. It was his policy to employ the chiefs on distant wars ; 
 and during his reign one Rajput Chief governed the province 
 of Kabul for the empire, and another commanded an army in 
 the Deccan ; but Aurungzeb is said to have had them both 
 poisoned. 
 
 The whole period of 151 years, from Akbar's accession to 
 Aurungzeb's death, is occupied by the reigns of only four 
 Emperors ; and the fact that every one of these four was much 
 superior to the average standard of Asiatic despots, is a good 
 argument on behalf of competitive trials for high office, since 
 each of these had to fight hard for his place. Moreover, they 
 all had large families ; indeed it will be found that, in contrast 
 
 * It was here that he received Sir Thomas Roe, sent by James I. in 1607.
 
 CHAP. VIII.] EFFECT OF PERIOD OF ANARCHY. 189 
 
 to the Fredericks and Napoleons of Europe, most of the great 
 rulers of Asia have been prolific ; and the prince who wins 
 life and crown from a death struggle with half-a-dozen brothers 
 is the product of natural selection out of a naturally vigorous 
 family. In the East a long reign means a strong reign ; and 
 for a century and a half the Moghal was fairly India's master.* 
 The political effect upon Rajputana was that, whereas up to 
 the reign of Akbar the Rajput clans had maintained a warlike 
 independence, from the beginning of the seventeenth century 
 we may regard their Chiefs as having become feudatories of the 
 empire, which was their natural and honourable relation to the 
 paramount power whose territory encircled them, and with 
 whose military calibre they had no pretence to compete.! And 
 this relation was undoubtedly acknowledged as the political 
 status of the Chiefs, until the sinking Moghal empire got 
 hopelessly among the breakers, and was finally wrecked by 
 Marntha freebooters. After Aurungzeb's death in 1707 came 
 the ruinous downfall of an overgrown centralised empire, 
 whose spoils were fought over by Affghans, Jats, Sikhs, 
 revolting Viceroys, rebellious governors, and military adven- 
 turers at large. The Rajput Chiefs took advantage of the 
 usual free fight among competitors for the vacant throne to cut 
 adrift from the Mahomedans, and to attempt the formation 
 of an independent league for the defence of Rajputana, and 
 they renewed the attempt later when Nadir Shah invaded 
 India, t But these clans and septs, with their barbarous feuds 
 and jealousies about primitive punctilio, have never been able 
 
 * "\Ve may compare three periods (of It is a coincidence that after the end of 
 
 which two almost exactly synchronize) each of these periods came a change of 
 
 in the history of three famous dynasties dynasty, a disruption of dominions, and 
 
 and kingdoms, in which the reigns of a great war. 
 
 four successive Kings covered 150 years f When Nadir Shah's invasion of 
 
 or more : India was impending, Raja Jai Singh 
 
 Years. (of Jeypoor) said to the emperor: "You 
 
 Four Moghal Emperors [1556 to must keep your eye on the Moghal 
 
 1707 A.D.] . . . 151 nobles, who will probably be treacher- 
 
 Four Spanish Kings [1555 to ous ; as for us Rajputs, we are ready to 
 
 1700 A.D.] . . . 145 join the royal standards." 
 
 Four French Kings [1610 to XadirShahheard of this league, and 
 
 1792] .... 182 feelinghimselfbound,afterhisawfulsack
 
 190 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [Cnxr. VIII. 
 
 to achieve any solid union, and the federation soon parted. 
 Moreover, this was not the ordinary interlude of confusion 
 between two long and strong reigns, as heretofore in the 
 annals of Moghal empire ; it was the beginning of the empire's 
 end. Aurungzeb's imprudent greed for extensive conquests 
 had ruined the vast fabric so firmly built up by his great 
 grandfather. He made the fatal political error of attacking 
 and subverting the Mahomedan kingdoms in the far South of 
 India, which had kept in subjection the Hindus of the penin- 
 sula ; and he thus let loose upon himself the Marathas of the 
 Deccan, who ruined his dynast} T . It could not be expected 
 that a fifth Emperor should arise, capable of coping with a 
 state of public affairs much more complicated and dangerous 
 than any which his four predecessors had faced ; and so the 
 Moghal empire went to wreck ; it was literally pulled asunder 
 by wild horsemen. During the century which followed the 
 death of Aurungzeb, from 1707 to 1807, all the dynasties and 
 principalities now existing in India except only the Rajput 
 States and several which no longer exist, were set up.* It 
 was an era of chaos unprecedented even in the annals of 
 Asiatic history, such an era as only follows the break up of a 
 wide spreading despotic empire which has so carefully knocked 
 out and cut away all internal or local stays and ties that its 
 fall, when it comes, is a ruinous crash, and leaves a vast terri- 
 tory in a state of complete political dissolution. The Moghal 
 empire had made a clean sweep of indigenous political institu- 
 tions within its sway ; and in their turn the Marathas, aided 
 in the work of destruction by Nadir Shah, by the Affghans, 
 Sikhs, Jats, by rebels and commanders of free companies 
 generally, made a clean sweep of the Moghal empire. At 
 
 of Delhi, to do something for the ruined of the book of creation." 
 and prostrate Moghal Emperor before * We may perhaps except the State 
 
 leaving India, he wrote to the Kajputs of Travancore, in the extreme corner of 
 
 a letter desiring them to "walk in the the peninsula. But this had been half 
 
 paths of submission and obedience to swallowed up by Tippoo of Mysore, 
 
 our dear brother" (the prostrate Moghal when we made him disgorge. As for 
 
 aforesaid). The letter ends thus cha- Mysore itself the present rulership is of 
 
 racteristically "God forbid it, but if British creation, dating from the year 
 
 accounts of your rebelling reach our 1867. 
 cars, we will blot you out of the pages
 
 CHAP. VIII.] RESCUED FROM DESTRUCTION. 191 
 
 the end of the last century very few indeed of the reigning 
 families in India could boast more than twenty-five years of 
 independent and definite political existence ; while the Rajput 
 chieftainships, the only ancient political groups left in India, 
 were threatened with imminent obliteration. 
 
 From destruction these States were rescued only by seeking 
 shelter at last within the sphere of the political system of the 
 English. We owe the present constitution of our empire over 
 the whole of India to three Governors General to Lord 
 Wellesley, Lord Hastings, and Lord Dalhousie who at 
 different epochs pushed forward the broad policy of establishing 
 British supremacy, and the recognition of the British guarantee 
 for order and territorial possessions, by treaties, alliances, and 
 subsidies, throughout all India. When, in 1803, war broke 
 out with the Maratha powers, Sindia and Holkar were delibe- 
 rately ruining Eajputana, lacerating it by violent incursions, or 
 bleeding it scientifically by a horde of relentless tax-gatherers ; 
 Ameer Khan, the Pathan filibuster, was living at free quarters 
 in the heart of the country : the clans had been exhausted, and 
 their lands desolated by thirty years' incessant war within their 
 own territories. In 1803 the three principal States of Oodey- 
 poor, Jodhpoor, and Je3 7 poor were in the utmost distress, and 
 the whole group of chieftainships was close upon collapse, 
 when Lord Wellesley struck in. By the sharp fighting which 
 ensued Sindia was politically disabled for life, and Holkar, after 
 hunting poor Colonel Monson right across Eajputana, was him- 
 self driven off by Lord Lake, who smote him blow upon blow. 
 But upon Lord Wellesley's departure our policy changed ; we 
 drew back from what seemed to Lord Comwallis and Sir 
 George Barlow a dangerous network of new ties and responsi- 
 bilities, and we attempted to contract the sphere of British 
 influence ; that is to say, we left all Central India, including 
 Eajputana, to take care of itself. The consequence was that 
 which in India has always followed a retrograde movement, 
 whether in the cabinet or in the field, the situation became 
 much more dangerous ; the great predatory leaders of Central 
 India enriched themselves with the spoils of the country which 
 we had abandoned to them, and became seriously arrogant and
 
 192 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 aggressive toward ourselves. These backward steps by the 
 English in India, being always inevitably followed by an 
 advance far beyond the original halting place, have come to be 
 regarded by native politicians as a retreat pour mieux sauter, 
 and have much helped to build up our popular reputation for 
 deep perfidious calculations. In the present instance the 
 attitude of " masterly inactivity " lasted nearly ten years, an 
 unusually long term for India. Rajputana was being desolated 
 during this interval. General Arthur Wellesley, the soundest 
 of Indian politicians, had long before pointed out how the 
 cessation of arms enforced over one large portion of India must 
 for the time aggravate disorder in that other portion with which 
 the pacifying authority refuses to interfere. Large bodies of 
 disbanded troops go from the pacified or protected countries to 
 become banditti too strong for the weak police of the States 
 left by us to their own resources ; while round these unlucky 
 States the British Government establishes a cordon of rigid 
 irresistible order which shuts up all the brigands of India 
 within a ringfence. These were the conditions under which 
 roving bands had increased and multiplied in Central India 
 into Pindaree hordes, until, in 1814, Ameer Khan was living 
 upon Rajputana with a compact army of at least 30,000 horse 
 and foot and a strong artillery. That a regular army of this 
 calibre should have been moving at large among the Rajput 
 States, entirely disconnected with any recognisable government 
 or nationality, and absolutely free from the trammels of any 
 political or civil responsibility, is a strong illustration of the 
 condition of the country. The Rajput chieftainships of 
 Jodhpoor and Jeypoor had brought themselves to the verge of 
 extinction by the famous war between the two ruling Chiefs for 
 the hand of the princess Kishen Konwar, of Oodeypoor. The 
 story is well known and perfectly authentic (though it is 
 precisely the kind which some future mythologist will prove to 
 be an obvious solar myth) ; and the fact that these two States, 
 surrounded by mortal enemies and in the direst political peril, 
 should have engaged in a furious blood feud over a dubious 
 point of honour, shows at once that the Rajputs were a people 
 quite apart from the rest of India, and strikes the primitive note
 
 CHAP. VIII.] PREDATORY RIGHTS EXTINGUISHED. 193 
 
 in their political character. The plundering Marathas and 
 Pathans, to whom such a casiis belli must have appeared 
 supremely absurd, encouraged and strenuously aided the two 
 Chiefs to destro}" each other, until the dispute was compromised 
 upon the basis of poisoning the princess, a termination which 
 very fairly illustrates the real nature of barbaric chivalry. The 
 Marquis of Ha'stings thought it high time to interpose before 
 Sindia and the Pindaree captains should have eaten up all the 
 minor principalities and set themselves up as formidable 
 fighting powers in their stead. He determined to extinguish 
 the predatory system, to stop the annexations of the Maratha 
 Chiefs, and to extend over Rajput^-na British supremacy and 
 its correlative, protection and territorial guarantee. This was 
 done by the treaties of 1818 and by the Pindaree war : the free 
 companies were driven out; Ameer Khan and the Marathas 
 were partly bribed to let go the Rajptit territories, and partly 
 choked off by threats ; there was a great restoration of 
 plundered districts and rehabilitation of boundaries ; the Chiefs 
 acknowledged the British Government as supreme political 
 arbiter ; and from that year internal peace has succeeded the 
 war which, with one brief interval, had been chronic in and 
 round Rajputana from time immemorial. 
 
 Thus it has come to pass that, as we began by saying, the 
 only ancient political institutions now surviving upon any con- 
 siderable scale in India have been saved by the English. There 
 can be no manner of doubt that the Rajput States would have 
 been broken up in a few years had the English not interposed ; 
 their primitive constitution rendered them quite unfit to resist 
 the professional armies of Marathas or Pathans, which included 
 corps d' elite under European officers. The clans would have dis- 
 solved and become mixed with the great composite multitude of 
 India, which is made up out of innumerable tribal dispersions ; 
 leaving only a few insignificant septs in the highlands of Central 
 India, and some strong cultivating communities in the plains. 
 The fortunate escape of these States has rescued out of the flood of 
 ordinary Asiatic despotism what are perhaps the best specimens 
 of early institutions that can now be found within the purview of 
 comparatively settled civilization. But peace and prosperity
 
 194. THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHJLP. VIII. 
 
 are as disintegrating to primitive societies as war and rapine, 
 though in a different way ; nor is it likely that these institutions 
 will remain many years without radical changes. And therefore 
 some account of the more striking peculiarities of the Rajput 
 chieftainships has at least the interest that attaches to a photo- 
 graph of things that are passing away, and that are sure not to 
 re-appear in the world, when their day has closed and they 
 have once left it. 
 
 There are, moreover, few things more important to the 
 English, in their dealings with India, than a right understand- 
 ing of the real constitution and historic growth of the Native 
 States ; for upon this subject misleading analogies and most 
 fallacious misnomers have for at least a century influenced 
 public opinion generally upon Indian affairs. The main source 
 of these misconceptions may probably be traced back to the 
 great Indian orations of Burke, who was never wearied of 
 denouncing the oppressors of Indian nationalities, the degraders 
 of ancient nobility, and the dethroners of sovereign princes. 
 When, in 1784, he compared our possessions in India with the 
 empire of Germany as " the nearest parallel " * he could find 
 likening the Nawab of Oudh to the King of Prussia, Cheyte 
 Singh of Benares to the Prince of Hesse, the Nawab of Arcot 
 to the Elector of Saxony, and classing the northern zemindars 
 and the polygars of Madras with Counts and Bishops of the 
 empire he committed one of the most notable political sole- 
 cisms on record. This may be called, literally as well by 
 Eastern metaphor, the great grandfather of all the false 
 analogies that have since been current ; and at the present day 
 even the recollection of it must be still exceedingly painful to 
 such sensitive historic nerves as those which vibrate at the 
 slightest breath of a blunder regarding the Holy Roman 
 Empire. The famous story of Warren Hastings' sale of the 
 " whole nation of the Rohillas " is discoloured throughout by a 
 similar abuse of the word nation, which has darkened the 
 reality of the case up to our own day. Macaulay knew India 
 much more closely than Burke ; but he did not care to spoil 
 
 * Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill.
 
 CHAP. VIII.] CONSTITUTION OF NATIVE STATES. 195 
 
 the rhetorical effects of his famous Indian essays by too minute 
 nccurac}'. And one consequence has been that the best known 
 writings about Indian politics have rather confirmed than dis- 
 lodged the popular notion, drawn from very modern analogies 
 in Western Europe, that a State under a distinct political 
 designation denotes in Asia a territory occupied by a people of 
 one nation under a king or ruler of their own nationality, as 
 in France, England, or Spain at the present day.* It follows 
 logically, from this conception of nationalities in Asia, that 
 when the governing class in a State is known to be distinct in 
 race and religion from the mass of its subjects, that State is 
 vaguely supposed to be under foreign rule. But it cannot be 
 too clearly understood that the unwilling subjection of one 
 nationality to another, which in Europe is always supposed to 
 constitute an oppression and a legitimate grievance, is a poli- 
 tical condition absolutely different in kind from that forcible 
 domination of one clan or family over other races or tribes 
 which we so constantly find in Asia. It may be said broadly 
 that from China to Constantinople the great States of Asia con- 
 sist of heterogeneous populations under djmasties of foreign race. 
 This may be called foreign rule, if we keep in mind exactly 
 what the words, thus used, mean; but the meaning is not 
 always quite clear even when the term is used by experts. 
 Colonel Malleson, for instance, in his very useful book on the 
 
 * The history of modern India by Shah Aurungzeb Alamgir, with 
 forcibly illustrates what is pointed out some religious titles on the reverse ; on 
 in Maine's Ancient Law that during a the latter we have all the great pro- 
 very long period of history no such vinces of the house of Hapsburgh 
 conception has been entertained as that claimed by different feudal or heredi- 
 of territorial sovereignty. In India terri- tary tenures. In Rajputa'na the State 
 tonal political titles are extremely rare ; takes its name from its capital, the 
 if any exist, the English are almost sure residence and citadel of its Chief ; and 
 to have had a hand in inventing them. the town itself almost always takes 
 Nothing can better mark the distinctive its name from the ancient Chief who 
 ideas of sovereignty which are described founded it. This nomenclature is a 
 in "Ancient Law," than a comparison peculiar sign of a prsefeudalic origin, 
 of the inscription on the coin of the if it is true that in feudalised countries 
 Moghal Emperor in A.D. 1700, with the family always takes its name from 
 that on the coin of the contemporary the place, when the two names corres- 
 Chief of the Germanic Empire. On the pond, 
 former we read only that it was issued 
 
 o 2
 
 lye THE EAJPTJI STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. viii. 
 
 Native States of India, says that the period of Mahomedan 
 empire in India, from 1206 to 1707 A.D., is one of the longest 
 periods of foreign rule which any country has ever witnessed. 
 Even if Colonel Malleson here meant rule by an alien dominant 
 race, the dominion of the Arabs in Spain was much longer ; but 
 he can only mean that the imperial throne was for five hundred 
 years occupied in India by dynasties of foreign extraction, and 
 since almost every Asiatic empire is or has been in a like 
 condition, the casual reader would hardly have guessed him to 
 mean so little. That these dynasties maintained themselves by 
 force, is only an incident common to all tenures of extensive 
 rule in Asia. 
 
 The first step, therefore, toward understanding the consti- 
 tution of Native States in India is to keep in mind clearly that 
 they are in no sense nationalities. The second step is to 
 master the great difference in structure between different groups 
 of these States. Colonel Malleson's sketch of the Native 
 States (already cited) divides them into six geographical 
 groups. His work deals mainly with the history of the reigning 
 families, and with their external relations with the British 
 Government, not with the internal economy of the States them- 
 selves. So that no ordinary reader would suspect a radical 
 difference of constitution between the Maratha group and the 
 Rajput group, between the State ruled by Maharaja Sindia, for 
 instance, and the conterminous State of Jeypoor or Oodey- 
 poor. Any difference existing between the two States would 
 probably be assumed in England to mean this, that the 
 Maratha Prince ruled over Marathas, and the Rajput Chief 
 over Rajputs. But this would be all wrong ; for there are very 
 few Marathas in the dominion of Sindia, the Maratha Prince ; 
 while he probably has more Rajput subjects than the Rajput 
 Chief of Oodeypoor, the oldest Rajput territoiy. The real 
 difference is that Sindia is the representative of the single 
 family of a successful captain of armies who annexed in the 
 last century all the territory he could lay hands on, and whose 
 son finally encamped so long in one place that his camp grew 
 into his capital some sixty years ago ; while the Rajput Chief 
 is the head of a clan which has for many centuries been lords
 
 CHAP. VIII.] THE RAJPUT CHIEF. 197 
 
 of the soil which now makes up the Oodeypoor State's terri- 
 tory. And this distinction of origin represents a vast distinc- 
 tion in the whole constitution and political classification of the 
 two States. Sindia is a despot of the ordinary Asiatic species ; 
 ruling absolutely the lands which his ancestor seized by the power 
 of a mercenary army ; but the Eajput chieftain is a very different 
 personage, of a much rarer and more instructive type politically 
 and socially ; insomuch that some accurate description of this 
 type may be useful and interesting even to general readers in 
 England. 
 
 The word Eajputana, then, does not mean the country ol 
 the Eajputs in the sense in which France now means the 
 country of the French, but in that much earlier sense accord- 
 ing to which Lornbardy once denoted the country taken by 
 the Lombards, and France the country occupied by the 
 Western Franks. And a Eajput State, where its genuine 
 form has been least modified, denotes the territory over which 
 a particular clan, or division of a clan, claims dominion for 
 its chief and possession for itself by right of conquest and 
 settlement. In the "Western States the conquering clans are 
 still very much in the position which they took up on first 
 entry upon the lands. They have not driven out, slain, or 
 absolutely enslaved the anterior occupants, or divided off the 
 soil among groups of their own cultivating families, after 
 the manner of the children of Israel entering Palestine, and 
 of many another invading tribe in Asia. Their system of 
 settlement was rather that of the Gothic tribes after their 
 invasion of the Danubian provinces of the Eoman empire, 
 who " never formed the bulk of the population in the lands 
 which they occupied, but were only lords of the soil, prin- 
 cipally occupied in war and hunting." * In a Eajput State 
 of the best preserved original type we still find all the territory 
 (with a few exceptions in favour of particular grantees) 
 partitioned out among the Eajputs, in whose hands is the 
 whole political and military organization, though the mere 
 officials, or agents in the internal administration, form an 
 
 * Finlay, Greece under the Romans.
 
 198 THE RAJPUT STATES OF IXDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 influential class apart. Under the Rajputs are the cultivating 
 classes, mainly belonging to castes or clans whom the Rajputs 
 overcame when they took possession, and who now pay land 
 rent to the lords or their families, living in village com- 
 munities with very few rights and privileges, and being too 
 often no more than rack-rented peasantry. Where either 
 non- Aryan tribes, or tribes of the half blood (descended from 
 irregular Rajput marriages) exist, these hold together as 
 subordinate tribal groups, and pay tribute. With these may 
 be classed several peculiar clans inhabiting the outlying tracts, 
 where they carry on just enough cultivation to disguise thereby 
 their real profession, which is gang-robbery. In the towns 
 are, of course, the usual mercantile and miscellaneous castes ; 
 a few of undoubted Rajput origin, but disintegrated into 
 separate castes by difference of occupation or of worship. 
 And below all are the ordinary servile and menial castes, with 
 the wandering casteless gipsies and others who, according to 
 the Indian phrase, carry their house on their back. 
 
 Authentic history, as well as all tradition, points to the 
 first band of successful adventurers as the nucleus out of 
 which has grown directly the existing separate Rajput State. 
 A sept, or the offshoot from a sept, of a particular clan, sets 
 out on an expedition, takes as much land as it can hold, and 
 builds the forts which are still the palaces or strongholds of 
 the ruling family. The case of Bikanir, a State in the desert 
 on the North-West border of Rajpiitana, is a fair illustration. 
 It was founded at the end of the fifteenth century by Bika, 
 who was the sixth son of Jodha, Chief of the Rathore clan, 
 which then, as now, possessed the lands that constitute the 
 modern State of Jodhpoor. Jodha had twelve sons, and as 
 the land available for their proper maintenance had become 
 hard to find, he gave his sons a broad hint to do something 
 for themselves. So Bika set off to win new lands, with five 
 uncles, three brothers, and six hundred kinsmen. The 
 expedition was also accompanied by men of the mercantile 
 and writing castes ; the land was gradually conquered, and 
 to this day the territory of the Bikanir State is divided among 
 the descendants of the original adventurers, the chieftainship
 
 CHAP. VIII.] SUCCESSION TO CHIEFSHIP. 199 
 
 belonging to the stock of Bika, while the posterity of the 
 merchants and writers claim hereditary office. The whole 
 story of this adventure is a counterpart of the episode of the 
 Danites in the Book of Judges ; when that tribe sought them 
 an inheritance to dwell in, and six hundred men, " well 
 appointed with weapons of war," emigrated to Laish, where 
 they smote the people with the edge of the sword, built a 
 city, and dwelt therein, while the sons of the Levite whom 
 they carried off on their road remained hereditary priests of 
 the sept. It should be observed, however, that the Rajput 
 immigrants are never stated to have exterminated those whom 
 they found in possession of the land, as the Israelites seem 
 usually to have done, but were quite content to remain the 
 dominant minority. Of the 300,000 people who now inhabit 
 Bikanir about 12,000 only are Rajputs. The fact that the 
 Rajputs of Rajputana never settled down to cultivate the land 
 which they divided off " among the tribes according to their 
 families " (to use the words of the Book of Joshua), and that 
 some of their clans have retained for so many centuries that 
 earliest form of a conquering tribal settlement in which the 
 victors merely distribute themselves as lords of the soil, is 
 the prominent peculiarity of their history and existing political 
 status. Elsewhere in India the Rajputs form great cultivating 
 communities ; but this is where their Chiefs have long lost 
 tribal sovereignty, and where the land, being very fertile, is 
 very valuable. In the barren regions of North- West Rajputana 
 where, as they say, there are more spears than spear-grass 
 heads, and where blades of steel grow better than blades of 
 corn, in such regions war and foray are more profitable than 
 tillage, and this state of constant fighting kept the dominant 
 clan together like a standing army. 
 
 Such being the origin and way of growth of a Rajput State, 
 the governing authority is, of course, in the hands of the 
 hereditary Chief of the dominant clan. Mr. (now Sir Henry) 
 Maine, when discussing in his Ancient Law the origin of 
 primogeniture, observed that in India the succession to public 
 office or political power forms an exception to the principle
 
 2 00 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. Till. 
 
 of equal distribution of property, being almost universally 
 according to the rules of primogeniture. 
 
 "There seems, in truth," he wrote, "to be a form of family dependency still 
 more archaic than any of those which we know from the primitive records of 
 organized civil societies. The agnatic union of the kindred in ancient Roman Law, 
 and a multitude of similar indications point to a period at which all the ramifying 
 branches of the family tree held together in one organic whole ; and it is no pre- 
 sumptuous conjecture that, when the corporation thus formed by the kindred was 
 in itself an independent society, it was governed by tlie eldest male of the oldest 
 line. It is true we have no actual knowledge of any such society." 
 
 This extract is taken from the third edition of Ancient Law 
 published in 1866, and it is curious to remember that about 
 that very time the author must have been occasionally in the 
 company, at Simla or elsewhere in India, of Chiefs who hold 
 precisely the position here described conjecturally at the head 
 of societies of the very kind for which Mr. Maine was then 
 searching. The passage is a fine example of successful 
 deduction ; since the conclusion that such an organization 
 must have existed appears to have been reasoned out from 
 the indication and structural characteristics of later forms, 
 without any knowledge that the earlier species could actually 
 be observed in existence. In Rajputana the Chief is supposed 
 to be the nearest legitimate descendant in direct line from the 
 founder of the State according to the genealogy of the tribe ; 
 and the heads of the branches from this main stock are the 
 leading Rajput nobles, the pillars of his State. And here it 
 may be remarked, by the wa}*, that it does not follow, because 
 a tribe claims its descent from a god, that the divine founder 
 is a personage entirely mythical, as certain comparative 
 mythologers do vainly imagine. He is quite as likely to be a 
 real hero deified, for the founder of at least one Rajput State, 
 who is authentic as any historic personage can be in India, is 
 freely worshipped by his clan to this day. The Chief, there- 
 fore, must belong to certain families of the founder's kin ; and 
 among sons the succession now always goes by primogeniture, 
 though the rule has by no means been observed from time 
 immemorial. There are several good precedents showing that 
 an eldest son has been passed over for another more worthy,
 
 CHAP. VIII.] CHOICE OF A CHIEF. 201 
 
 though the reason for such a step must be extraordinary, and 
 almost always the choice had to stand the test of appeal to the 
 sword. But the characteristic of every important rule (politi- 
 cal, religious, or social) in India is that, whereas it is always 
 assumed in theory to be inflexible, it is nevertheless always 
 readily flexible in practice. And it seems probable that primo- 
 geniture as the rule in theory of the demise of tribal sove- 
 reignty has prevailed ever since the first successful leader 
 founded the State. If a Chief has no issue to his body, he 
 can of course adopt a son in his lifetime from one of the 
 founder's kin ; but he has usually very sound reasons against 
 giving some ambitious or impatient youth, or family, an 
 interest in his death ; and the same feeling has at the present 
 moment much to do with the constant default of legitimate 
 male issue from the marriages of the reigning Chief. In Lord 
 Canning's viceroyalty, the British Government formally recog- 
 nised the power of a childless Chief to adopt a successor. It 
 was supposed that this would be regarded as a most valuable 
 privilege, of which the Chiefs would avail themselves eagerly ; 
 but as a matter of fact they use it very seldom, leaving the 
 choice of the successor to be arranged after their death. 
 Thus a Chief too often dies childless, and then the successor 
 must be chosen from among the branches of the founder's 
 original stock, which are represented by the families aforesaid. 
 Here again the nearest in degree to the deceased has a prima. 
 facie right, though one by no means indefeasible ; for the 
 selection virtually lies, when there is any doubt at all, with the 
 heads of the great agnatic branch-families, subject to a sort of 
 wider appeal to the whole of the leading families of the clan. 
 It is true that when the Chief dies without an heir, either by 
 blood or adoption, the recognised form is that the widows shall 
 adopt ; but the person to be adopted is usually settled in con- 
 cert among the widows and the leading families, and if the 
 widows adopt without the concurrence of the kinsfolk, there is 
 dissension, and a storm begins to gather. It has sometimes 
 happened that the chief widow has been instigated by a cabal 
 to adopt one whom the families do not desire for a ruler over 
 them, or whose legal claim seems inferior ; thence comes a
 
 202 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAF. VIII. 
 
 rift which has often widened into civil war. The families are 
 almost always in the right ; they usually look first to birth- 
 right, and secondly to capacit} T , requiring a fair combination of 
 both ; but the widow's choice is apt to be the result of some 
 backstairs intrigue of which the object is to gain the regency 
 for herself during a long minority with some favourite official 
 of the Mazzini or Godoy type as prime minister. One or two 
 families of the clan may join her, she gains over her mercenary 
 forces, summons her own kinsfolk (it will be remembered that 
 a Rajput never marries into his own clan), and perhaps seizes 
 the capital. Then the heads of the families retire to their 
 own estates, muster their septs, declare the chief whom, they 
 have chosen, and fierce struggles have ensued between the two 
 factions in days before the English arbitration had been 
 thoroughly acknowledged. John Stewart Mill, in his Subjec- 
 tion of Women, made the striking general assertion that when- 
 ever anj- intervals of good government are recorded in the 
 annals of native Indian States, it will be always found that a 
 woman was concerned in them. Unluckily the same might be 
 predicated of almost all violent paroxysms of misrule in 
 India ; so that upon a complete survey of experiences we begin 
 to perceive that Mill's observation is only part of the wider 
 popular generalization as to a woman being at the bottom of 
 all strange or eccentric combinations of human circumstance. 
 In regard to the influence of women on public affairs in India, 
 all that the candid observer can fairly say is that, for good or 
 for evil, princesses with a taste for politics have usually em- 
 ployed amazing energy toward gaming their ends, and have 
 shown a remarkable aptitude for short and sharp methods with 
 adversaries. In Rajputana an ambitious widow has at her 
 peculiar command one resource for creating political dilemmas, 
 that of declaring herself enceinte immediately after the 
 death of her husband, and of demanding adjournment of the 
 question of a successor. But as to abide the result of this 
 declaration would be to give ample time for spreading a com- 
 plicated net of fraud and intrigue, with a long minority as the 
 most favourable upshot possible, the nobles are apt to receive 
 the announcement with disloyal scepticism, and sometimes to
 
 CHAP. VIII.] POLICY OF ENGLAND. 203 
 
 disregard it utterly. What they want is a man at the head of 
 their clan, which is just what the palace or court party does 
 not want. 
 
 Indeed, before the English stopped free fighting over debate- 
 able vacancies, and insisted on the establishment of some 
 peaceable and fairly consistent practice of succession, even the 
 eldest son, or whoever might be indisputably nearest of kin, 
 was liable to disqualification on the ground of incapacity. 
 There have been recent cases in which the clan simply chose 
 the fittest kinsman of full age, though of course such an elec- 
 tion raised issues to be tried by hard blows ; but the political 
 faction interested in a Chiefs weakness or imbecility has 
 usually been a minority, and the idea of divine right has not 
 reached that phase when it is concentrated upon an individual. 
 Divine right in Eajputana exists only in the primitive sense 
 of right by descent from a divinised ancestor, and this divinity 
 does not yet hedge a king only, but includes whole families 
 within its aureole. Under English arbitration this scrambling 
 custom of succession is being steadily though very cautiously 
 moulded, by the natural bias of pacific influences toward con- 
 sistency, into some less easily variable law of inheritance. 
 Here, as elsewhere in India, the English found native institu- 
 tions at the stage in which they are forms to which the facts 
 usually, but not at all necessarily, correspond ; the people 
 obeying facts while they make immense show of respect for 
 forms, and being only moderately distressed by glaring incon- 
 sistencies between the two. The English cannot, if they 
 would, help compressing facts into correspondence with the 
 forms they have recognized, being compelled to do so partly 
 by the modern spirit which abhors inaccuracy, partly by our 
 unlucky habit of purging by positive statutes the loose cus- 
 toms of the gentle weal, and partly because, according to <pur 
 notions, there is no political continuity or regularity until forms 
 and facts of this kind do correspond. For Rajputana, as for 
 all other Native States, the imperial policy is to abstain from 
 directing successions, and to let the natural guardians of the 
 State settle doubtful cases. But when doubt warms into dis- 
 pute, every one looks to the paramount power for a decision ;
 
 20-1 THE EAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 and the English, as we have said, cannot help deciding accord- 
 ing to some consistent rule. And thus the. practice of succes- 
 sion must tend gradually more and more to conform to a strict 
 principle of indefeasible hereditary right. Now even in 
 Europe this principle, as distinguished from the earlier prac- 
 tice which admitted also the claims of superior strength and 
 fitness, has never been very successful in supplying decent 
 kings, so long as kings were expected to govern as well as 
 reign. The rule seems to answer well only in highly civilized 
 kingdoms, where the competency or incompetency for actual 
 government of the hereditary prince is a matter of indifference 
 and the only thing essential is a stable principle. But Asia 
 has never been able to develop any principle except that of 
 personal government, in which the competency of the monarch 
 is of the first and last importance. And in Asia hereditary 
 succession actually means the succession to each vacancy of 
 the ablest and most popular of the ruling dynasty or tribal 
 family, the incompetent being rapidly eliminated as failures 
 after short and sharp experiment. When no able man turns 
 up for a dynastic vacanc} 1 -, the dynasty collapses ; but the 
 tribal sovereignty stands on a much broader foundation, 
 because the choice may range among half a dozen families, 
 and the chance of finding a fit man is proportionately greater. 
 If the unanimous voice of the elders of the tribe does not 
 name the right man, he would have been identified in earlier 
 times by the process of diligent fighting. But the English 
 are being slowly compelled, by the necessities of orderly ad- 
 ministration, to abolish this effective test of capacity to rule ; 
 and it is becoming very questionable whether any equally 
 serviceable method of furnishing the protected Native States 
 with tolerable rulers can be substituted. A strict law of 
 hereditary succession to petty Asiatic despotisms is not a very 
 promising political innovation ; it renders the Chief indepen- 
 dent of personal qualifications, and makes him reckless of 
 offending any one except only the British Government. 
 Meanwhile his people care little for him, having assured them- 
 selves that according to the present policy of the British 
 Government, misrule does not involve annexation of the
 
 CHAP. VIII.] HEREDITARY SOVEREIGNTY. 205 
 
 State (the only consequence dreaded by the leaders of the 
 community) but merely a change of rulers, which is often 
 welcome, like a change of ministry in Europe. For the para- 
 mount power, having arrested the operation of the natural law 
 by which the fittest ruler prevails, is compelled itself to main- 
 tain a kind of providential selection, and sometimes to depose 
 incapable Chiefs. In Rajputana, however, the tribal institutions 
 which still limit the personal government of the Chief, render 
 interference by the supreme authority less necessary than else- 
 where ; and accordingly it is among these States that the new 
 system has the best chance of working. 
 
 The condition, then, of hereditary sovereignty in a Rajput 
 State may be shortly described thus : The primary right to a 
 vacancy is by primogeniture, and the sovereign is also the 
 Chief of the clan, who is understood to represent the oldest 
 and purest blood of the political group which traces back its 
 consanguinity to the vanishing point of a far distant common 
 ancestor. But even primogeniture must qualify up to a low 
 standard of competency ; and when direct heirs fail the Chief 
 may be chosen from any branch of the common stock, the 
 choice sometimes going from one branch to another, according 
 to critical needs and circumstances, the electors being the 
 heads of the branch families and the elders of the tribe 
 generally. The constant default of direct heirs keeps alive 
 this elective machinery, which would fall into disuse and decay 
 under a powerful and prolific dynast}", as it has done else- 
 where. A standard case in the matter of succession to Rajput 
 suzerainty is that of Kerowlie, a small territory on the eastern 
 border of Rajputana belonging to a very ancient sept of the 
 bluest blood. In 1852 its Chief died, aged fifteen years only, 
 having adopted on his deathbed an infant descended through 
 half a dozen generations from the third son of a common 
 ancestor. Lord Dalhousie, more suo, raised the ominous 
 question whether the Supreme Government was bound to 
 recognize this adoption as conveying a right to succeed ; and 
 he appears to have been at first quite unconscious that there 
 could be any rightful heir to a Rajput chieftainship after the 
 extinction of all lineal descendants of the Chief to whose
 
 206 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 lieirs and successors the English had guaranteed the suc- 
 cession of Kerowlie in 1817. He held that the distant kins- 
 man adopted was no natural heir at all, and that the adoption 
 was an act which the Supreme Government might or might 
 not sanction, as seemed expedient. It is curious, as showing 
 the absence of exact knowledge, to find Lord Dalhousie 
 minuting that the circumstances of Kerowlie resembled in all 
 essential particulars those of the Maratha State of Sattara, 
 whereas it was in all essential particulars that the two States 
 differed. The question, whether this adoption made by the 
 deceased Chief should be sanctioned, was referred to England 
 for decision ; but in the meantime the heads of the branch 
 families (some thirty-eight in all) entitled to decide disputed 
 successions to the Kerowlie chieftainship, had met, and they 
 set aside altogether the adoption, electing instead a man of 
 full age, descended from another son of the ancestor common 
 to the late Chief and to the infant whom he had adopted. 
 The widows went through the form of adopting this candidate, 
 and the tribal elders then informed the British Government 
 that this was their Chief, and that they would have no other. 
 Probably they had got an inkling of the danger which over- 
 shadowed their little State, and thought that this was one of 
 the critical conjunctures in the affairs of a clan when a man at 
 their head is more useful than a child. " This is the reason," 
 said one of their leaders, " for adopting a grown-up person, 
 the splendour and government of the State are preserved ; 
 but by adopting a child injury and evil come upon the State." 
 And in reply to a suggestion of some legal axiom (elaborated 
 by an English officer) that only a child could be adopted, the 
 Rajput answered broadly that if any grown-up heir (i.e., per- 
 son of founder's kin) can be found, a child cannot be adopted, 
 "because injury to the State is apparent from a child's reign- 
 ing." This mayor may not have been correct; but the two 
 different views contrast very curiously two widely distant stages 
 in the formation of a rule of hereditary succession. In the 
 primitive stage the birthright is primarily subordinate to prac- 
 tical expediency, and infancy is a disqualification ; in the 
 latest and purely legal phase the rule disregards practical
 
 CHAP. VIII.] TENURES NOT FEUDAL. 207 
 
 expediency altogether, and the adoption of a child is assumed 
 to be in accordance with some law of nature. The Kerowlie 
 Rajputs adhered so steadily to their view and to their election, 
 which was backed by unanimous public opinion throughout 
 Rajputana, that the Government of India very wisely con- 
 firmed their choice. In the present day the feudal notion 
 of a Rajput State escheating in default of lineal descendants 
 has vanished below the political horizon ; but the foregoing 
 example proves how important is accurate knowledge of the 
 multiform societies with which an Indian Government has 
 to deal, and how unsafe it is to follow imperfect European 
 analogies. In the Kerowlie papers the words escheat, fief, 
 suzerainty, and feudal superior, constantly recur. The analogy 
 of feudalism so completely filled the mind of even our best 
 writers upon Rajputana, that it is no wonder if Lord Dalhousie 
 to some extent adopted it, though perhaps only as a con- 
 venient formula to aid his real convictions as to the right 
 policy with Native States. He was much too great a states- 
 man to be the servant of a formula; he may have intended 
 to make the formula serve him. 
 
 But it was the interior constitution of a complete Rajput 
 State that most forcibly suggested the analogy of feudalism. 
 A Rajput State where its peculiar structure has been least 
 modified, means the territory over which a particular clan, or 
 division of a clan, claims dominion for its chief, and political 
 predominance for itself, by right of occupation and conquest. 
 A Rajput chief is the hereditary head of a clan whose members 
 have for centuries been lords of the soil, or of the greater part 
 of it, within the State's limits. In the Western States, where 
 the original type is best preserved, the dominant clans are still 
 much in the position which they first took up on entry upon 
 the lands. The whole territory is understood (for there are 
 exceptions to every rule in Asia) to be divided off and inherited 
 among the branch families of the dominant clan and their off- 
 shoots. The Chief himself possesses the largest portion, 
 though not always a larger portion than the aggregate hold- 
 ings of other families ; and apportions very large grants to his 
 nearest agnatic kinsfolk, providing of course for his wives and
 
 03 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 his predecessor's widows, and sometimes for their relatives. 
 A few estates are owned by families of a clan different from 
 the ruling clan, these being usually relics of a clan whose 
 anterior dominion upon that part of the soil has been super- 
 seded ; though this is comparatively an inferior tenure, except 
 where these families have intermarried with the chief branches 
 of the dominant clan. The proportion of territory under the 
 direct administration of the Chief of the State varies widel}' in 
 different States ; where the clan organization is strongest and 
 most coherent the Chief's dominion is smallest, and largest 
 where the Chief is, or has lately been, a strong, energetic, and 
 therefore acquisitive ruler. Large tracts of land are possessed 
 by the hereditary heads of the branch septs which have spread 
 out from the main stock, and by the kindred families which 
 are as boughs to the great branches. Sometimes these 
 branches have ramified into a numerous sept ; sometimes 
 they are represented only by a family ; they take greater or 
 lesser rank and power according to birth, possessions, and 
 number. The family chief also apportions out his land 
 among his nearest brethren ; in fact he is the State Chief in 
 miniature, and his group is a sub-group. The relations of 
 these minor chiefs to the Chief of the State var} 7 in different 
 States ; in some of the Eastern States they are little more 
 than grantees of land or of rents assigned to them who pay 
 some sort of fee to their suzerain, have a right to maintenance 
 as the Chief's kinsmen, but have no political power. In the 
 best preserved States of the West, as in Oodeypoor or Jodh- 
 poor, they exercise almost complete jurisdiction within their 
 own domain, though not over all the domains of their family ; 
 and their obedience to the State Chief depends mainly upon 
 his power to meddle with them. They pay him certain duties, 
 regulated according to immemorial custom ; they are bound to 
 render military service against the foreigner or against rebels ; 
 and their lands are usually rated at so many horsemen to be 
 furnished for the ordinary public service. At every succession 
 to their States the heir is bound to do homage to the Chief, 
 and to pay into the State treasury a fine of some value these 
 acts being essential to his entr\ r into legal possession of his
 
 CHAP. VIII.] SUBORDINATE CHIEFS. 209 
 
 inheritance he also pays some other customary dues of a 
 feudal nature. In the States of the West, belonging to the 
 Rathore and Sesodia clans, the domains of all the subordinate 
 chiefs are rated at a certain valuation of annual rent-roll; and 
 for every thousand rupees a certain number of armed horsemen 
 and footmen must be provided for the State's service. The 
 attempt has often been made by the rulers to commute this 
 militia service for cash payment; but the great landholders 
 have always resisted any such attempts with united obstinacy. 
 They know well enough that to fill their Chief's treasury with 
 hard cash instead of providing bim with a rabble of their own 
 retainers would be to transfer all real strength from their side 
 to his. And their jealousy of his power never sleeps. Dis- 
 obedience to a lawful summons or refusal to do homage involves 
 sequestration of the lands, if the Chief can enforce it, lien 
 entendu; and if the Chief has not got right on his side in a 
 quarrel over the homage to be done or the fine to be paid, he 
 will usually not find it easy to enforce his decree. On such 
 occasions the lesser chief holds out in the ancestral fort as long 
 as he can, and if the fort is made too hot for him, he may take 
 to the holds with a select band of brethren, where he is joined 
 by the wild Bheels with their bows and arrows, by any profes- 
 sional banditti that may be prowling about, and by swash- 
 bucklers and landless loons generally. Here he sets up, like 
 the injured Earl of Huntingdon in Peacock's Maid Marian, 
 in the combined character of patriotic outlaw and generous 
 reiver; his hand being against the commercial public generally 
 for young men must live, as Falstaff said at Gadshill, and 
 gorbellied knaves with long purses are fair game but specially 
 against all officials, and very particularly against the officers 
 sent to seize and administer his vacant estate. Usually these 
 proceedings bring on compromise and a reconciliation ; but at 
 the worst the estate is only made over to another near kins- 
 man of the outlaw ; for it is very rarely indeed that an estate 
 is ever confiscated outright and permanently annexed to the 
 fisc by the suzerain. The whole federation of kindred families 
 would combine against such an absorption if there were any 
 practical alternative.
 
 210 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VI 
 
 Around and below the chief of each family are his kinsfolk, 
 which claim to belong to his sept, and hold land of greater and 
 less extent, some independently of him, others on a sort of 
 grant from him. Where the Rajput himself cultivates he 
 hardly ever pays any rent ; his freehold has its original signi- 
 fication of the holding of a free man, as distinguished from the 
 holdings of other castes and classes, which are assessed to land 
 rents according to the soil, as elsewhere in India. Very com- 
 monly the petty Rajput holds his fields .on condition of service, 
 of protecting the village or the roads, or of attending in anus 
 on certain occasions ; or it may be a special grant to compen- 
 sate bloodshed, to settle a feud, or to reward acts of valour in 
 the field. Sometimes these tenures represent the possessions 
 of the remnants of an earlier Rajput clan, which has kept its 
 freehold rights to the soil. Excepting some special grants, all 
 the lands either pay rent immediately to the ruling Chief, who 
 must of necessity be a Rajput, or to some minor chief within 
 whose lordship they fall ; or else they are held by septs and 
 cultivating groups of Rajputs, who pay a fixed quit rent to 
 some overlord. And as in all these lands the lordship cannot, 
 in the still surviving phase of societ} T , pass permanently out of 
 Rajput hands by which they are held on a sort of noble 
 tenure, it may be said that in the best preserved States the 
 territorial dominion of the clan still survives unbroken. There 
 are grants of land, mainly terminable, made by the ruling 
 Chief to favourites and wives, while in the Eastern States 
 there are some non-Rajput beneficiaries ; but all over the 
 West it would be difficult to find a single important estate not 
 held by a Rajput. Then there are of course assignments of 
 lands to temples and religious bodies, some of whom give nearly 
 as much trouble to Rajput Chiefs as ever churches and monastic 
 orders did to mediaeval European princes. It is difficult to 
 deal with a holy man whose disciples are ready to bury them- 
 selves alive if the government puts pressure on their master 
 for land taxes, and thus to bring down a curse upon the whole 
 administration. This is the Hindu method of excommunica- 
 tion, very effective still in Rajputana, and not to be faced with 
 impunity by the most powerful Chief. The best known remedy
 
 CHAP. VIII.] PRIVILEGES OF KINSHIP. 211 
 
 is to negotiate a private arrangement with some influential 
 Balaam, whereby curses are suddenly turned into blessings. 
 And, lastly, there are long stretches of wild and hilly tracts 
 occupied by the aboriginal tribes, who pay tribute to the 
 dominant Rajputs and are nominally under the Chief's rule, 
 though they swarm out like wild bees if he sends his police 
 into their country. These are mostly in the South-Western 
 regions of Rajputana. 
 
 But this is not the place for a complete and detailed descrip- 
 tion of the interior organization of a Rajput State, or of the 
 land tenures. Sufficient has been said to explain why the 
 organization of Rajput society has been almost always said to 
 be feudal ; and indeed the resemblance to feudal society is at 
 the first sight striking enough. Even Colonel Tod, whose 
 intimate knowledge of Rajputana has been never equalled, and 
 whose work is perhaps the most valuable and exhaustive 
 special study of Indian history and manners that has ever 
 been produced, has been so far misled by the likeness as to 
 miss the radical distinction between the two forms of society, 
 tribal and feudal. Although he clearly understands the con- 
 nection of those whom he calls ' vassals ' with their suzerain 
 to be affinity of blood, still he insists that the working system 
 of Rajputana is feudal. He devotes several chapters to proving 
 the extraordinaiy identity of the feudal incidents of the Euro- 
 pean system with that which he found at the beginning of this 
 century in Rajputana ; and it is he who is chiefly responsible 
 for the introduction into writings about Rajputana of all those 
 mediaeval terms [escuage, reliefs, Knights' fees, subinfeuda- 
 tion, &c., &c.] , which were seized upon as convenient phrases 
 by others who had not Tod's intimate qualifying acquaintance 
 with the facts. Now in these days the difficult}' of eradicating 
 a convenient theory is enormous, because the habit of general 
 reading disseminates it so widely, and because even men who 
 could collect and examine their own facts find it so much easier to 
 go to the standard books of reference, where they can find some 
 ready-made theory which helps them to arrange their facts ; in 
 short, because over-indulgence in book reading and too implicit 
 reliance on authorities produce an atrophy of the observing 
 
 p 2
 
 212 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. YIIL 
 
 faculty. Colonel Tod, however, gathered all his materials at 
 first hand ; and perhaps We should not blame him for failing 
 to see that his Rajput feudalism was not the basis of the 
 society, but an incomplete superstructure, and that Rajptitana, 
 as he surveyed it, was a group of tribal suzerainties rapidly 
 passing into the feudal stage, which we now know to have 
 been largely built up in Europe over the tribal foundations. 
 He saw that a chain of reciprocal authority and subordination 
 ran from the Chief downward by gradations to the possessor 
 of one or more villages. The lands held by the head of a 
 branch family in a clan he therefore persists in calling fiefs 
 held of the Chief as of a feudal sovereign, and he quotes Hal- 
 lam to show how the feudal structure was based immediately 
 upon the necessity of mutual preservation a compact between 
 lord and vassal for exchange of service and protection. This 
 identical compact he discovers in Rajputana ; and yet the in- 
 valuable documents which he has cited might have shown him 
 that the cement of the system was something much stronger 
 than feudalism. The subordinate Chiefs of the Jodhpoor 
 State had been driven from their lands by the oppression of 
 their Maharaja, the head of their clan and the ruler of their 
 State. They write thus (1821 A.D.) to Colonel Tod : " The 
 Maharaja and ourselves are of one stock, all Rathores. His 
 forefathers have reigned for generations, our forefathers were 
 their ministers and advisers, and whatever was performed was 
 by the collective wisdom of the council of our Chiefs. When- 
 ever Marwar (the Jodhpoor country) was concerned, there our 
 fathers were to be found, and with their lives preserved the 
 land .... When our services are acceptable, then he is our 
 lord; when not, we are again his brothers and kindred, claimants 
 and laying claim to the land." Again, we find the kinsmen in 
 Oodeypoor of the chief of Deogurh [called by Tod sub-vassals], 
 himself a branch from the main stock of the Chief of the 
 Sesodia clan, who rules Oodeypoor, thus remonstrating against 
 the head of their family : " When Deogurh was established, at 
 the same time were our allotments ; as is his patrimony, so is 
 ours." These protests take their stand on rights far beyond 
 the feudal conception ; and indeed it is universally assumed in
 
 CHAP. VIII.] RAJPUT CLAN-SOCIETY. 213 
 
 every clan of Rajpiitaua that the Chief and Ruler of the State 
 is only primus inter pares. 
 
 It is of course easy, for those who write after reading the 
 History of Early Institutions, to prove that a society of this 
 nature is by origin primitive and prsefeudalic. Sir Henry 
 Maine's remarkable power of insight into the real meaning and 
 connexions of archaic customs so alien to modern ideas as to 
 be ordinarily incomprehensible, and his luminous generaliza- 
 tions upon the materials found scattered over these obscure 
 fields of research, have greatly influenced local inquiries in 
 India. He surveys and marks out the whole line of penetration 
 into difficult and entangled subjects, and workers in the field 
 are constantly verifying the extraordinary precision of their 
 chief engineer's rapid alignments. In the actual condition, 
 for example, of the Rajput clan-society, with its tribal Chief at 
 the head of a cluster of families and sub-families, each having 
 a separate representative, we find a living illustration of that 
 set of ideas to which Sir H. Maine points as the true origin of 
 some European aristocracies, the conception of an aristocracy 
 deriving from blood alone, the families being noble according 
 to the degree of nearness of their consanguinity with the pure 
 stock of their Chief, and nobility depending entirely upon a 
 man's position in his own clan, while outside of all the clans 
 there is no nobility at all. There are in most States a few 
 noble families belonging to a clan different from that of the 
 territorial Chief; but we can usually trace them back to the 
 group upon which the clan now ruling imposed its supremacy 
 by conquest, and with these the test of nobility is intermarriage 
 with the ruling tribe. If they intermarry, they also are of 
 good Rajput blood, though the clan is alien. Land tenure is 
 not the base of this noblesse, but their pure blood is the origin 
 of their land tenure ; from the vast estates of a sub-Chief who 
 lives in independence almost complete at the head of a branch 
 family which has multiplied into a sept, down to the single 
 free-holding Rajput who is bound to follow his kinsmen to the 
 field. We have thus the starting point for a wide survey of the 
 filiation of historic institutions. Let us imagine Bernier, who 
 travelled from Paris to Delhi toward the end of the seventeenth
 
 214 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 century, surveying the -whole line of connection between the 
 Eajput noblesse and the noblesse of Versailles. Atone end of 
 the range he might have seen, in India, a primitive stratification 
 of society, having its superior and subordinate layers divided by 
 kinship, its tenures of land (excepting religious tenures) corre- 
 sponding to distinctions of birth, its hereditary officials forming 
 a separate caste, and the mass of its commercial and cultivat- 
 ing population ranked in classes altogether apart from the 
 ' upper ten thousand,' as the Eajputs might be literally called 
 in more than one State. At the other end he would have 
 seen Louis XIV. of France, absolute as an Asiatic despot 
 throughout his dominions, having reduced his nobles to political 
 nonentitj' while he admits a Montmorenci to be a better gentle- 
 man by descent than himself. At Ajmere as at Versailles the 
 noblesse of blood is predominant and rigidly exclusive; but in 
 Eajpiitana the noblesse are the clan, and the clan is the State. 
 Whereas the French nobility has passed clean through and 
 beyond the feudal phase, and has not only lost its political 
 independence or influence, but for the most part even its hold 
 on the land, yet it still hangs together as a separate caste by 
 the archaic tie of blood. The wear and tear of a thousand 
 restless years has hollowed out the primitive organism into a 
 thin shell, which breaks at the first serious social pressure. 
 
 Side by side with these two extreme forms of true aristocratic 
 institutions we have in the history of Asia, as of Europe, 
 specimens of societies in which the primitive forms have been 
 utterly crushed out and obliterated. "The only man noble in 
 my dominions," said the Emperor Paul of Eussia in reply to a 
 question as to the status of Eussian nobility, " is the man to 
 whom I speak for the time I am speaking to him ; " and Sir 
 H. Maine observes* how such a pretension would have been 
 resented in Bourbon France, by the Due de St. Simon (we may 
 add) for example. The Eussian answer is just what might 
 have come out of the mouth of a Moghal Emperor of India in 
 the seventeenth century, speaking of his own courtiers 
 and high officers; while the resentment of a Eajptit Chief 
 
 * Early Institutions, pp. 137 and 138.
 
 CHAP. VIII.] EAJPUT ARISTOCRACY. 215 
 
 at the bare notion of such a status would have been ten 
 times as great as a French noble's. The Rajput is most 
 punctilious on points of etiquette, knowing the value of forms 
 in keeping up substantial rights* when one has to do with 
 princes ; and the tradition of common ancestry has preserved 
 among them the feeling which encourages a poor Rajput yeoman 
 to hold himself as good a gentilhomme as his Chief, and im- 
 measurably superior to a high official of the professional class. 
 Yet, as was said at the beginning of this chapter, there is no 
 more favourite commonplace about our English rule in India 
 than that it has levelled the native aristocracy ; though it is 
 impossible to do much levelling upon a dead flat, such as had 
 been prepared for us by the steam-roller of Mahoniedan despot- 
 ism and its satrapies. The only ancient aristocracy which the 
 Mahoniedan Emperors spared in Upper India survives still 
 among the tribes which they could not subdue or break up, and 
 the only aristocracy which they set up consisted of a few lucky 
 individuals who managed to hold and transmit for a few gene- 
 rations the grants of land obtained as rewards for service,! 
 
 * "Le gout des formes, choses as common men in the cavalry of some 
 
 ennemies de la servitude." Tocque- omrah. The king, however, usually 
 
 ville, Ancien Regime. bestows a small pension on the widow, 
 
 f The following extract from Ber- and often on the family ; and if the 
 
 nier's Travels in the Moghal Empire omrah's life be sufficiently prolonged, 
 
 may give some people a new view of the he may obtain the advancement of his 
 
 status of grandees at the imperial court : children by royal favour, particularly if 
 
 ' ' It must not be imagined that the their persons be well formed, and their 
 
 omrahs or lords of the Mogul's court complexions sufficiently fair to enable 
 
 are members of ancient families, as our them to pass for genuine Moguls. But 
 
 nobility in France. The king being this advancement through special favour 
 
 proprietor of all the lands in the proceeds slowly, for it is an almost in- 
 
 empire, there can exist neither duke- variable custom to pass gradually from 
 
 doms nor marquisates ; nor can any small salaries and inconsiderable offices 
 
 family be found possessed of wealth to situations of greater trust and emolu- 
 
 arising from a domain and living upon inent. The omrahs, therefore, mostly 
 
 its own patrimony. The courtiers are consist of adventurers from different 
 
 often not even descendants of omrahs, nations, who entice one another to the 
 
 because the king being heir of all their court, and are generally persons of low 
 
 possessions, no family can long main- descent, some having been originally 
 
 tain its distinction, but, after the slaves, and the majority being destitute 
 
 omrah's death, is soon extinguished, of education. The Mogul raises them 
 
 and the sons, or at least the grandsons, to dignities, or degrades them to ob- 
 
 reduced generally to a state bordering scurity, according to his own pleasure 
 
 on mendicity, and compelled to enlist and caprice."
 
 216 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 often as bigots, lackeys, or panders. It is worth noting that 
 the Emperors were never able to reduce the Rajput Chiefs even 
 to the status of beneficiaries, or to pass them into the feudal 
 stage proper, for the plain reason that even if the Chiefs were 
 willing their kinsmen were not; and the ruling Chiefs had 
 never sufficient power to have then* own way in a matter of this 
 sort. 
 
 It must not be inferred from what has been written above 
 that the political organism of the ruling clan prevails with 
 equal integrity in all the Rajput States. It is least damaged in 
 the Western and North- Western States, which are held by the 
 clans of the Kuchwahas, the Rathores, and the Sesodias ; but 
 even in these States the organism is, as we have shown, much 
 overlaid by feudal growth, the state of incessant war having 
 prominently developed the obligations of military service. 
 Nowhere, however, has the sj'stein become entirely feudal; 
 that is, nowhere has military tenure obliterated altogether the 
 original tenure by blood and birth-right of the clan. There 
 are a few real beneficiaries, but their tenure is acknowledged 
 to be special and inferior ; and as the tribal Chief is kept in 
 order by his powerful kinsmen, so the powerful kinsman has to 
 reckon with his brotherhood. The only class that can be taxed 
 or bullied in real feudal fashion is the non-Raj put peasantry ; 
 but even here the cultivator is so valuable that he must not be 
 driven away. In the Eastern Rajput States, which were most 
 exposed to the disintegrating ravages of the Moghal and 
 Maratha, the tribal organization has been much effaced politi- 
 cally, and the Chief has centralized his power and acquired 
 almost complete jurisdiction over the whole of his territory. 
 So that whereas in the North and West a ruling Chief could 
 not break through the compact front which his clansmen would 
 at once oppose to any serious political encroachment, and has 
 a dubious jurisdiction within the domains of his leading kins- 
 men, in the South a Chief rules a State more or less under his 
 own administrative orders, and a population of which his own 
 clansmen form but a small part. In these States, indeed, the 
 chief families are decaying into a French noblesse, living on 
 the rents and fees of estates assigned to them for maintenance,
 
 CHAP. VIII.] PRIMOGENITURE. 217 
 
 a distinct class with right to appear on all State occasions and 
 to be provided for upon the lands, but having no independent 
 strength or separate following, while the ruler is gradually cen- 
 tralizing all power. It is manifest that these Eastern States 
 have long been rapidly sliding into the normal type of ordinary 
 oriental government, irresponsible personal despotism; and 
 these are precisely the States which were nearest to the brink 
 of destruction when the English interposed in 1817. In this 
 stage of the decay of the tribal system, when a Rajput Chief 
 has managed to cut away all round himself the power and 
 independence of his kinsmen, the State topples over at the first 
 vigorous push like any other ephemeral Asiatic principality. 
 It is a sound political as well as a mechanical truth that you 
 can have no real support without resistance, or the capacity to 
 resist. 
 
 We may conjecture that primogeniture, as a rule of political 
 succession, was born out of a combination between expediency 
 and the right of blood. To have any settled political existence 
 a tribe wants a leader, but as that leader must be of the purest 
 blood of the founder of the tribal dominion, the choice is 
 restricted to founder's kin. Among these the candidate most 
 likely to unite the two desiderata, purity of blood and influence 
 in the society, is the eldest son of the last ruler ; and thus may 
 come to be formed the rule of primogeniture, always condi- 
 tional upon qualification for the office, which has governed 
 succession to tribal States in Rajputana. The advantage of 
 primogeniture as the first step toward political amalgamation 
 may be measured by observing that in one or two very peculiar 
 tracts of Rajputana, where the rule has never got established, 
 the septs have never been able to build up any political system 
 at all. On the Western border of Rajputana is a tract called 
 Mullanee, nominally within the territory of the Chief of Jodh- 
 poor. It is possessed by a sept which claims descent, every 
 man of them, from the divinized ancestor of the whole Rathore 
 clan ; by a line earlier and more direct than that of the Jodh- 
 poor Chief himself, the acknowledged political head of the 
 Rathore clan. According to primitive ideas this superior 
 lineage gives a clear right to demur at discretion to the Jodhpoor
 
 218 THE KAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 Chief's authority, and the sept being "wild borderers, fond 
 of feuds and forays, any good pretext for demurring to estab- 
 lished authority is heartily welcome. But the peculiarity of 
 this sept is that though it descends from one stock, it has no 
 chief of its own ; it is made up of a number of distinct family 
 groups, each separate and independent under its head. And 
 the land is not only parcelled off among these groups, but there 
 goes on a constant struggle between the ordinary rule of Hindu 
 succession to property, which divides off the land among the 
 sons at each succession, and the rule of political expediency 
 which inclines toward primogeniture. The ordinary outcome 
 of this struggle is a sort of inchoate primogeniture, allotting a 
 larger portion of the family lands and superior authority to 
 the elder heir of the chief family in a group. But the blood 
 feuds, family and faction fights, and general anarchy caused by 
 these chronic quarrels over the land are incessant, and have 
 totally prevented any political consolidation of the sept into a 
 State. The whole tract would long ago have been incorpo- 
 rated quietly into the Jodhpoor State, to which it does nomi- 
 nally belong, had it not been an outlying country, full of hardy 
 caterans not easily tamed. There is at the North-East of 
 Rajputana another tract in a very similar condition, peopled 
 by the Kuchwaha clan, of whom the head is the Jeypoor Chief, 
 to whom this sept owes an allegiance that is very unpunctually 
 paid. Here again this sept consists of the descendants of a 
 son of an ancient Chief of the main stock of the Kuchwahas 
 who went forth and conquered this tract on his own score and 
 private venture. They have never formed a State under one 
 tribal leader, and they still continue in the molecular condition 
 of an uncertain federation of family groups of different magni- 
 tudes, usually dividing and subdividing the land down to the 
 point consistent with some kind of cohesion for self-protection 
 and the recognition of a head to each family. These groups- 
 seem to represent the fluid unconsolidated stage of tribal 
 aggregations, before they have begun to crystallize round an 
 acknowledged head, and to harden into political shape. And 
 latterly the consolidation of these septs has been greatly hin- 
 dered by the policy of the Chiefs of Jodhpoor and Jeypoor,
 
 CHAP. VIII.] MARRIAGE CUSTOMS. 
 
 who being unable to control these unruly communities became 
 alarmed lest they should unite under one head and become 
 formidable independent rivals. AVith much the same motive 
 as that which, according to Sir H. Maine, induced the English 
 to gavel the lands of the Irish Papists and make them 
 descendible to all the children alike, the Je} T poor Chiefs used 
 all influence to push forward among the refractory sept the 
 custom of equal division of the land among males on each 
 succession ; using it as a wedge to split up the groups as they 
 began to form. Under this impetus each field has in some 
 villages been repeatedly parcelled off into lots of heritage ; and 
 as no real central authority has been imposed in this tract, 
 the interminable blood letting over these landmarks has 
 effectively kept down the strength of the sept, and prevented 
 political amalgamation. 
 
 Marriage plays so important a part both in the political and 
 social systems of the Rajputs that some brief description of it 
 is essential. The invariable custom is, to use the term intro- 
 duced by Mr. J. F. McLennan, that of exogamy, or the custom 
 which prohibits intermarriage within the clan, so that every 
 clan depends, for wives, upon the other clans ; for of course no 
 Rajput can take a wife elsewhere than from Rajputs. Thus a 
 Rathore clansman, for instance, could never wed a woman 
 from the most distant sept that bears the Rathore name ; if he 
 does, the children are certainly not pure Rathores, whatever 
 else they may become. The custom is very widespread and 
 well known all over Asia ; but the Mahomedan law (of which 
 the peculiar effect is to break up the archaic tables of prohibited 
 degrees) has very largely obliterated it, and now it could hardly 
 be better exemplified than in Rajputana, where we can trace it 
 directly and palpably back to its source in the assumption that 
 the whole of a great clan scattered over many distant pails of 
 a large country are kinsfolk. Here, as wherever exogamy 
 prevails, marriage by abduction of the bride flourishes univer- 
 sally in form, however it may have decayed in fact ; and the 
 ceremony may be witnessed in great perfection at any marriage 
 in high life, when the bridegroom arrives with his wedding 
 band of armed kinsmen, who clash their arms and rush in with
 
 220 THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIIL 
 
 a shout upon the bride's party. It can be easily understood 
 that exogamy has always operated to stimulate jealousies and 
 heart-burnings between clans, and to make the taking of a 
 wife a still more troublesome and perilous business than even 
 in civilized life. For it leaves the supply of wives in the 
 hands of a neighbouring clan, always jealous, and often at open 
 feud, who may suddenly refuse to give their daughters, as in 
 the famous story of the war between Israel and Benjamin. 
 Disputes over brides and betrothals have been important in 
 Rajput history. Socially the custom makes marriage difficult by 
 narrowing the field of selection, for neither can a man go very far 
 among strange tribes to seek his wife, nor a father to seek a hus- 
 band for his daughter ; so that a poor man often does not marry 
 at all, while a rich man of high birth is besieged with applications 
 for his hand, in order that the stigma of an unmarried daughter 
 may at least be formally removed. And if there were space 
 here, we might give some curious facts to show how this diffi- 
 culty of marriage has been one cause of that constant morcelle- 
 ment, or splitting up into isolated groups, the larger group into 
 smaller ones, which is a radical law of the dynamics which 
 govern the construction of primitive societies. In the old war 
 times many companies of Rajputs took service with the Empe- 
 rors in their distant expeditions to the frontiers, and were 
 placed under their own leader in charge of the distant border 
 forts. They settled on the lands close round these forts; 
 became the hereditary garrison; and their descendants may 
 be found occupying the ruined inclosure to this day. But as 
 these military colonists could not, by reason of distance and 
 the dangers of travel, obtain wives from the legitimate clans, 
 they sometimes took wives in the country of their adoption, 
 and sometimes intermarried among themselves. In the former 
 case they unwillingly founded a new sub-caste; in the latter 
 they cut themselves off from the parent clan, and became a 
 separate impure clan, with numerous internal sub-divisions. 
 Then again the disintegrating effect of sectarianism among the 
 Rajputs must at one tune have been great ; for there are in 
 Rajpiitana some distinct castes who appear to be of pure 
 Rajput origin, but to have been detached many generations
 
 CHAP. VIII.] RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS. 221 
 
 ago by following a peculiar religious movement. When a 
 Rajput turns aside after the new light shown by one of the 
 spiritual teachers who are incessantly arising in Hinduism, 
 and completely adopts a new way of life, he exchanges a tribe 
 for a caste. And it appears (though the subject is very 
 obscure) that whereas his tribal bond of consanguinity ex- 
 tended round his whole clan, in the caste his kinship is at once 
 nan-owed down to that section of the great caste group which 
 was originally Rajput. The most famous sect in Rajpiitana 
 holds within its pale no less than 1,444 distinct groups ; all 
 apparently formed by this process of partial accretion, inter- 
 marrying one with another, but never within themselves. In 
 this instance, so far as can be learnt, all this spreading reticu- 
 lation of spiritual relationship has grown out of the teaching of a 
 single revivalist who appeared only four centuries ago. There is 
 also in Rajpiitana a very curious fraternity of warlike devotees 
 claiming to be founded by a Rajput who seems to have been a kind 
 of fighting ascetic, disdaining any other garments save shield 
 and sword belt ; and these men, being vowed to strict celibacy, 
 recruit their ranks by adoption, purchase, or abduction of chil- 
 dren. The orphanage of old-fashioned India for males is a 
 religious order. But irregular marriages are in Rajputana the 
 commonest source of a fresh group formation. 
 
 The institution of fosterage of course flourishes among com- 
 munities so distinctively of the primitive Aryan type as the 
 Rajputs. And though the foster family of a Chief is never of 
 the Rajput clan, but belongs almost always to some particular 
 family of a well known pastoral tribe, yet the foster brothers 
 often attain much influence and position at his court; and 
 the family has a recognized hereditary status of "kinship by 
 the milk." 
 
 After this manner, therefore, does the cross of blood, the 
 change of faith, or other variation from ancestral custom, 
 continually operate to cut off the diverging family from the 
 parent species, which is kept pure through this careful pruning 
 away of unsound offshoots. And thus the pure Rajput clans 
 are those great kindred groups which have kept immaculate 
 the rules and conditions of exogamic conntibium throughout
 
 222 THE EAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIIL 
 
 the genealogy of their tribal tree in all its branches, every 
 family showing its pedigree leading back to some branch, 
 however insignificant, which springs out of the original stem 
 and root of the tribe. This is the real aristocracy of India, 
 with which every Hindu dynasty and family of influence or 
 new wealth (except Brahnians) tries to find, beg, or buy a 
 connection, from the petty non-Aryan Chief of the Central 
 Indian woodlands to the greatest Maratha ruler, the kings of 
 Nepal, and the half Chinese princes on the far North-Eastern 
 frontiers of India and Burma. 
 
 We have left ourselves no space to describe any class of 
 the population of Rajputana beside the Rajputs, or much 
 might have been said of the enterprising commercial and 
 banking class who made their head quarters in the fenced 
 cities of Jodhpoor and Bikanir, oases in the desert which 
 marauding bands could not reach, and who conducted exchange 
 operations all over India in the midst of the anarchy of the 
 eighteenth century. There is much vague talk about the 
 English rule in India being the paradise of money-makers ; 
 but the great bankers of Upper India with one accord look 
 back regretfully from these levelling times of railway and 
 telegraph to the golden days of immense profits upon daring 
 ventures, when swift runners brought earl} r secret news of a 
 decisive battle,* or a great military leader offered any terms 
 for a loan which would pay his mutinous troops. In those 
 times a man whose bills were duly cashed in every camp and 
 court of the Northern Provinces had often to remit specie at 
 all hazards, and the best swords of Rajputana were at the 
 service of the longest purse. A tremendous insurance policy 
 was paid to some petty chief or captain of banditti, who 
 
 * One of the few picturesque touches who had undertaken to run in nine days 
 
 in Grant Duff's History of the Marathas across India from beyond Delhi to 
 
 is where he tells how Bajee Rao, the Aurungabad in the Deccan, with a 
 
 great Peshwa, lay in camp on the bank cipher message to some bankers from 
 
 of the Nerbudda, waiting anxiously for their correspondents in the North that 
 
 news of the grand army which he had the Maratha army had been routed with 
 
 sent to conquer North India. He vast slaughter on the plains of Panee- 
 
 could hear nothing until his scouts put. 
 brought in a runner they had stopped,
 
 CHAK VIII.] EFFECT OF ENGLISH HULE. 223 
 
 undertook by hook or crook to cut his way across country 
 and deposit the treasure at its appointed place, and who 
 almost always discharged his contract with great daring 
 and fidelit}'. Something might also have been said of the 
 curious religious sects and divinities of Rajputana, and 
 much of the non- Aryan tribes. But this must be merely 
 a sketch of institutions that are interesting not more by 
 their past history, than by the speculations which are 
 suggested as to the transmutations which await them. 
 Change these institutions must, and rapidly ; for under 
 the weighty pressure of the English empire every where 
 we see the old order changing, giving place to new, be- 
 cause the English rule is itself such an entire alteration of 
 political circumstances in India. The future of these States 
 is a question well worth the deepest consideration of those 
 who guide the policy of our empire, because, as we began by 
 saying, these States contain the only ancient institutions in 
 India which have sbown stability, and are worthy of free men. 
 Every other indigenous experiment at political development 
 in India has broken down ; during the last eight centuries there 
 have been none except ephemeral tyrannies, a hopelessly sterile 
 species. The Rajput States, in spite of all their defects, 
 stand out in marked contrast against the native despotisms 
 which we overturned, or those which we still protect and 
 endeavour to improve in India, or against the Moghal empire 
 at its best. Our modern notions are apt to make us too 
 readily disgusted or disheartened with turbulent nobles, a 
 weak central administration, a bad police, and a general 
 indifference to the great civilizing watchwords of order and 
 progress. And each ruling Chief, in proportion to his dexterity 
 or ambition, attempts to enlist these notions on his own side 
 against his nobles. Now that he no longer needs the support 
 of his powerful kinsfolk against external enemies, he feels 
 their restraint upon his internal authority. They help him 
 neither in the field nor in the cabinet, for there is no such 
 usage as would necessitate an assembly of the notables ; and 
 the minor chiefs often live apart in their forts, hating and 
 hated by the supple ministers who advise their ruler, who are
 
 224 THE RAJPUT STATES OP INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 of another caste altogether, and whose interests are on the 
 side of centralized and absolute power. It is easy to see 
 that the tendency of modern officialism would be to strengthen 
 the sovereign against the nobles. We have the same feel- 
 ing of impatience with these troublesome half-barbarous 
 communities that prompted, and still prompts, many able 
 men to rejoice at the crushing out of the Polish kingdom, 
 with its quarrelsome Diet and unreasonable assemblage of 
 tumultuous nobles ; which contained nevertheless more life 
 and promise of free development than the dull immovable 
 bureaucracy, Eussian or Austrian, that has succeeded it. 
 Military rulers in Europe, and experienced European offi- 
 cials in India, declare that order and a strong centralized 
 government is the one thing needful. So it is ; but if plants are 
 to be hardy, we must give them time to grow. It is certain that 
 these Eajpiit societies, held together by all the cumbrous bonds 
 and stays of a primitive organism, present far more promising 
 elements of future development than powerful and well-ordered 
 despotisms of the normal Asiatic t} r pe, where a mixed mul- 
 titude are directly under the sway of one ruler, however able, 
 who degrades or dignifies at his will. Let any one contrast 
 the account which we have here given of Eajpiit institutions 
 with the descriptions which Bernier (an excellent observer, 
 and a subject of Louis Quatorze) gives of society under the 
 Moghal empire in the seventeenth century, a period when it 
 was still flourishing like a green bay tree.* Nor is there much 
 ground for hoping -that we are likely soon to see in any native 
 Indian State a race of princes so able as the descendants of 
 the Emperor Baber, or that European education and tutorial 
 
 * Take this passage as a sample tain the splendour of a numerous court, 
 
 "Instead of men of this description" and to pay a large army maintained 
 
 (opulent, educated and -well born) "the for the purpose of keeping the people 
 
 Great Moghal is surrounded by slaves in subjection. No adequate idea can 
 
 ignorant and brutal ; by parasites raised be conveyed of the sufferings ot that peo- 
 
 from the dregs of society ; strangers to pie. The cane and the whip compel 
 
 loyalty and patriotism ; full of insuffer- them to incessant labour for the benefit 
 
 able pride, and destitute of courage, of of others, and driven to despair by 
 
 honour and of decency. The country every kind of cruel treatment, their 
 
 is ruined by the necessity of defraying revolt or their flight is only prevented 
 
 the enormous charges required to main- by the presence of a military force.''
 
 CHAP. VIII.] JJAJPUT INSTITUTIONS. 225 
 
 superintendence by English officers will rear up generations of 
 wise and benevolent Rajahs and Xawabs. The reigning families 
 of India have to guard themselves against rapid deterioration 
 under the listless security produced by our protection, by the 
 absence of personal danger, and above all by relief from the 
 fear of serious internal revolts, of foreign invasion, or general 
 tumults and commotion. In the present condition of political 
 securit}', bringing general ease and prosperity, the surround- 
 ings are too strong for artificial training; when a youth is 
 set up and propped up safely as a golden image of wealth and 
 power he becomes careless, and is apt to go wrong as a rule] 1 , 
 if there is nothing to stop him but the English government, which 
 is always averse to frequent interference with the internal affairs 
 of a State. In Rajpiitana alone there do actually exist the 
 natural institutions which, in various forms and stages, have 
 checked and graduated the power of sovereigns all over the 
 world. The incessant bickering and contests between encroach- 
 ing Chief and jealous kinsmen ; the weak central power ; the 
 divided jurisdictions ; the obstinacy with which a man of high 
 birth insists on the proper punctilio to be reciprocated between 
 himself and his Chief all these are the tokens of free society 
 in the rough. To make haste to help the Chief to break the 
 power of his turbulent and reactionary nobles, in order that 
 he may establish police and uniform administration over his 
 whole territory, is to an Englishman at first sight an obvious 
 duty, at the second look a dubious and shortsighted policy. 
 If these rough hewn obstructions to helpless equality under the 
 orders of a central government are once smoothed away they will 
 assuredly never be built up again ; and as there is nothing that 
 could take their place, the tribal chieftain will have converted 
 himself into a petty autocrat, responsible for his doings only 
 to the paramount power which sustains him. Now the pro- 
 tected autocrat in a native Indian State has not as yet turned 
 out such a success that the English nation can feel proud of 
 having brought him out upon the political stage. So it will 
 be wise to have patience with the wild ways of Rajputana as 
 long as we can, to abstain as much as possible from inter- 
 ference, and to maintain, so far as we do interfere, the 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE EAJPUT STATES OF INDIA. [CHAP. VIII. 
 
 equilibrium of weight between Chief and nobles, until it can 
 be adjusted by the light of improved intelligence and education 
 on both sides. 
 
 Whether such a time will ever arrive, is an open question 
 with some who, like the Comte Gobineau,* affirms that the 
 civilization of Europe never has taken, and never will take, 
 root among the old races of Asia. And, looking to the present 
 social condition of the Rajput clans, it is much to be feared 
 that they are declining fast in vigour and in numbers. It may 
 be possible, indeed, that throughout Asia the warlike tribes 
 are decaying under the spread of European dominion, which 
 seems to be favourable mainly to the prosperity of the industrial 
 races, the soft weak populations which swarm in the tropical 
 low lying regions. But these races have no real political 
 future, and only damage free institutions by burlesques that 
 we shall some day become tired and ashamed of bringing out 
 under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen. If it be 
 true, therefore, that a more polished and reasonable despotism 
 is the only political improvement that Europeans are likely to 
 introduce into India, then no sacrifice of modern notions of 
 uniformity is too great for the object of preserving as long as 
 possible in the Rajput countries these last relics of institutions 
 which have elsewhere proved fruitful in their development of 
 some real advantages to political well-being. It must be con- 
 fessed that the tribal system, appears occasionally to stand 
 right in the path of reforms which to an European appear of 
 prime and peremptory necessity. The system would fall in a 
 few years before an efficient State arnTy, or even a strong police, 
 in the hands of an able Chief; it would be ground to atoms 
 under the regular mechanism of effective law courts after the 
 Anglo-Indian model. The chicane of half civilized avocasserie, 
 that bane of all British India, would make short work of all 
 these vague customs and unwritten privileges. And when we 
 have confessed that these primitive institutions are at present 
 incompatible with the machinery of civilized law and police, 
 many persons will reply that they stand self-condemned. 
 
 * "Trois ans dans 1'Asie."
 
 CHAP. VIII.] THE POLITICAL FUTURE. 227 
 
 Nevertheless, it will be a pity if these institutions, which 
 have survived such perilous ages, and have resisted so many 
 despotic dynasties, should now under the dominion of a free 
 people succumh prematurely to the cankers of a calm world, 
 before it is clearly understood how the void which they will 
 leave can be filled up. 
 
 Q 2
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ISLAM IN INDIA.* 
 (Theological Review, 1872.) 
 
 Dr. Hunter's literary skill and success as a writer on India Reference t 
 Mahomedan grievances as stated by Dr. Hunter in his "Indian Musalm&ns, "" 
 and by Colonel Lees in a pamphlet Remarks and criticisms upon these 
 statements, and upon the real position and feelings of Indian Mahomedans 
 Brief historical retrospect of our relations with the Mahomedans, and of the- 
 cause of events leading up to the existing situation, in which the English 
 have succeeded to the political supremacy over India relinquished by the 
 Mahomedans Question whether religious texts or rulings have much practical 
 effect on the acts or attitude of Mahomedans Observations upon the- 
 inevitable anomalies and difficulties surrounding English government in 
 India Same discontent and disappointment among Mahomedans unavoidable 
 Syud Ahmed's polemical controversy with Sir William Muir Unpopularity 
 of "Wahabis among Mahomedans The educational policy of the Indian 
 Government, how far it actually deserves the imputation of formidable errors 
 and grievances Examination of specific charges ; nature and effect often 
 exaggerated Explanation of our general policy ; the substantial complaints 
 against it mainly founded on incidents inseparable from the situation ; to be- 
 remedied by time, goodwill, steady and impartial administration, and the 
 general spread of our civilizing influences. 
 
 DR. HUNTER'S book on <: Our Indian Musalmans " was 
 read with much interest, and even with anxiety, by all persons 
 to whom secular and religious politics are a matter of serious 
 concern. The author is very well known in England as a 
 writer on Indian topics : indeed, it is now some years since 
 he reached a grade of literary reputation perhaps never 
 before so fully attained by an Anglo-Indian official. Any 
 book which Mr. Hunter sends from India for publication at 
 
 * 1. Our Indian Musalmans. Are Appendix containing Lord Macaulaifs 
 
 they bound in Conscience to rebel against Minute. By W. Nassau Lees, Fellow of 
 
 the Queen? By "W. "W. Hunter, LL.D. the Calcutta University, late Principalof 
 
 1871. the Mahomedan College at Calcutta, &c. 
 
 2. Indian Musalnulns. Being Three 3. Essays on the Life of Mahomed. 
 
 Letters reprinted from the Times, with By Syud Ahmed Khan Bahcidur, C. S. I. 
 
 four Articles on Education, and an [Published in India, 1870.]
 
 CHAP. IX.] " THE SPIRIT OF UNREST." 229 
 
 home, is widely read by the public at large and carefully con- 
 sidered by the best judges. Hitherto those who have acquired 
 special personal knowledge of India, have very rarely possessed 
 also the gift of imparting it in the style and shape demanded 
 by the high standard of even popular literature in these days ; 
 and of the few good writers who have intimate practical 
 acquaintance with Indian administration, hardly one has suc- 
 ceeded so well as Dr. Hunter in drawing immediate general 
 attention to Indian affairs. Macaulay is, of course, a signal 
 exception : his famous essays actually created the public 
 opinion almost universally held to this day upon the great 
 political strokes by which certain resolute Englishmen towards 
 the end of the last century carved out and consolidated our 
 empire in Asia. Those great historical cartoons of the exploits 
 of Warren Hastings and of Clive have stamped their impres- 
 sions ineradicably upon the mind of ordinary readers, insomuch 
 that if the average Englishman knows anything of such things, 
 he implicitly believes Macaulay's version of them ; and it 
 would be vain to protest that, though this historical oil-paint- 
 ing (as Carlyle calls such works) is magnificent, it is not 
 -always history. But so strong and enduring is the influence 
 of trenchant phrase and picturesque language, that many 
 of the mistakes and over-coloured statements contained in 
 Macaulay's sketches of thirty 3 r ears ago, have been vigorously 
 reproduced by Mr. W. M. Torrens, in a book, named "Empire 
 in Asia," which he published in 1872. 
 
 The motive and reason of Dr. Hunter's treatise are ex- 
 plained in one of his earliest pages, where he says that " the 
 Musalmaus of India are, and have been for years, a source of 
 chronic danger to the British power in India." This danger is 
 caused by " the spirit of unrest," which Dr. Hunter proceeds 
 to exhibit in its threefold form : in the formation of a Rebel 
 Colony on our North-western frontier, which has involved us 
 in constant disasters ; in the treasonable organization of Musal- 
 mans within our interior districts ; and in the legal discussions 
 that have arisen upon the question which Dr. Hunter has 
 chosen for the title of his work " Are the Indian Musalmans 
 bound in Conscience to rebel against the Queen ?" He goes on
 
 230 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 further to examine the grievances of the Mahomedans under 
 English rule, and to point out means of remedying them. 
 In short, he inquires into the sources, historical, political 
 and social, whence has flowed the disaffection, which Dr. 
 Hunter holds to be deep-seated, wide-spread and imminently 
 perilous to our government. In accordance with this pro- 
 gramme, the opening chapters of the book are allotted to a 
 brief and animated description of the foundation and fortunes 
 in Arabia of the sect called Wahdbis ; of their establishment 
 on our North-western border by a famous saint and martyr; of 
 the rapid spread of the Wahabi doctrines throughout India by 
 fanatic missionaries ; and of the constant petty wars and 
 internal seditions which have been traced entirely to this 
 Wahabi propaganda. I shall not follow Dr. Hunter along 
 his narrative of these events, which should nevertheless be 
 known to all readers who desire to comprehend whence came 
 Wahabism into India, and how it has fared there. I am bound, 
 however, to observe that there are certain peculiarities in the 
 style and manner of this spirited historical sketch (and indeed 
 more or less throughout all this book) which must be taken 
 into account by home-keeping Englishmen who desire to draw 
 accurate and safe conclusions upon the subject which Dr. 
 Hunter has handled so skilfully and attractively. 
 
 Dr. Hunter is before all things vigorous, clear and definite ; 
 he rejoices in strong lights, in highly-finished episodes, and in 
 full-length portraits of personages. He excels in the art of 
 lively scenic representations of Indian history by artistic and 
 effective use] of European metaphors and phrases for Asiatic 
 events and institutions, whereby his ideas and allusions are made 
 to appear quite luminous and suggestive to educated Englishmen 
 who begin with this work their study of an unfamiliar topic. But 
 it is impossible that the original facts and local peculiarities 
 should not suffer even by the most skilful paraphrase or travesty; 
 for Indian figures cannot be dressed up in European costume 
 without some damage to their native character and complexion. 
 So that the similes and historical illustrations in which Dr. 
 Hunter luxuriates are often more striking than exact ; they 
 have not in Asia, where he applies them, the same connotation
 
 CHAP. IX.] THE " MAHOMEDAX QUESTION." 231 
 
 that they have in Europe, whence he borrows them; they 
 convey some notion of the truth, but not the whole truth ; 
 and, moreover, the author is at times sorely vexed by an 
 hyperbolic fiend which he would do well to cast out. With 
 these premonitory observations, the book may be commended 
 to all persons seeking in England to gather evidence and frame 
 a judgment upon some of the complications and contrasts 
 which are incessantly growing out of that extraordinary poli- 
 tical accident, the English dominion in India. 
 
 The pamphlet by Colonel Nassau Lees is a reprint of three 
 letters in the Times, which were called forth in 1871 by Dr. 
 Hunter's book, and of four articles on Education which origi- 
 nally appeared in Indian journals. He has appended to them 
 a Minute written in 1835 by Macaulay, when he was in India, 
 upon the system of higher State education to be adopted in 
 that country. Colonel Lees was Principal of the Mahomedan 
 College at Calcutta, and is altogether entitled to a respectful 
 hearing upon the condition and feelings of Mahomedans in 
 Lower Bengal : his argument, which we shall examine at length 
 farther on, is mainly directed towards exposing the mistakes of 
 our educational policy in India, and the fallacies contained in 
 Macaulay's Minute, which had immense effect at the time ; and 
 toward attempting to demonstrate how the system of instruction 
 which has hitherto been employed has had the grave consequence 
 of depressing the social and political status of our Mahomedan 
 fellow-subjects. 
 
 Xow as this paper is intended to give some account 
 of what may be termed the "Mahomedan question" in 
 India, and as Dr. Hunter and Colonel Lees both put the 
 case on the Mahomedan side quite as strongly as it can fairly 
 be made out, it may be convenient to take from these authori- 
 ties a precise statement of the main grievances which the Indian 
 Mahomedans are said to allege. I remark, with all other 
 critics on Dr. Hunter's book, that lie draws his facts very largely 
 from the province of Lower Bengal, and applies his inferences 
 to all India, a process somewhat defective in logical fairness. 
 However, here is his chief indictment against the British 
 Government, drawn up in sentences composed after the style
 
 232 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 of Macaulay, though this is no necessary imputation on the 
 substance : 
 
 "There is no use shutting our ears to the fact that the Indian Musalmans 
 arraign us on a list of charges as serious as have ever been brought against a 
 Government. They accuse us of having closed every honourable walk of life to 
 professors of their creed. They accuse us of having introduced a system of educa- 
 tion which leaves their whole community unprovided for, and which has landed 
 it in contempt and beggary. They accuse us of having brought misery into 
 thousands of families by abolishing their Law Officers, who gave the sanction of 
 religion to the marriage tie. . . . They accuse us of imperilling their souls by 
 denying them the means of performing the duties of their faith. They charge us 
 with deliberate malversation of their religious foundations, with misappropriation 
 of their educational funds. They declare that we have shewn no pity in the time 
 of our triumph, and with the insolence of upstarts have trodden our former masters 
 into the mire. They . . . arraign us for want of sympathy, want of magnanimity, 
 mean malversation . . . and for great public wrongs spread over a period of one 
 hundred years." * 
 
 These are the accusations with which I propose to deal 
 hereafter in some detail ; they make up the gravamen of the 
 plaint stated for Mahomedans by their able and somewhat 
 impassioned advocate ; and the matter cannot be debated 
 without joining issues on these points. But I must first say 
 that I doubt whether these sharp-set sentences really present 
 to us the actual feelings and utterances of the general body 
 of Mahomedans ; I am more inclined to affirm that they 
 derive their force and weight principally from the rhetorical 
 power and the imagination of the writer, who is evidently 
 determined that his case shall not lose by any over caution 
 about stating it. The words quoted are the language of a Pole 
 under the Russian regime ; of a Greek under Turkish despotism 
 fifty years ago ; of an Irish Papist under the furious penal laws 
 of the last century ; of some crushed nationality, or of some 
 people vindictively oppressed and ground exceeding small in 
 the mills of political tyranny. Stronger expressions could not 
 have been employed if we Christians had done unto the Indian 
 Mahomedans as Mahomedans have elsewhere done so often to 
 Christians ; if we had persecuted them as Aurungzebe persecuted 
 Hindus, or treated them with the hatred and savage cruelty 
 shewn to unbelievers by Hyder Ali or Tippu of Mysore. 
 
 * Indian Musalmfens, p. 145.
 
 HAI>. IX.] MAHOMEDAN GRIEVANCES. 233 
 
 "\Yhereas the Mahomedans of India in the present day are 
 (excepting the lowest classes) very good Oriental politicians, 
 \vith fair knowledge of the world and of Asiatic history, and 
 with some traditional experience of what bad governments really 
 are ; they know much better than Dr. Hunter the real meaning 
 of the strong words which he so lightly puts into their mouths; 
 they could not possibly so misunderstand our antecedents and 
 their own, and their present circumstances, as to regard them- 
 selves as persecuted, or as reduced, the whole community, to 
 contempt and beggary; they judge us, fairly enough, by the 
 Oriental standard of fas and nefas as applied to rulers, and 
 they appreciate the situation not incorrectly. They may still 
 take some umbrage at our supremacy ; they dislike some parts 
 of our levelling administrative system ; most of them are preju- 
 diced against all Christians by the religious rivalry of a thousand 
 years, and against English residents in India by violent 
 contrasts in the habits and manners of East and West. But 
 many of the charges alleged by Dr. Hunter seem too profoundly 
 unreasonable and far-fetched to be entertained, even as popular 
 delusions, by the mass of Mahomedans ; while the words, 
 <( want of sympathy, want of magnanimity, mean malversation 
 of funds," and " great public wrongs spread over a century," 
 appear to me to convey only ideas and expressions selected 
 by an English orator as likety to have a striking effect upon an 
 English audience, if it can be persuaded that this is how the 
 natives of India actually think and speak. 
 
 Colonel Nassau Lees writes in a cooler tone, and regrets 
 that Dr. Hunter should have " out-Heroded Herod" in the 
 fervency of his pleading for Mahomedans ; but Colonel Lees 
 also supplies a list of specific counts upon which the British 
 administration is arraigned the more important of them being 
 our treatment of the education and the endowments of Musal- 
 mans. Both authors admit that above and around these 
 particular grievances there are other sources of dissatisfaction 
 and disloyalty which were inevitable, and flowed naturally 
 from the facts of Indian history ; yet both of them appear 
 to be led by a propensity and a desire to connect every kind of 
 discontent with those blunders and faults for which the English,
 
 234 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 can be directly blamed. Dr. Hunter, especially, seems to 
 confound the essential with the accidental, to attribute to 
 local and temporary causes s}'mptonis which are inherent 
 in and inseparable from our relations with the Mahornedans, 
 and to interpret their indistinct regrets and uneasy mur- 
 murs by the notions and literary conceptions of a highly 
 cultivated European bred in a totally differing environment. 
 The consequence has been, that he views, and makes his 
 readers view, many things through a false perspective, and 
 estimates the weight of his facts in a deceptive balance. Or 
 where he preserves a truer eye and hand for dealing with such 
 phenomena, his sense of proportion tempts him to exaggerate 
 and over-colour English shortcomings and errors, in order to 
 present adequate causes for the extreme results which his line 
 of argument attributes to them. Now it cannot and need not 
 be denied that some disaffection still survives among certain 
 classes of the Mahomedans in India : we all know that the colony 
 of outlaw Wahabis founded beyond our North-western frontier 
 among the wild hill tribes, must obviously be as bitterly hostile 
 to the English in the Punjab as it was to the Sikh government 
 which preceded us ; while Mr. W. Palgrave* has told us long 
 ago, that throughout Asia the spirit of Wahabism is a spirit of 
 uncompromising fanaticism, which seeks by all means, secret 
 or overt, to upset any rule, whether of Turk or Englishman, 
 that restrains bigoted and furious intolerance. It is true also 
 that these Wahabis at one time formed secret conspiracies of a 
 serious kind in the province of Bengal, and that their plotting 
 was connived at or willingly ignored by a crowd of non-Wahabi 
 Mahomedans, who would naturally prefer the predominance of 
 their religion, and have no objection to allow the Wahabis to try 
 their hands at pulling the chestnuts out of the fire. It is certain 
 that the Indian Mahomedans have not altogether grown out 
 of the sore feelings and the heart-burning which accompany 
 everywhere the fall from high position, the loss of power, and the 
 descent of a despotically dominant class to fair equality with 
 all others before a firm law. But unpleasant reverses of this 
 
 * Travels into Eastern Arabia.
 
 CHAP. IX.] ENGLISH SHORTCOMINGS. 235 
 
 kind occur constantly in the history of societies as of indi- 
 viduals ; they are inseparable from the competition and struggles 
 for mastery which have hitherto been the conditions of all 
 progress in this world ; and the Mahomedans, a high-spirited 
 community which has had its share of political adventure and 
 triumph, are not incapable of accepting with dignity such 
 changes of fortune. It may be questioned whether the termina- 
 tion of a period of supremacy and the succession of a foreign 
 government are changes as acutely felt by a community which is 
 bound together with the tie of a common faith, as they are by 
 a tribe or by a modern nation; and whether nationality, which 
 is a bond quite unknown to Indian Mahomedans, be not much 
 the more sensitive constitution. Yet undoubtedly all these 
 things make up for the Mahomedans of India a case which 
 requires delicate and forbearing treatment by their successors in 
 chief sovereignty, although it was not England that pulled down 
 the rule of Islam in India, which had fallen to pieces before we 
 began to build up an empire ; and we may concede that the 
 English Government, with all its good intentions and high 
 integrity for the last sixty years, has often failed to treat 
 such difficult and complicated disorders with skill and ten- 
 derness. "We are not famous, if Mr. Matthew Arnold reads 
 us aright, for sweetness and sympathy in our dealings with 
 subject peoples; we are too much inclined to rely upon the 
 force of material interests for our work of fusion; to fane}' 
 that personal liberty and comfort will compensate for the wounds 
 which our success must necessarily inflict on the pride and the 
 prejudices of those whom we follow in political supremacy: 
 we reckon too much on the interests of men, and too little on 
 their passions. It may be owned that we are not always very 
 light-handed ministers to the Oriental mind diseased. But this 
 is a very different matter from confessing that we are responsible 
 for the disease itself, or that it exhibits any peculiar symptoms 
 or mysterious virulence that could only be accounted for by our 
 reckless neglect and ignorance, or by sheer malignity. 
 
 We may at once assume that our conquest of India has been 
 distasteful to the Mahomedans, and that their hostility may be, 
 in certain contingencies, a matter of great concern to ourselves.
 
 236 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 For the present we cannot help this ; all that we can do is to 
 inquire how far these unavoidable resentments can he allayed ; 
 whether the specific grievances that exist are just and reason- 
 able ; and if we have unwittingly wronged the Mahomedans by 
 our acts, we must do them right. But nothing can be more 
 vain or more impolitic than to foster in their minds the notion 
 that we English are chiefly responsible, as administrators, for 
 the condition in which the Indian Mahomedans now find them- 
 selves, or to encourage them to mistake natural sentiments of dis- 
 appointment, of depression and of wounded religious pride, for 
 the just indignation of an oppressed people or a persecuted sect. 
 
 To obtain a clear view of the situation now before us in 
 India, we must go a few steps back. Politics and religion 
 are with the Mahomedans (as Mr. W. G. Palgrave has lately 
 said) two sides of the same medal ; it is impossible even to 
 approach the religious side of the Mahornedan position in 
 India without surveying first its political aspect. 
 
 The rule of the English in India so immediately followed 
 the fall of the Mahornedan suzerainty, and has been so widely 
 built up on the ruins of their great empire, that the popular 
 mind naturally imputes to us all the misfortunes of the Maho- 
 medans. But all readers of history know that the Moghal 
 Empire had been severed piecemeal and dilapidated by the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, and that province after 
 province fell into our hands because the imperial govern- 
 ment was rotten to the heart and paralyzed in every limb ; 
 while we alone were able to drive off the Maratha vultures 
 which were tearing the moribund carcase. When we had 
 driven the Maratha out of Agra and Delhi, the defenceless 
 capitals of extinct Mahomedan dominion; when we had secured 
 the Moghal emperor from affronts and captivity, we found all 
 the Punjab, the land where Mahomedans had been strongest, 
 in the hands of the Sikhs. Every one knows what it cost us 
 to break that formidable fighting power, which had completely 
 subdued the Mahomedaus, and had even driven the Affghans 
 out of the Trans-Indus country, and had confined them to 
 their hills. In the south we had, at the end of the last 
 century saved from imminent certain destruction the Nizam,
 
 CHAP. IX.] BRIEF HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. 237 
 
 the greatest Mahomedan prince then, as now, in India ; we 
 supported and even set up again some minor kinglets, who from 
 being viceroys had made themselves independent ; others we 
 pulled down and pensioned off: our policy was governed by the 
 currents and chances of a long and perilous struggle. Of course 
 the benefits we conferred have long been forgotten, while the 
 injuries remain ever fresh. That the pensioned descendants of 
 usurpers or of puppets should now be regarded by their 
 fellow-religionists as the ill-used heirs of legitimate dynasties, 
 is comprehensible enough ; that acts of State which were 
 moderate and by comparison merciful in the old da} r s of war 
 and tumult, should now be condemned as unscrupulous and 
 greedy, is to be expected. But it is a curious thing to find 
 Englishmen ready to sit down and weep with the Mahomedans, 
 and to employ their literary skill in denouncing as oppressors 
 the men whose hardihood and endurance in winning for England 
 an empire were equalled only by the general justice and 
 patience with which they pacified and administered it. There 
 is something like a false note in these remorseful palinodies, 
 something like the inclination to abandon in quiet times 
 those who served us well and unreservedly in days of war 
 and tumult. We all know what sort of legacy David be- 
 queathed to the sons of Zeruiah, whose ready swords cleared 
 away rivals and rebels from his path to the throne ; and 
 England seems occasionally to display a liking for that same 
 kind of pious atonement. Those who resolutely uphold an 
 empire recently founded, who are determined to bequeath to 
 their children the great heritage they hold in trust from 
 their fathers, must bear the brunt of such odiums and 
 qualms of conscience ; but the ancient smouldering resentments 
 will die away as the edifice settles down. At this moment, 
 however, when England is almost too ready to do penance 
 for the high-handed misdeeds of those who won India for her, 
 when the Mahomedans have neither wholly forgotten the old 
 order of things, nor have become properly reconciled to the 
 new, it is unfortunate that many causes combine to bring home 
 rather closely to Indian Mahomedans the natural consequences 
 of their political downfall. So long as the old fighting times
 
 238 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 lasted in India, we heard little of widespread grievances. The 
 Mahomedan in that country was an adventurer by descent and 
 by profession ; he or his fathers (I except here the tribes of 
 converted Hindus) had always entered the country from 
 Western Asia in search of military or civil employment ; he 
 was very rarely a colonist or a merchant; he was usually a 
 soldier of fortune. During our long Northern wars, the 
 Mahomedans enlisted willingly in our armies, and followed our 
 victorious standards against Goorkhas, Sikhs and Marathas ; 
 they marched with us to Cahul and Candahar, cities of the 
 Muslim ; and to this day they fight for us most gallantly 
 against the wild tribes on the debatable frontier lands between 
 India and Afghanistan. Dr. Hunter makes much of the 
 fanatic Mahomedan hatred which provoked us into the Umbeyla 
 campaign of 1863 against certain independent tribes in the 
 hills just across our North-west frontier ; and he traces the 
 causes of this expedition back to the malevolence of our own 
 subjects; but he might have mentioned how, when in that 
 short but hard fought campaign a famous outpost of our 
 position was lost and re-taken by the British Indian troops 
 after a bloody struggle, a Mahomedan was one of the two 
 officers who then led the storming party against the best 
 and most fanatic fighting men of the frontier, charging 
 sword in hand uphill under a shower of rifle bullets.* 
 Thus in active military service the Mahomedans have 
 alwaj'S been loyal enough ; and they held office under us 
 contentedly, so long as we kept up the native system of 
 civil administration, in days when surveillance was lax, the 
 standard of education low, and officials more powerful than 
 ever because they represented an irresistible government. 
 
 * Dr. Hunter alludes (page 12, Indian It is not true that we lent our swords 
 
 Musalmans), to "the descendants of for the extermination of the Eohillas ; 
 
 the Kohillas, for whose extermination at any rate it is clear they were not 
 
 we had venally lent our troops . . . exterminated, as they left a numerous 
 
 and whose sad history forms one of the posterity; but who would have guessed, 
 
 ineffaceable blots on "Warren Hastings' from this passage, that their posterity 
 
 career. Their posterity," he says, at the present time recruit the British 
 
 " have taken an undying revenge, and army in large numbers with some of its 
 
 still recruit the Rebel Colony on our bravest and most loyal swordsmen ? 
 frontier with its bravest swordsmen."
 
 CHAP. IX.] THE GREAT MUTINY. 239 
 
 But the second Punjab campaign of 1848 laid all India at our 
 feet ; the great wars of conquest were finished, and after them 
 came "the cankers of a calm world and a long peace: " at home 
 the reins of civil and military discipline were tightened, so that 
 not much wealth was to be gained rapidly under our ad- 
 ministration by the pen and still less by the sword ; while 
 we gradually annexed Xagpore, Jhansi and Oude, thus 
 abolishing courts and camps which still afforded some 
 chances for the irregular ambition of a lucky captain or 
 an adroit courtier. Long ago, General Arthur Wellesley 
 had pointed out in his Despatches how the discontent of the 
 adventurous classes in India, of the men who live by an unscru- 
 pulous head or hand, must become more and more exasperated 
 by the constant spread of our arms and authority ; by the 
 imperious regime which maintains the peace of India, which 
 insists upon universal order and truce among allied states as 
 well as in subject territory. And all this process of transition 
 from the old immemorial way of life to the new pressed with 
 peculiar stringency upon the Mahomedans, to whom, from the 
 warlike chiefs of gathered clans like Nadir Shah and Ahmed 
 the Abdallee, down to the poorest highlander who followed their 
 standards from Central Asia, India had for centuries been the 
 Eldorado where stirring times brought speedy fortunes. All 
 this spirit of unrest (to use Dr. Hunter's phrase) was brood- 
 ing over India when the great mutiny broke out among our 
 Hindu sepoys. In Delhi, Lucknow, and other centres of 
 disaffection the Mahomedans at once caught the contagion 
 of rebellion, and almost immediately seized the lead of it, 
 using the wild, aimless fury of the soldiery for their own com- 
 pact and straight-pointed political designs. The consequence 
 was, as all can recollect who were in Northern India in 1857-8, 
 that the English turned fiercely on the Mahomedans as upon 
 their real enemies and most dangerous rivals; so that the 
 failure of the revolt was much more disastrous to them than to 
 the Hindus. The Mahomedans lost almost all their remaining 
 prestige of traditionary superiority over Hindus ; they forfeited 
 for the time the confidence of their foreign rulers ; and it is 
 from this period that must be dated the loss of their numerical
 
 210 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 majority in the higher subordinate ranks of the civil and 
 military services. Before the Mutiny they largely outnumbered 
 the Hindus in all the best offices which could be held by a 
 native in Northern India; after that period they fell to a 
 minority, and although the} r are no way responsible, as a body, 
 for the misconduct of certain sections of their community in 
 1857, yet in certain provinces they have naturally had some 
 hard work to recover the ground which was cut from under 
 them when they made that last desperate spring after the 
 shadow of a lost empire. 
 
 This brief historical retrospect was necessary, because the 
 present religious temper of the Mahomedans is the reflection 
 of their political and social misfortunes. It is easy to 
 understand how these misfortunes must have stirred up 
 fanaticism in certain sections of a community bound together 
 and circumscribed into one pale, not by nationality, but by 
 their faith ; to whom the dissolution at the end of the last 
 century of their Indian supremacy was a direct catastrophe 
 for the religion which enjoins them to set up and pull down 
 kingdoms in its name. As Colonel Lees observes, the 
 laws of the Koran were framed for conquerors ; and though 
 texts can always be found to warrant prudence and the tactics 
 of common sense, yet such interpretations conflict inevitably 
 against the whole tone of their Prophet's message, and 
 jar upon the whole framework of his system. Much learn- 
 ing and logic have been expended by Mahomedan school- 
 men of late upon the nice sharp quillets of the law of Islam, 
 to inquire whether it permits submission to an infidel 3 r oke, 
 or absolutely enjoins resistance even when resistance is 
 not politic and the yoke easy. And Dr. Hunter writes,* 
 almost as if he verily believed it, that " the obligations of 
 the Indian Musalmans to rebel or not rebel hung for some 
 months on the- deliberations of three Suni priests in the Holy 
 City of Arabia" (he refers to the fact that the doctors of 
 Mecca were consulted as to whether Mahomedans might law- 
 fully yield us quiet allegiance) ; and he devotes a whole 
 
 * Our Indian Hus.ilm&ns, p. 11.
 
 CHAP. IX.] THE LAW OF ISLAM. 241 
 
 chapter to balancing the import of various expositions by diffe- 
 rent schools of the texts which bear on this point. He seems 
 rather to enjoy alarming home-bred English readers by inclin- 
 ing the weight of authorities towards the conclusion that a war 
 of extermination is a necessary act of faith. But, on the 
 other hand, Syud Ahmed, in a series of letters published in 
 India in 1872, undertook to demonstrate that the duty of 
 JiMd, or religious war, is not at all imposed on Mahomedans 
 by their actual relations with the English in India, and that 
 Dr. Hunter's inferences from the Koran and its commentaries 
 are overstrained and even quite unwarranted. He maintains, 
 moreover, that the Futwas, or authoritative decisions which 
 declare that Indian Musalmans are in no way bound to rebel, 
 were not elicited by the anxiety of the Musalmans to relieve 
 tender consciences or doubts as to their duty, but by the con- 
 stant suggestions and nervous fancies of the English, who 
 pressed the point upon them, until they were obliged to set 
 themselves right before the world. And we see how this 
 explanation becomes probable, when we find Colonel Lees 
 telling us in one of his Times Letters* how he argued the case 
 of the Indian Muslim in solemn earnest with the Sheikh-ul- 
 Islam at Cairo, each disputant brandishing his own text ; one 
 being, " Kill them wherever you find them ;" the other, " Ye 
 are in no wise bound to rush upon your own destruction." Of 
 course the result of setting flat against each other a negative 
 and a positive command like these was to produce a dead-lock, 
 a logical stalemate ; but such games have no influence on the 
 real business of the world. Fanaticism is the steel point of 
 the spear-head, but cool and wary people take care how they 
 brandish the weapon; and no one risks his life on a text, 
 unless it fits in generally with his own views and calculations, 
 and justifies what is otherwise convenient and opportune. All 
 the debaters admit that in practice no body of Mahomedans is 
 likely to be driven into hopeless revolt by an ecclesiastical 
 decision, as if execution followed a decree of the Sheikhs against 
 a formidable government as necessarily as it follows a judgment 
 of the Privy Council against heretical clerks. 
 * P. 7 of the pamphlet.
 
 242 ISLAM IX INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 For the truth is, that all this painful examination of texts 
 and authorities only illustrates what I have remarked upon 
 before, the tendency of certain writers to attribute to special 
 and local causes those sentiments of indisposition towards us, 
 and of religious aversion from us, which belong naturally 
 to the general constitution of the Mahomedan faith in its 
 present intellectual phase and in its actual circumstances 
 in India. These things have really very little to do with 
 readings of the sacred books, or with the Futivas of Mecca. 
 The Mahomedans, with their tenets distinctly aggressive and 
 spiritually despotic, must always be a source of disquietude to 
 us so long as their theologic notions are still in that uncom- 
 promising and intolerant stage when they openly encourage 
 the natural predilection of all devout believers for the doctrine 
 that their first duty is to prevail and, if need be, to 
 persecute. To most Englishmen of the day, this conditions 
 of thought may appear a strange anomaly, it is only an 
 anachronism ; the unquiet spirit now abroad in India is 
 no other than that spirit which troubled all Christian 
 Europe for so many centuries, and which even in England 
 has not yet been quite exorcised by the modern doc- 
 trine of toleration, or the modern affection of indifference. 
 It is the spirit which so long upheld passive resistance to 
 a heretic ruler to be a sin against God ; because (to quote 
 the words of Calvin*) "although obedience toward princes 
 accords with God's service, yet if any princes usurp the 
 authority of God, we must obey them only so far as may be 
 done without offending God." And since the theologian claims 
 the right to define God's jurisdiction, so that anything that 
 touches the interests of a religion is assumed to offend the 
 Deity, while in his service all acts are held to be justifiable, it 
 is manifest that no merely secular government, maintaining 
 the ordinary limits of civil jurisdiction, can hope to avoid 
 offence. A government so placed and the Indian Government 
 is so placed will always find itself exposed, whatever it may do, 
 to great misrepresentations ; to a sort of general reprobation, 
 
 * D'Aubigne. Reformation in Europe.
 
 CHAF. IX.] RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. 243 
 
 rather conventional and for consistency's sake perhaps, than 
 real and heartfelt, from the mass of even reasonable and easy- 
 going religionists; and to virulent overt sedition from the 
 extreme zealots. In India, although the thorough-going hot 
 gospellers may be few and unpopular, as are the Wahabis ; yet, 
 like a feeble fire under a large cauldron, they serve to keep 
 lukewarm the sentiments of the great majority, who are never- 
 theless very far from boiling up into dangerous explosion, or 
 from allowing themselves to be driven by theologic fervency 
 into following the lead of forlorn hopes against impregnable 
 material facts. But while the Mahomedans evade by elastic 
 glosses any conclusions which seem plainly desperate and 
 beyond reason in practice, yet the sentiment which justifies to 
 itself violent assertion can never be entirely dormant in an 
 exclusive monotheistic religion, which claims as a right and duty 
 universal spiritual despotism, while it has been levelled down by 
 a neutral government to mere denominational equality. It would 
 be contrary to all experience, if this sentiment did not occa- 
 sionally stir up the corresponding antipathies which civiliza- 
 tion and the considerations of sound policy have very nearly laid 
 to sleep among Europeans. It would be rash to declare that 
 Christians in India are yet altogether free from the old spirit 
 which included crusading among the solemn duties of a faithful 
 ruler; and there have not long since been English officials who 
 would have desired nothing better than to try conclusions with 
 the Wahabi at his own weapons on his own extreme principles, 
 and to determine which doctrine was orthodox " by apostolic 
 blows and knocks." Impartial Mahomedans must needs recog- 
 nise the expediency of making allowance in Christians for that 
 same tincture of sincere intolerance, and the same conscientious 
 irreconcilability with the professors of doctrines thought to be 
 false, which they themselves hold to be very excusable in 
 matters theologic. But this lurking belief of the duty on 
 both sides to contend against each other a outrance, this 
 conviction that each religion is bound to destroy the other, 
 must occasionally embitter the resentment of the party 
 which holds secondary political rank ; it may rouse and foster 
 suspicions that the more powerful faith will use unfairly 
 
 B 2
 
 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 its secular predominance. In spite of all disclaimers put forth 
 by the English Government, our ill-wishers have always raised 
 against us the cry that we desire to compel persons to embrace 
 our religion, and this is still widely credited by the ignorant 
 crowd. In a volume of Travels in India, lately published by a 
 Parsee of Bombay, the writer mentions how " strongly im- 
 pressed " were certain Mahomedans, with whom he conversed* 
 "with the belief that their rulers were now intent on making the 
 people of this country converts to Christianity by all means in 
 their power." Nor can we wonder that this sense of keen emu- 
 lation between Christianity and Mahomedanism in the same 
 country is stimulating, in India, that spirit of Mahomedan 
 revivalism which is reported to be abroad throughout all the 
 countries which profess Islam, even in those where the faith is 
 triumphant and holds undisputed monopoly of the State's 
 support. 
 
 Moreover, these two great rival religions have at last found 
 in India not only a common mission field, but also a common 
 arena and audience for polemical controversy. Hitherto the 
 writers on either side have scarcely ever joined fair issue in 
 argument, or opposed each on the same ground ; the Chris- 
 tians have demolished the pretensions of Islam to Christians, 
 at their leisure ; the Mahomedans have denounced Christianity 
 before Mahomedans ; the two hostile camps were separated by 
 different tongues and by a great interval of distance between 
 their respective head-quarters. But now the Englishman in 
 India is an Arabic scholar ; and the Indian Mahomedan 
 studies English works. Sir William Muir writes a Life of 
 Mahomed, with critical examination of the canonical scriptures 
 upon which the traditional evidences of Islam are based ; and 
 he has at once found a gainsayer in Syud Ahmed Khan 
 Bahadur, q, distinguished officer of the government over which 
 Sir William as Lieutenant- Governor of the N. W. provinces, 
 lately presided. Although Syud Ahmed was himself born 
 too late for acquiring that knowledge of English which would 
 enable him to meet English critics with English writing, 
 yet in Arabic he holds himself on a par with the accomplished 
 author of the Life of Mahomed, whom he shows no reluctance
 
 CHAP. IX.] SYUD AHMED'S POLEMICS. 245 
 
 to meet on neutral Asiatic ground with his own weapon. 
 Instead of bigoted contempt and invective, we have now a fair 
 literary argument and a beginning of scholarly exegesis. Syud 
 Ahmed naturally dissents widely from the view taken of 
 Mahomed by the Christian biographer ; and the effect of Sir 
 William Muir's work upon his mind "was to determine him 
 to collect, after a critical examination of them, into one syste- 
 matic and methodical form, all those traditions concerning the 
 life of Mahomed that are considered by Mahomedan divines to 
 be trustworthy."* The completion of this plan was hindered 
 by several obstacles; but he has presented to the public twelve 
 Essays, which constitute the first volume of his Life of Mahomed, 
 chiefly intended (we infer) to correct and refute certain \iews and 
 conclusions of Sir W. Muir. It was perhaps imprudent for the 
 able Mahomedan champion to rely upon second-hand learning 
 and on interpreters for his material for a critical dissertation in 
 regard to the meaning of the Greek versions of the Christian 
 Testament ; as when he insists that in the passage which says, 
 "It is expedient that I go, for if I go not the Comforter 
 will not come," the word -Trapa/cXrjros is a corrupt reading for 
 TTpiK\vT6s=the famous one= Ahmed Mahomed ; and that 
 Christ is thereby proved to have prophesied of Mahomed as 
 the necessary successor and complement of his own divine 
 mission, f This method of verbal disputation, which makes 
 the acceptance or rejection of a mighty revelation to the lead- 
 ing races of the world depend upon a copyist's error or a 
 monkish forgery, has fallen somewhat out of favour in modern 
 European polemics : we want a broader basis for our theories 
 of religious cataclysms. But Syud Ahmed is more successful 
 when he desists from his attempt to prove the mission of 
 Mahomed out of Christian Scriptures, and takes to retorting 
 upon others the generalizations and philosophic reflections 
 which have been employed to cast doubt upon the au- 
 thenticity of the Mahomedan canon. Thus Syud Ahmed 
 extracts from the Life of Mahomed such passages as (for 
 instance) these : " The habits of the early Moslems favoured 
 
 * Preface to the Essays, p. xix. 
 t Essay on the Prophecies.
 
 ISLAM IN INDIA. [Cu.u-. IX. 
 
 the growth of tradition." ..." On what topic would early 
 Moslems descant more enthusiastically than on the acts 
 and sayings of their Prophet?" . . . "The mind of his fol- 
 lowers was unconsciously led on to think of him as endowed 
 with supernatural power ; here was the material out of which 
 tradition grew luxuriantly .... the memory was aided by 
 the unchecked efforts of imagination." .... " Superstitious 
 reverence was the result which lapse of time would natural!}' 
 have upon the . . . narratives."* And then he asks with 
 some point whether the miraculous deeds of Moses, or the 
 prodigious histories of other great prophets whom Christians 
 revere, must not also he contemplated through the same 
 medium of calm and large-minded rationalism. He claims, in 
 short, for Mahomed the same indulgent and respectful consi- 
 deration which is accorded by all zealously devout persons to 
 the records of the words and acts of those whom they incline 
 to hear as a preacher sent from God ; or else he desires that 
 all miraculous histories shall be subjected to the same dis- 
 solvent analysis. 
 
 But to return from this digression to the main line of my 
 essay. I have now gone hastily over the historical conditions 
 and consequences of our position in India, which account very 
 sufficiently to my mind for some unavoidable unpopularity 
 of the English Government among a large class of Mahom- 
 edans. Taking these things into account, it would, I believe, 
 be much nearer the truth to say that the inconsiderate and 
 uneducated mass of them are against us, than that the "best men 
 are not on our side," as Dr. Hunter too invidiously affirms. 
 That author appears to lay too much stress upon the significance 
 of the spread of Wahabism in Lower Bengal, among a com- 
 paratively depressed and unwaiiike Mahomedan population. 
 Syud Ahmed, in his letters to the Indian Pioneer (1871), denies 
 that even the Wahabis consider that their situation under the 
 English in India justifies a holy war ; and he mentions that in 
 1857, when the mutineers held Delhi, Bakht Khan, the rebel 
 commander, endeavoured to compel the Moulvies of that city 
 
 * Supplement to the Essay on Traditions.
 
 CHAP. IX.] UNPOPULARITY OF WAHABIS. 217 
 
 to declare lawful a Jihad against the British ; but was boldly 
 withstood and opposed by two leading Wahabis. If these two 
 learned doctors carne forward spontaneously at such a time to 
 deny the legality of the Jihad, the instance is a very strong 
 one ; but if the fact was that they had been called upon by 
 Bakht Khan, a famous mutineer, to put their signatures to 
 such a declaration while the English were bombarding the city, 
 it is possible that they had noticed the lines of the English 
 batteries pushing gradually nearer, and had reflected upon that 
 text quoted some pages back from the Koran, about true believers 
 not being bound to rush upon destruction. But whatever may 
 be the real convictions of Wahabism, without doubt its followers 
 are few throughout all India, and are intensely unpopular with 
 all other sects of Mahomedans in provinces where Mahomedan 
 loyalty is infinitely more important to the security of our 
 Government than in Bengal proper. In many parts of India, 
 the appearance of a Wahabi preacher is the signal for sharp 
 internal discord; the odium theologicum breaks out at once. 
 It is some years since the Nizam's government at Hyderabad 
 expelled the Wahabis for breeding endless strife in that great 
 Musalman city, where it was not safe to attend religious revivals 
 without sword and buckler; and very recently a Wahabi teacher 
 came down to the province of Berar, in the Hyderabad country. 
 He was an earnest reformer, and the abuses which he de- 
 nounced were patent ; but in a few weeks he had quarrelled 
 with the chief Moulvies of their district over questions of theo- 
 logy and ecclesiastic discipline, with all the Pharisees, and with 
 Demetrius the silversmith, upon backslidings connected with 
 worship at shrines, and the ungodly gains made by trading upon 
 superstitious usages. All parties virulently accused him of 
 sedition against Csesar, that is, against the Queen's Government. 
 The British officials, taking a broader view of their duty than 
 did the Roman Gallic, not only refused to interfere in a 
 dispute about religious law, but also took measures to preserve 
 order and prevent violence to any man, and the Wahabi was 
 placed under the special protection of the police. 
 
 I have thus attempted to set forth my view of the causes of 
 Mahomedan discontents with us in India, by shewing that
 
 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 these causes are for the most part innate and congenital with 
 the growth of our empire there. But Dr. Hunter and Colonel 
 Lees have brought up prominently a series of particular 
 grievances, and these it is right to examine. Dr. Hunter, 
 especially, devotes a whole chapter to the wrongs of the 
 Mahomedans, which he declares to have been inflicted by 
 blunders criminal enough to free our subjects from their obli- 
 gation of allegiance.* Now many of the most important facts 
 and figures on which he relies in this section of his work 
 have been briskly challenged, whether successfully or otherwise 
 cannot be positively decided; but without going into these 
 details, I propose to look into the substance of some of the 
 graver charges laid by hini and by Colonel Lees against the 
 Indian administration. 
 
 Colonel Lees and Dr. Hunter both deduce very serious and 
 wide-reaching consequences from the educational policy inau- 
 gurated in 1836 by a very characteristic Minute of Lord 
 Macaulay, who then held office in India. The question was,. 
 how to apply the State grant toward higher education ; whether 
 the public instruction to be subsidized by public money should 
 be English or Oriental ; whether the languages, science and 
 philosophies of the West or of the East should be encouraged 
 by the State. Macaulay was altogether in favour of the "West ; 
 and he beat down all opposition by his brilliant and impetuous 
 attack upon Orientalism. He said that a single shelf of a good 
 European library was worth the whole native literature of 
 India and Arabia ; that it was not decent to use the public 
 funds for bribing the Indian youth to read books full of mon- 
 strous lies and blunders ; and so on with startling antitheses 
 as usual, securing a great triumph to the Anglicists. From 
 that day English (to use the words of Colonel Leest) "has 
 been recognized as the medium of higher education in India, 
 and the subjects taught in it have been entirely European;" 1 
 and Colonel Lees declares the effect of this change was " the 
 gradual and steady transfer of the civil government of the 
 
 * Indian Musalmans, p. 143. 
 
 t Pp. 24, 25, of the pamphlet Letter to the Times.
 
 CHAP. IX.] LORD MACAULAY's MINUTE. 249 
 
 country from Mahomeclans to Hindus." Now this sweeping 
 assertion illustrates the rhetorical practice of which complaint 
 has heen made elsewhere in this essay, of tracing back great 
 events to slender origins of a special and narrow kind ; and 
 certainly the very contrast between minute causes and uni- 
 versal effects does strike the imagination of incautious readers. 
 I myself should be inclined to demur, with all deference to 
 authority which deserves respect, both to the manner of infer- 
 ence and to the fact assumed in the conclusion. But it may 
 be agreed that the change of system, as it was carried out, 
 was impolitic, for reasons which are just of the sort which 
 Lord Macaulay, with all his genius, did not always feel or 
 understand, because he lacked full sympathy with the deeper 
 and more delicate fibres of political sensitiveness. To him 
 all Oriental literature was almost entirely worthless, and this- 
 was quite enough for him ; that a sentimental attachment for 
 their ancient book-lore and a prejudice against superseding it 
 in .all public instruction by a foreign language and library, 
 might exist among the people of India, did not impress him 
 as points calling for wary consideration. This blind side of a 
 brilliant writer on politics is very well displayed in a somewhat 
 similar case, when it was proposed to buy certain invaluable 
 Irish manuscripts for the British Museum. Lord Macaulay 
 (says Mr. M. Arnold*) declared that he saw nothing in the 
 whole collection worth purchasing, except the correspondence 
 of Lord Melville on the Amerian war. If he thought ancient 
 Celtic literature mere rubbish, it was not likely that he should 
 set much store by Sanskrit and Arabic treatises, which have not 
 even an antiquarian value. So he prevailed on the Government 
 of that day to de- Orientalize University education ; and in this- 
 he carried his point too far. It would have been wiser to 
 permit Musalrnans, as Colonel Lees has since proposed, to- 
 graduate in Oriental classics ; and we might have continued 
 ample State provision for the religious education of their youth, 
 according to the course of study approved by their customs 
 and their religion. We are as yet hardly so firmly established 
 
 * On the Study of Celtic Literature, p. 179.
 
 250 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 in India as to be warranted in undertaking the propagation of 
 true science and undenominational instruction, while such 
 things are unpalatable to important communities with sensitive 
 prejudices ; we cannot yet afford to risk political obloquy in 
 the dissemination of those principles. If the Mahomedan still 
 prefers his own literature, our business is not to gainsay him 
 disagreeably, but to let him take his own course for the pre- 
 sent. It should be explained that primary schools have never 
 been Anglicized or made strictly secular, and that the alleged 
 grievances were found in the system which excluded Oriental 
 classics from the curriculum of the Presidency Universities, 
 thus barring the affiliation of the purely Mahomedan colleges, 
 and in the allotment of the funds of one particular Mahomedan 
 college (at Hooghly) toward English instead of toward Oriental 
 learning. All these thorough-going reforms, these abrupt 
 innovations, were far too premature ; we cannot hurry an 
 ancient people of some culture so rapidly through phases of 
 social progress which with European nations have occupied 
 long periods; and in fact these educational grievances have 
 since been for the most part remedied. 
 
 On the other hand, I must repeat my opinion that the direct 
 consequences of our educational changes have been exagge- 
 rated; and that though these tilings may have contributed 
 something to the discontent and discouragement of Mahomedan 
 students in Bengal, they have had little or nothing to do with 
 the general feelings or position of the Mahomedans of India. 
 Moreover, while it is certain that the Government might 
 offend Mahomedan prejudices and interests by openly pushing 
 on English education all over the county, especially by attempt- 
 ing this hastily; yet, if we are to go forward at all, the move- 
 ment must be in this direction, and all true intellect and real 
 literary capacity among Mahomedans must gradually follow, 
 though the Hindus have been permitted to take the lead of them. 
 The Mahomedans may be inclined to hang back, and to be much 
 dissatisfied with the supersession of their classics by modern 
 literature; but these are difficulties and thwarting influences 
 which were sure to cross our path ; they were not created 
 artificially or brought about by administrative mismanagement,
 
 CHAP. IX.] EFFECT OF EDUCATIONAL CHANGES. 251 
 
 though some mismanagement may have complicated the problem. 
 Anyhow, we cannot now stand still, or shut out the rush of 
 light and air which have followed our throwing open the win- 
 dows of the West, because at first it chills and dazes the con- 
 servative Mahomedan. For we must recollect that he does not 
 so much object to the influx of Western knowledge, as to the 
 inevitable consequence that it has become a broad open channel 
 toward official promotion and professional eminence under our 
 regime, free to all comers; whereby the old studies and the exclu- 
 sive privileges of Mahomedan learning, are more or less super- 
 seded. Now it is very hard to discover how we can help them 
 here, since our civil government of India demands the best heads 
 and the highest skilled training that the world can give, and 
 by using inferior tools we should incur a peril far more serious 
 than any that can grow out of the reactionary susceptibilities of 
 Mahomedans. With military service, so dear to Mahomedans, 
 the question of superior education has as yet no concern ; but 
 our raison d'etre in India, and our motto for ruling it, must 
 ever be La carricre ouverte aux talents ; and the policy of the 
 Indian Government sets steadily toward throwing open to 
 that career an increasing proportion of the appointments in 
 every grade of the administrative and judicial services. With 
 all respect for the very weighty authority of Mr. W. G. 
 Palgrave, and for his ultimate acquaintance with Mahom- 
 edan countries, I am afraid that his project* of establishing 
 separate Mahomedan law-courts for judging all social and 
 religious questions arising between Mahomedans by one of 
 themselves, would now hardly satisfy in India even themselves. 
 The measure might succeed in great Mahomedan cities, as 
 in Delhi or Patna, though even there some might prefer courts 
 which are quite dispassionate and incorruptible, at least for the 
 appeal ; while the separate jurisdiction might tend to increase 
 the isolation of the Mahomedans amid the rising generations 
 of India. But all over the vast provinces of India the Mahome- 
 dans are often very thinly scattered ; and in many great districts 
 we should -be much puzzled to find them capable judges. 
 
 * See Fraser's Magazine for February, 1872.
 
 252 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 If the Maliomedans really desire, as the best of them do, to 
 maintain in our Indian empire the high place which their 
 remarkable qualities, their strong mental character and their 
 high physical courage, naturally assign to them, they must in 
 these clays make up their minds to accept Western science 
 and literature, and to join the society of nations which rule 
 and lead the whole world. To those Mahomedans who cling 
 to their own classics, and who adhere to the kind of training 
 afforded by the study of Arabic theology or philosophy, every 
 facility and even encouragement should be given. All natives, 
 as Colonel Lees has proposed, might be free to graduate in the 
 literis humanioribus of the East or of the "West, as they should 
 please ; there might be an Oriental faculty as well as an 
 English faculty of Arts in our Indian Universities, so that 
 every one might follow his own bent and take his choice. 
 But although we may feel ourselves bound to throw open both 
 lines of study to our Indian subjects, and precluded from clos- 
 ing the ancient road merely because we think that it leads 
 astray, yet we cannot guarantee the same results to either 
 branch of education and learning ; we cannot promise to those 
 who may choose Oriental scholarship, that they shall find them- 
 selves abreast, in all the various high-roads of life which lead 
 to profit and distinction, with the men who shall have devoted 
 themselves to acquiring the knowledge which in these days is- 
 power, the intellectual treasures which make fifty years of 
 Europe better than a cycle in Cathay, which are the sinews 
 of peaceful empire as surely as money is the sinew of war. 
 It is impossible but that those who hold back in modern India 
 will find themselves left behind ; wherefore we may doubt whe- 
 ther the Mahomedans will be much appeased by any concessions 
 of encouragement to their special studies ; because their real 
 grievance is that these studies are no longer in fashion, that 
 distinction and court favour can no longer be gained by profi- 
 ciency in the literature and theology of Islam. This is a real 
 and sensible grievance ; but how are we to remedy it, except 
 by patience and extreme consideration ? Nor is it possible to 
 comply with the demands of those liberal Mahomedans who 
 have too much intelligence not to perceive the enormous
 
 CHAP. IX.] THE STATE SCHOOLS. 253 
 
 advantage of European education, yet too much patriotism to 
 abandon without reluctance the language of their country and 
 the traditions of their faith. These gentlemen, among whom 
 Syud Ahmed Khan is prominent, argue that all the stores of 
 Western knowledge should not he kept under the lock and key 
 of the English language, but that our Government ought to 
 provide for Indians access to this rich treasure-house through 
 the media. of their own vernaculars, so that a native need not 
 labour for years at a foreign tongue before he can work his 
 way up into the higher atmosphere of philosophic thought or 
 scientific practice. No doubt this necessity of first mastering 
 a strange language is a severe obstacle, but it is one which we 
 should hardly attempt to remove ; for we cannot undertake to 
 translate European literature for the benefit of our Indian 
 fellow-subjects, the best of whom would already laugh at 
 paltry abridgments and imperfect renderings. Syud Ahmed 
 Khan's son has passed through an English University, and has 
 qualified himself to rise to the first rank of any profession or 
 service which he may choose after his return to India ; what 
 chance will there be against him in intellectual competition 
 for young men who have never learnt English, or who have 
 worked at European literature through Hindustani trans- 
 lations? Possibly those pioneers from the East who have 
 first explored and occupied this literary Eldorado of the 
 West, may devote themselves to laying out the road, as 
 translators and expounders in the vernacular, by which the 
 mass of their less enterprizing and less affluent countrymen 
 may follow; but this is a task which we English are 
 compelled to leave to their patriotic energy. The English 
 Government has constructed for all natives a good system of 
 primary education in their own dialects ; and the official 
 inspectors very properly heed not the strong probability (if not 
 certainty) that some sort of religious instruction is given in 
 the State schools, which are all quasi-denominational ; that is, 
 the Musalman and Hindu schools are ordinarily separate. 
 There is no reason why Mahomedan boys should not receive 
 an exclusively Mahomedan education ; the State will still 
 subsidize elementary instruction of this kind, if only decent
 
 254 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 rudiments of secular knowledge are also given. But in the 
 higher standards of education we cannot well refrain, on free- 
 trade principles, from showing a decided bias in favour of 
 English learning, because, though it is undeniably a foreign 
 importation, yet it is so incomparably the best. We may 
 silence natural complaints and appease prejudice by an im- 
 partial and even-handed distribution of the educational grants 
 to Eastern and Western learning ; and we may attempt, as 
 Dr. Hunter wisely recommends, to connect the two branches 
 of study ; but the ultimate result may be safely left to the 
 shrewdness and literary taste of the cleverest races in Asia. 
 It is no new thing that learning and science should be propa- 
 gated as the result of conquest; and though the Mahome- 
 dans, like other martial races, have usually taken their 
 civilization from conquered peoples, they may be content for 
 once to accept light and intellectual leading from a nation 
 that has over them the advantage of European training in arts 
 as well as in arms. 
 
 It would take up much time to examine in detail the other 
 specific charges alleged against the British Government, which 
 are taken to form reasonable and sufficient ground for our un- 
 popularity among Mahomedans, by writers who trace it imme- 
 diately to administrative shortcomings. The charges are very 
 seriously worded. "Deliberate malversation of religious foun- 
 dations," is, for instance, a tremendous accusation against a 
 Christian Government of India; and it has not been proved by Dr. 
 Hunter. All that could be really established on this indictment 
 is that sometimes we have scrutinized with injudicious rigour 
 the title-deeds whereby endowments were held, and that in one 
 instance we unwisely, though in good faith, attempted to divert 
 towards education on the European system the funds of an estate 
 bequeathed for Mahomedan pious uses. Another count is for 
 " abolishing the Mahomedan law officers who gave the sanction 
 of religion to the marriage tie ;" as if we had cut asunder the 
 bonds of Mahomedan society and broken up families. Whereas 
 all we have done is to cease to appoint Kazis by order of State, 
 leaving election or selection to the Mahomedan communities. 
 This was a change, possibly an error, of which the consequences
 
 CHAP. IX.] ADMINISTRATIVE SHORTCOMINGS. 255 
 
 were not foreseen at the time, and it has since been set right 
 wherever recurrence to the former state of affairs seemed 
 possible. The truth is, that we were seeking to dissociate 
 the State from its patronage of non-Christian religions, and 
 we fancied that the severing of such connections would be 
 rather agreeable than otherwise to Mahomedans and to 
 Hindus, who might be jealous of our exercising these powers. 
 Meanwhile, the Kazis are still performing their ministry and 
 holding their official allowances, which are ordinarily secured 
 upon the land or on the land revenue ; they are in no way abo- 
 lished, though they are no longer officers of the Government. 
 It is possible that all these changes may have produced some 
 local irritation here and there, where they affected vested in- 
 terests and strong prejudices; but no reasonable politician will 
 allow that they have ever been sufficiently important or wide- 
 spread in their effects to cause a general revulsion of feeling 
 among Mahomedans all over India. By far the greater pro- 
 portion of Mahomedans have probably never heard of these 
 things ; and it must be again observed that both the writers 
 who enlarge upon them draw their personal experience mainly 
 from the same province, Lower Bengal. It may be fairly 
 contended, in opposition to such views, that the feeling among 
 Mahomedans of disinclination to our rule, and the occasional 
 seditious stirs which move India from time to time in various 
 quarters, are the natural incidents of alien dominion over a 
 vast unsettled population; that all we see and hear is no 
 more than might be expected and predicted; and that the 
 Mahomedan element is necessarily and by its nature an element 
 of some contrariety and restlessness. The improved means 
 of correspondence and communication, by post and telegraph, 
 by railway and steamboat, are drawing Islam together ; and 
 whereas at the beginning of this century the Indian Mahomedans 
 were mainly cut off from the great Mahomedan nations westward 
 of them, and were of no great account abroad, they are now 
 taking, by their wealth, their education, and their civilization, 
 a very prominent place among Mahomedan societies. India is 
 becoming the highway from Central Asia to the sea, by the 
 railroads which connect Peshawur, and the main thoroughfares
 
 256 ISLAM IN INDIA. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 from Kabul and Kandahar, with Bombay and Kurrachee; 
 and in the annual concourse of pilgrims to the holy cities of 
 the Hejaz the Indians are by far the most numerous. All 
 these circumstances give a constantly expanding importance to 
 any question touching Islam in India, increase its intricacy, 
 and prove the need of surveying the whole situation before 
 attempting to describe it. Every now and then some skilful 
 writer startles us by a vigorous picture of one side of this 
 question, by grouping many striking facts, and by piling up 
 Into a heap all the errors and oversights which are inevit- 
 ably scattered along the difficult path we have trod. But I 
 "believe that, to other nations who act as bystanders, the real 
 wonder is that the blunders are not more, and that unpleasant 
 premonitory symptoms of trouble or ill feeling are on the 
 -whole so slight. 
 
 I have attempted to sketch, though much too rapidly and 
 Imperfectly, the principal causes and conditions which have 
 originated and still keep up among the Mahomedans a certain 
 Irksome dissatisfaction with our Government, and which must 
 long postpone a complete reconciliation between us and that 
 high-spirited but somewhat uncompromising community, 
 because whatever is substantial in their complaints is, for 
 the most part, either inseparable from the situation, or else 
 the remedy lies with themselves. In so far as these grievances 
 are part and parcel of the actual situation, we must depend 
 on time and reason to allay them, and we must endeavour 
 to convince the Mahomedans that they are fairty compensated 
 for the loss of past advantages by the benefits which certainly 
 accrue to them from living under the most just and the most 
 enlightened government that has ever been tried in their 
 country. In so far as they can point to wrongs which have 
 been accidental, and the consequence of mistakes which all 
 foreign rulers must commit more or less, we are doing our 
 best to apply a remedy, and we see that the Mahomedans do 
 not lack fervent advocates among the best of our own English 
 officers. But we must work upon our own broad notions of 
 essential justice and expediency ; we cannot continual!}' twist 
 and modify them so as to fit in with the curves and angles
 
 CHAP. IX.] REMEDIES FOR GRIEVANCES. 257 
 
 of accidental and temporary prejudices, in India or elsewhere. 
 We cannot guarantee to Mahomedans as a right what would 
 be unfair to other Indian fellow- subjects; we will not deny 
 civil status to any subject of the Queen, convert or pervert ; 
 nor will we put back the hands of the dial by retarding the 
 sowing and high cultivation of European education in so 
 splendid and so fertile a land as India. "We must continue to 
 enlist the best men into our services, whoever they may be ; 
 and we must govern the country, at any cost, on the principles 
 of order and progress, of civil liberty and religious equality.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. 
 (Fortnightly Review, 1872.) 
 
 Difficulty of position of the British Government in India, in regard to the numerous 
 creeds and sects ; and to the widely different phases of religious opinion in 
 Europe and in Asia Brief sketch of the early policy of toleration adopted by 
 the English in India, disregard shown for political reasons to native Christians; 
 careful performance of State ceremonial towards Hindu worships Gradual 
 effect of missionary protests against connexion of English Government with 
 the religions of the country ; withdrawal of Government from superintendence 
 of endowments ; counter protests of natives against total withdrawal ; course 
 and tendency of legislation on the subject ; effect upon it of the mutiny 
 Grievances of the Mahomedans as put forward by English writers ; criticism 
 of their views Suggestions as to the proper policy to be followed. 
 
 Ix Great Britain the relations of the State to religion are 
 still in a very delicate condition. Hardly any subject is so 
 keenly discussed or so little settled even in this country, 
 where we are a self-governing people very fairly agreed upon 
 essential beliefs, at any rate unanimous in accepting Chris- 
 tianity as the religious basis of our civil society. No question 
 of home politics ferments so rapidly under controversy among 
 Englishmen, and for that reason nothing would more surely 
 attract their serious attention- to Indian affairs than a general 
 impression that our Government in the East had been blun- 
 dering in its dealings with the religious convictions of the 
 people. Yet I imagine that Englishmen at home do not 
 always realise or make allowance for the degree to which the 
 universal problem as to the proper functions of government 
 becomes complicated, when the points under debate are the 
 duties and attributes of the government of India by the 
 English; more particularly whenever we have to decide 
 upon the attitude which Christian rulers should take up in 
 regard to the numerous creeds and sects which abound in
 
 CHAP. X.] NATIVE CREEDS AND SECTS. 259 
 
 and constantly issue afresh out of that qfficina religionum. 
 For it is not merely that the leading popular faiths of India 
 differ one from another widely and positively, to the extent of 
 setting forth opposite conceptions of primordial morality, and 
 contradictory practical rules as to what are acts of laudable 
 devotion, and what are outrageous public nuisances, but we 
 have to do with the varying shapes and colours assumed by 
 these diverse ideas and doctrines as they are viewed through 
 different intellectual media. Besides having to arbitrate 
 among proclaimed antagonists, we find ourselves confronted 
 by one or another faith in its several phases simultaneously, 
 as when it is held outwardly by people who disagree en- 
 tirely in their true appreciation and practical application 
 of it ; while the behaviour of the Government in this curious 
 situation is watched and criticised from standpoints so far 
 apart as are England and India. Thus the Government has 
 not only to reconcile the interests and to recognise the peculiar 
 institutions of several powerful native creeds radically dis- 
 tinct in structure, and mutually hostile in temperament, but 
 has to submit its proceedings to tribunals of religious opinion 
 in Europe as well as in Asia, and to take account of theological 
 prejudices in two continents. So we are continually measured 
 by inconsistent standards and weighed in discordant balances. 
 In India we have to give reason for our doings to rigid 
 Brahinans and to iconoclastic Mahomedans 
 
 " Such as do build their faith upon 
 The holy text of pike and gun ; " 
 
 we have to stand well in the dim religious light of a fetich 
 worshipper, and to satisfy the refined Deism of the Brahmo 
 Soin&j. "We must at the same time reply to vigorous mis- 
 sionary societies who would have a Christian government 
 testify openly to its faith by cutting off allowances to heathen- 
 dom, and we must argue with Nonconformists at home who 
 overhaul our ecclesiastical expenditure, and would give no 
 public money from Indian revenues to Christian ministers. 
 During late years the growth of a strong many-sided interest 
 in Indian affairs has created in England a general half-know-
 
 260 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. [CHAP. X. 
 
 ledge of them, and a sort of fusion or confusion among those 
 ideas which lie upon the border land between Eastern and 
 Western habits of thought regarding such a universally in- 
 teresting subject as religion. Half-knowledge is proverbially 
 dangerous ; nor is it more likely to be either safe or effective 
 when it is handled as ammunition of parliamentary warfare, 
 or used for drawing from India analogies to support party 
 measures in England, or for producing startling effects in the 
 political and popular literature which occupies and diverts the 
 minds of the outer public upon the present condition of our 
 Indian Empire. Yet each and all of these various critics 
 require the Government to do or abstain from something, 
 while ever} 7 step which the Government takes backward or 
 forward is usually distasteful to one or the other. 
 
 For the time is past when the Government of India could 
 escape all this tangle of contradictory responsibilities and 
 demands by doing nothing, and by maintaining the status 
 quo. From the beginning, indeed, of our dominion in the 
 East one of the cardinal principles upon which we administered 
 the country has been Toleration. It was lucky for England 
 that she got her firm footing in India at a period when religious 
 enthusiasm was burning very low in the nation ; neither within 
 nor without the Church of the eighteenth century was there 
 left any ardent spirit of proselytising abroad or of ecclesiastical 
 domination at home (except over Irish Papists), and so we 
 avoided the terrible blunders of fanaticism made by the 
 European nations, who in the preceding centuries had gone 
 before us Eastward and Westward, to India and to America, 
 in the career of adventure and conquest. Moreover, tolera- 
 tion, meaning complete non-interference with the religions of 
 the natives, was of such plain and profitable expediency with 
 the East India Company in its earlier days, that not to have 
 practised it would have been downright insanity in an associa- 
 tion whose object was to do business with Indians ; wherefore 
 the merchants who enforced a strict monopoly of material 
 commerce were always careful to encourage free trade and 
 unlimited speculation in religion. So the tradition of total 
 abstinence from any religious policy grew up, and was main-
 
 CHAP. X.] RELIGIOUS TOLERATION. 261 
 
 tained long after the Company had ceased to depend on the 
 favour of Indian princes or priests, and had instead become 
 arbiter of their destinies. We continued, as a great rising 
 Power, to survey all religions (including Christianity) with 
 the most imperturbable and equitable indifference. We 
 tolerated every superstitious rite or custom to the extent of 
 carefully protecting it ; any single institution or privilege of 
 the natives that had in it a tincture of religious motive was 
 hedged round with respect, endowments were conscientiously 
 left untouched, ecclesiastical grants and allowances to pious 
 persons were scrupulously continued; in fact, the Company 
 accepted all these liabilities created by its predecessors in rule 
 as trusts, and assumed the office of administrator-general of 
 charitable and religious legacies to every denomination. We 
 disbursed impartially to Hindus, Musalmans, and Parsees, to 
 heretic and orthodox, to Jagannath's car, and to the shrine of 
 a Mahomedan who died fighting against infidels, perhaps 
 against ourselves. This was, on the whole, a conduct as wise 
 and prudent as it was generally popular; for no anterior 
 government had preserved such complete equipoise in its re- 
 ligious predilections ; the Mahomedans had indulged in chronic 
 outbursts of sheer persecution, while the Marathas often laid 
 heavy taxes on Mahomedan endowments, if they did not 
 entirety confiscate them in times of financial need. At the least 
 every succeeding ruler provided largely and exclusively for the 
 services of his own religion, and most rarely for any other ; to 
 do this much was not only the right of a conquering prince, 
 but his duty, springing obviously out of the fact that he was 
 bound to promote the spread of certain tenets or the glori- 
 fication of certain divinities. On the other hand, the only 
 tutelary deities which the Company cared to propitiate were 
 powerful personages in the flesh at home ; and in India their 
 chief officers were so cautious to disown any political connection 
 with Christianity, that they were occasionally reported to have 
 no religion at all. It thus came to pass that whereas Hinduism 
 and Islam had been well endowed and richly salaried when- 
 ever the Hindus or Mahomedans had from time to time been 
 predominant, Christianity took nothing by the wonderful turn
 
 262 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IX INDIA. [CHAP. X. 
 
 of fortune which at last brought Christians to the top of the 
 wheel in India ; and for the first time India saw the wealth of 
 vast provinces dispensed by rulers who showed not the slightest 
 inclination to allot any portion, beyond a few very moderate 
 salaries, to the religion which they themselves professed. The 
 consequence Avas a marked and striking contrast between the 
 condition of native Christians and that of other historical 
 religious communities, the more extraordinary and impressive 
 because all temporal power was in the hands of those who 
 belonged to the religion which possessed no temporalities, and 
 because the races which had been superseded in dominion 
 retained great religious endowments. While Christians held 
 the highest offices of State, with irresponsible power over 
 immense revenues, the Christian religion was as poor and as 
 depressed as when it first struggled for existence among the 
 pontiffs and philosophers of the Roman Empire ; and about 
 the time when the quarrels of Greek and Latin monks over 
 their holy places in Turkey well-nigh shook the throne of the 
 chief sovereign of Islam, in India the Christians, as a bod}', 
 were left by our English Government with no more privilege 
 nor protectorate than would have been accorded by ordinary 
 magistrates to any insignificant group of worshippers without 
 pretension to political importance. Toleration of this heroic 
 self-denying kind contradicted all the precedents and prejudices 
 of Asia. 
 
 When I speak of the Indian Christians, I must not be 
 supposed to mean a body composed mainly of the Company's 
 servants, or of immigrants from Europe during English 
 rule. It is well known that a branch of the early Nes- 
 torian Church prospered for several centuries in Southern 
 India, principally about Travancore ; and though these 
 Christian communities are said to have been much weak- 
 ened by later dissensions with the Roman Catholics, yet La 
 Croze, whose History of Christianity in India was pub- 
 lished in 1724, says that in his day they had fifteen hundred 
 churches and as many towns and villages within the king- 
 doms of Cochin and Travancore. The Abbe Dubois stated 
 in his evidence before the House of Commons that in 1792
 
 CHAP. X.] NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 263 
 
 the number of Roman Catholic Christians in the southern 
 peninsula of India was estimated to exceed one million, 
 but that " the Christian religion had been visibly on the 
 decline during these past eighty years." As for their con- 
 dition at the time (1832) when M. Dubois was speaking, 
 he goes on to suggest that " the state of the native Christians 
 might be materially improved if, above all, their religious 
 guides could be placed above the state of penury, or rather 
 beggary, in which they live generally, most of them having 
 nothing for their support but the scanty substance of dis- 
 tressed flocks, themselves hi the greatest poverty, and the 
 priests being thus reduced, in order to procure themselves 
 absolute necessaries, to the sad but unavoidable necessity of 
 making a kind of traffic of the sacraments, and otherwise 
 debasing themselves." * He " proposed to shelter the clergy 
 from the horrors of indigence," by giving to every bishop a 
 salary of about six hundred rupees (60) yearly, and to priests 
 in due proportion. Up to the year 1831 native Christians had 
 been placed under stringent civil disabilities by our own regu- 
 lations, which formally adopted and regularly enforced the 
 loose and intermittent usages of intolerance which they found 
 in vogue ; native Christians were excluded from practising as 
 pleaders, and from the subordinate official departments, although 
 no such absolute rule of exclusion had ever been set up against 
 them by Hindus or Mahomedans; while converts to Chris- 
 tianity were liable to be deprived, by reason of their conver- 
 sion, not only of property, but of their wives and children ; and 
 they seem to have been generally treated as unlucky outcasts 
 with whom no one need be at the trouble of using any sort of 
 consideration. The British Government had ordained for 
 their own servants some ecclesiastical establishment, but it is 
 described as having been in Western India " a disgrace to our 
 national character "t until the constitution of the see at Cal- 
 cutta in 1814. For many decades of our rule there was in the 
 
 * Parliamentary Papers, Minutes of Committee on the affairs of the East 
 Evidence. India Company, 1832. 
 
 1* Appendix to Report from Select
 
 2C4 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IX INDIA. [CHAP. X. 
 
 Bombay Presidency only that first English church which had 
 been built at Bombay in 1714 ; and just one hundred years 
 later one bishop was appointed for all Protestant India, with 
 nineteen chaplains for the whole Bengal Presidency, and one 
 Scotch minister to each Presidency, an economical allowance 
 with which the numerous Scotchmen in India appear to have 
 always been quite contented. The local governments were 
 also rather grudgingly permitted to build a " few cheap 
 chapels;" but it was remarked that the Roman Catholics 
 shamed the Protestants (and saved the revenues) by building 
 their churches without any aid from the Treasury. It is 
 not clear that the indigenous Christian communities got any 
 sort of aid or subsidy ; in the year 1832 they were described 
 as being in a state of " lamentable superstitious degradation," 
 especially in Salsette Island (close to Bombay), which had 
 been British territory since 1774. But at this time the reli- 
 gious institutions and rites of the Hindus and Mahomedans 
 were treated with deferential and scrupulous observance of the 
 position which they held under native governments. All the 
 customary honours, civil and military, were paid to shrines 
 and images ; the district magistrates continued to press men, 
 according to ancient use, for dragging the cars of a famous 
 idol, and declined to exempt Christians from this general 
 corvee; we administered the endowments, paying over net 
 rentals to priests or ministers; "our interference extended 
 over every detail of management, we regulated their funds, 
 repaired their buildings, kept in order the cars and images, 
 appointed their servants, and purveyed the various commodi- 
 ties required for use of the pagodas."* All these matters, 
 however, were merely forms of harmless external observance 
 which the executive might fairly recognise, just as the law 
 courts would take cognizance of idolatrous customs and adju- 
 dicate thereupon. But there were other superstitious prac- 
 tices plainly condemned by the first principles of Christian 
 morality and decency, which yet, on account of their motive, 
 were exempted by devout opinion from the purview of the 
 
 * Parliamentary Papers, 1832.
 
 CHAP. X.] RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 265 
 
 ordinary criminal law. During a long time the Company 
 hesitated to interfere with such practices ; and this abstention 
 was consistent with the particular stage of toleration at which 
 our Government in India had then arrived. For so long as 
 the laws of each separate sect or community depend upon and 
 are derived from its religion, are personal instead of being 
 territorial in such a state of society governments have 
 usually held themselves precluded from interfering with 
 any act warranted by the creed in which a person has been 
 bom, excepting only when such an act is dangerous to the 
 State itself; and weakness and philosophic indifference have 
 combined to commend these principles all the world over 
 to prudent rulers of many strong tribes or of powerful religious 
 factions. 
 
 This rather primitive conception of the meaning of tolerant 
 government was soon, however, found inadequate and incom- 
 plete by the European chiefs (not individually without courage 
 or political insight) who administered India under European 
 direction. Then arose that knotty question which in different 
 shapes and degrees has vexed all Christianity since we aban- 
 doned the good old rule and simple plan of pure Intoler- 
 ance, and which even troubled the London School Board 
 during its earliest discussions as to principles, namely, How ^ 
 far are we bound to tolerate that which we firmly believe 
 to be wrong? Those very extreme cases which Professor 
 Huxley suggested* by way of reducing administrative nihilism 
 to an absurdity, came as matters of fact before Indian rulers, 
 who had to decide practically about countenancing the 
 worship of Astarte, and about permitting other religious 
 usages not much less barbarous than Thuggee. So early as in 
 1792 Mr. Grant, in his " Eeview of the State of Society in 
 Asia," had asked of the Government, "Are we bound for ever 
 to preserve all the enormities of the Hindu system ? Have we i 
 become the guardians of every monstrous principle and practice 
 which it contains?" Yet only gradually did the Government 
 make bold to answer these appeals by a clear negative. Under 
 
 * Fortnightly Rc'dcw, November, 1871.
 
 266 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IX INDIA. [CHAP. X. 
 
 Lord Wellesley the exposure of infants and aged parents to 
 death by wild beasts or starvation in the Hooghly was declared 
 illegal; but the practice of "driving widows into flames by a 
 diabolical complication of force and fraud"* was tolerated 
 until in 1829 Lord W. Bentinck outlawed it, with some qualms 
 and many explanations. These and other similar domestic 
 institutions (as slavery, suicide, &c.) were gradually disallowed 
 upon the plea that such errors were so unanimously condemned 
 by every system of secular law and morality in the world, that 
 even genuine religious convictions must in such instances 
 yield to the necessity of some kind of police, were it merely for 
 a commonwealth's self-preservation. Thus far the Govern- 
 ment could proceed on solid ground, for Christians and 
 Mahomedans approved, while Hindus (after some grumbling) 
 acquiesced in the drawing our new line of toleration so as to 
 exclude acts of flagrant inhumanity ; though the question of 
 meddling with shocking indecency seems to have been 
 adjourned as rather more metaphysical and less urgent. 
 
 But the true religious difficulty was gradually closing round 
 us, despite our laborious declarations of " perfect Neutrality." 
 We soon began to enter upon those intricacies of navigation 
 which have ever since beset a government that, during its. 
 whole course, is more or less under the influence of two diffe- 
 rent currents of public opinion, setting in from the East and 
 the West simultaneously, and both flowing stronger and 
 stronger (though in varying proportion of strength) as the 
 voyage proceeds. The Western current, hitherto slightly felt, 
 was gathering drift. It brought a feeling that Christianity, 
 among other things, ought to be tolerated; that a system 
 which allowed native Christians to be punished publicly by 
 canes t for refusing to drag the car of Hindu idols, which 
 taxed them for support of these idols, and which visited them 
 with civil disabilities, was, to say the least, an excessive 
 
 * Grant, "State of Society in Asia," the year 1815. 
 
 Parliamentary Papers. Three hundred t Minutes of Evidence before Select 
 
 and ten widows were burnt, within the Committee, 1832. 
 English dominion, as it then stood, in
 
 CHAP. X.] CONSCIENTIOUS SCRUPLES. 267 
 
 deference to the opinion of majorities. So in 1832 the 
 Government went so far as to pass a law which protected all 
 persons who should change their religion from loss of property 
 in consequence of that change. The enactment was general, 
 though its special aim was relief to new Christians, yet the 
 Hindus actually protested against it as a manifest breach of 
 the neutrality which the English had been so careful to pro- 
 claim, although it was notorious that the Mahonaeclans in 
 the days of their ascendency not only bestowed upon their 
 proselytes immunity, but reward. From this time forward, 
 nevertheless, the counter-pressure of English religious opinion, 
 mainly organized and directed by the growing power of mis- 
 sionary societies, began to have its sensible effect upon our 
 policy of administration ; the conscientious scruples of Chris- 
 tians, as well as of Hindus or Musalmans, were ventilated 
 and had gained representation ; and the contrarieties occa- 
 sionally produced by these cross winds were curious. For 
 instance, about 1838 the Government desired, according to the 
 ordinary routine, to repair the Imaiiibarali, or place of prayer, 
 belonging to that same religious foundation at Hooghly in the 
 recent management of which we have incurred (according to 
 Dr. W. W. Hunter) the charge of "deliberate malversation."* 
 An order was sent as usual to the Board of Kevenue in 
 Calcutta to invite tenders for these repairs, whereupon one 
 member minuted as follows : 
 
 " It is deeply distressing to me to receive orders from the Government which I 
 cannot execute without grievously offending my conscience. I must respectfully 
 but earnestly entreat that I may not be required to make myself an instrument 
 for the maintenance and embellishment of an edifice dedicated to worship which I 
 am conscientiously persuaded is not that of the true God. I know that the act 
 which I am directed to perform is one of very easy execution, and that very little 
 interference on the part of the Board is likely to be called for ; but this is not a 
 
 question of degree, my objection is one of principle It is an offence, in my 
 
 opinion, of the greatest magnitude to take knowingly a single step in a direction 
 contrary to that of truth, "t 
 
 This quotation serves to illustrate the difficulties of the position 
 in which the Government found itself occasionally placed. On 
 
 * " Our Indian Musalmans," page tion of the Government of India with 
 185. Idolatry or with Mahomedanism. 
 
 t Parliamentary Papers on connec-
 
 268 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY LN INDIA. [CHAP. X. 
 
 the one side lay the hitherto acknowledged duty of respecting 
 and maintaining, according to the use and practice of preceding 
 governments and the expectation of the people, the principal 
 religious endowments of the country, and the gulf of troubled 
 water into which any open neglect of such duty was likely to 
 bring us. On the other side an active and increasing party of 
 earnest Christians urged that any sort of co-operation with 
 false creeds was a compact with Satan, a crime against the true 
 creed, and that their scruples on this head had as much claim 
 to respect as the phantasies of a Hindu, or the violent aversions 
 of a Mahomedan ; that Christians must no longer be required, 
 even figuratively or constructively, to draw the car of Jagan- 
 nath; that when a Christian church fell out of repair the 
 Government sent orders to pull it down,* while professional 
 architects were employed on mosques ; and that this species of 
 policy only appeared to the natives as if it were blanched by 
 timidity. Out of this particular dilemma there has in modem 
 times been only one way of escape, which is always adopted by 
 governments when they find themselves hemmed in and headed 
 backward and forward by rival sects that of attempting to slip 
 away from all connection with ecclesiastical affairs, and of 
 seeking safe anchorage in the calm roads of exclusively secular 
 administration. And the unendowed minority naturally desire 
 to drive the State into this outlet, as the best bargain which they 
 can hope to extort; they cannot consistently hope for establish- 
 ments because they are sure to have been denouncing them, 
 but they can demand disestablishment, if not disendowment ; 
 they cannot logically propose levelling up, but they can reason- 
 ably agitate for levelling down ; while the very professions of 
 neutrality and pure impartiality set up by a modern government 
 at once lay it open to a claim that their principle shall be uni- 
 versally applied. Unfortunately this solution of the difficulty, 
 which is thought to be full of hope and promise in England, is 
 still a little premature in India, where the customs and preju- 
 dices of the people still give a somewhat unusual aspect to the 
 principle of complete abstinence by the State from expressing 
 
 * Parliamentary Papers, Minutes of Evidence, 1832.
 
 CHAP. X.] TRANSFER OF ENDOWMENTS. 269 
 
 or supporting any particular religious opinion. The pre- 
 ceding governments, who framed their religious policy on the 
 antique pattern of doing everything for their own creed 
 and leaving other creeds alone (save for occasional out- 
 bursts of fanaticism), were at least free from this special kind 
 of embarrassment. But here were the missionaries saying 
 humbly to the English Government, "We don't ask you to 
 support Christianity, but if you must be what we call atheist, 
 be so consistently; do not act as agents and managers for 
 any religion at all." So the Government, being moved 
 thereto by divers reasons, did in India what every governing 
 body thus placed must eventually do; it resolved to with- 
 draw from all direct connection with religious institutions, 
 expecting thereby to please all parties, and to sit apart from 
 the turmoil of religious strife. The principle of dissociation 
 was imposed upon the Indian administration by their Home 
 Government, as " due alike to the character of a Christian 
 Government and to the scruples of its Christian officers : " and 
 in 1846 the Indian Council reported to England that the neces- 
 sary measures were in progress, which the Court of Directors 
 entirely approved. 
 
 But the business of making over to responsible trustees or 
 guardians the enormous possessions of the various religious 
 bodies in India, which had been perhaps for generations under 
 the direct and powerful administration of successive govern- 
 ments, involved great and complicated transactions, clogged by 
 many hitches and much delay. Many of these establishments 
 had no recognised heads, and when heads were found they 
 were sometimes incompetent or untrustworthy. There were 
 numerous landed estates to be transferred, and proprietors 
 were not easily discovered, while the rights of tenants had to 
 be guarded. There was a large accumulation of surplus eccle- 
 siastical funds in Government treasuries, and to hand over big 
 lump sums of ready cash to temples or shrines would often be 
 merely to force waste and debauchery upon pious and ascetic 
 communities ; for they had no idea of investing such money, 
 and no legitimate objects on which it would be suddenly spent. 
 However, the Government persevered until, by the energy and
 
 270 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. [CHAP. X. 
 
 minute local knowledge of district officers all over the empire, 
 most of the arrangements for handing over to individuals or to 
 corporations the conduct and personal management of religious 
 lands and money allowances had been more or less successfully 
 agreed upon. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Government soon discovered that these 
 measures by no means satisfied the religious sentiment of all 
 parties, or enabled it to shake off its religious responsibilities ; 
 for certain sections of the native population, both Hindu and 
 Mahomedan, began to complain that the English Government 
 was abdicating one of its most essential functions by refusing 
 any longer to superintend the religious endowments of the 
 country, as had been the immemorial custom and obligation of 
 native princes to do ; that no other guardians or trustees both 
 honest and capable could be found ; that there was great con- 
 fusion as to title, incessant quarrels as to right to use the 
 funds or deal with the lands; and that the Government 
 cynically, and with subtle intent to ruin non- Christian creeds 
 by the law's delay, referred these disputes to the civil courts, 
 instead of deciding them by its own ancient prerogative and 
 according to its plain duty. Meanwhile the party whose 
 opinions were represented by the Christian missionaries was 
 pushing forward its advantage from the other side. The 
 Government had determined to be no longer agents and 
 officers for institutions of false religions or of heathen super- 
 stitions ; but large annual grants (the donations of our prede- 
 cessors) continued to be made from the Treasury toward 
 the support of idols and idolatrous or infidel usages ; so the 
 Honourable Company was " earnestly reminded that idolatry 
 is not only a curse to mankind, but that any approval or coun- 
 tenance lent to it, directly or indirectly, is represented in the 
 Word of God as a grievous offence against Heaven."* The 
 leading case on which both parties relied, and in which the 
 conduct of the Government was most impartially condemned 
 by Hindus and Christians alike, was that of the great temple 
 of Jagannath, which had been formally assured of the protec- 
 
 * Memorial to Honourable Court of Directors by Protestant Missionaries, 
 1850 (Parliamentary Papers).
 
 CHAP. X.] REVENUES OF JAGAXXATH. 271 
 
 tion of the British conquerors when the province of Cuttack, 
 in which the temple is situated, was annexed ; and in observ- 
 ance of this pledge a large sum of money was paid yearly to 
 the Brahmans by assignment of the revenue from certain 
 tracts. In 1845 it was proposed to commute this assignment 
 once for all by a grant of land in perpetuity ; upon which a 
 high official in Bengal minuted that this was a mere device of 
 Christians by profession who wanted to conciliate the Hindu, 
 and at the same time "to secure themselves against the exe- 
 cration of their fellow- Christians by presenting their oblation 
 to an idol under the cover of a perpetual endowment," instead 
 of undergoing the annual disgrace of a money payment.* This 
 uncomfortable aspect of the proposal did not in the end pre- 
 vail, for certain lands were conveyed to a Hereditary Superin- 
 tendent in trust for the Temple ; but the Court of Directors 
 forbad the usual posting of police inside the building to keep 
 order on great festivals ; while the missionaries charged our 
 hapless Government with encouraging "the vilest character- 
 istics of Hindu idolatry," and with directly subsidizing "a large 
 idolatrous establishment which tends to perpetuate intellec- 
 tual and moral debasement." t Thus the High Christian party 
 was no longer satisfied that Government had ceased to overlook 
 the employment of religious funds ; it now required that the 
 allowances themselves should be stopped J (not, however, that 
 their estates should be confiscated) ; and when it was proposed 
 to escape the scandal of periodical disbursements by a grant 
 of land, they retorted that this was merely to perpetuate and 
 plant an abuse which ought to be uprooted. At the same 
 time many natives cried aloud that Government was shirking 
 its duties, throwing their religious institutions into confusion 
 by declining to administer them, impoverishing them by cur- 
 tailing on inadequate reasons the customary grants, and con- 
 fiscating them by rigorous investigations into right and title, 
 
 * Parliamentary Papers. were actually being enjoyed under valid 
 
 t Parliamentary Papers, 1852. authority at the time when a province 
 
 J It will be understood that only came into British hands, 
 those allowances were continued which
 
 272 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. [CnAr. X. 
 
 such as by equity and common law of the country these endow- 
 ments had never been expected to sustain. 
 
 Then the question of religious disabilities brought upon 
 the Government similarly conflicting remonstrances against 
 a breach of perfect neutrality. Up to 1830 the native 
 Christians had been excluded in the Madras Presidency 
 (where they were most numerous) by law from the bar, from 
 judicial offices, and from the army commissions ; they were 
 even left amenable in the interior provinces to Musalman law, 
 and their civil rights were denned by no particular code at all 
 throughout India. The religious minority ruled both in Ire- 
 land and in India ; but here all likeness ends between the two 
 cases, for while in Ireland all the ecclesiastical revenues of the 
 country went to support the religion of the dominant race, and 
 the disabilities were laid on the mass of the people ; in India we 
 sought to conciliate the great majority of our subjects by 
 maintaining civil disabilities upon that part of the indigenous 
 population which belonged to the religion of the conquerors. 
 In 1832 was passed in Bengal a law which protected any man 
 from losing his property by the effect of the law of a religion 
 which he had renounced ; but in 1845 the Bishop of Bombay 
 represented that in his diocese the benefit to native Christians 
 of the courts of justice was confined to protecting them from 
 personal violence ; a convert had no other rights under the 
 Regulations. Upon this, after much deliberation, the Govern- 
 ment in 1850 framed a Bill which rescinded all laws and 
 usages throughout India inflicting upon any person forfeiture 
 of rights or property by reason of his renouncing or being 
 excluded from the communion of any religion. Against this 
 the Hindus of Bengal and Madras at once sent up strong 
 memorials declaring that " the measure was viewed by the 
 whole Hindu population with the utmost horror and dismay ; " 
 that its object was evidently to sap the foundations of their 
 religion, and to insinuate a system of indirect persecution ; 
 and the memorialists, as usual, respectfully asked " whether 
 this was the Honourable Company's principle of toleration." 
 Lord Dalhousie (who regarded strong words as a sort of incon- 
 vertible currency of his own issue, good for paying with, but
 
 CHAP. X.] COURSE OF LEGISLATION. 273 
 
 not for being paid in) carried through the reform with his 
 usual high-handed resolution ; but the Government found 
 itself no nearer than before to the haven of refuge from 
 theologic winds and currents ; and this very grievance about 
 disabilities has by no means died away, for Colonel Nassau 
 Lees gravely registers it among the specific wrongs over which 
 the Mahomedans to this day brood discontentedly.* 
 
 So far, indeed, was Lord Dalhousie from having piloted his 
 vessel into calm waters, that he left her on the edge of a 
 c}*clone. This gradual tolerance of Christianity, the progress 
 which it made towards admission within the circle of recog- 
 nised Indian religions, the bold countenance of its thorough- 
 going professors, and the perceptible inclination of the State's 
 course under the increasing ripple of "Western opinion all 
 these things did combine to arouse jealousy among the more 
 sensitive Hindu and Mahomedan classes and interests. They 
 saw that their faiths were losing their old exclusive privileges, 
 and they openly propounded the conclusion that the Govern- 
 ment was undermining their religious constitutions with the 
 object of proselytism. These ideas, which were abroad not long 
 before the great eruption of mutiny and revolt in 1857, aided 
 much to bring the native Indian mind into an inflammable 
 condition ; when the spark fell the rebels and mutineers went 
 to the country with the cry of Religion in danger, and the 
 cry was very widely believed. All the proclamations issued 
 from Delhi and Lucknow contained allusions to the invidious 
 machinations of the English against the creeds of India ; 
 while natives about to be executed would offer to embrace 
 Christianity if they might be spared, and would be astonished 
 at discovering that this alternative was not permitted. On 
 the neutrality question the effect of that bloody wrestle was 
 natural enough. The old Puritanic intolerance which still lies 
 hid at the bottom of the hearts of so many English and Scots 
 was ominously rekindled, as big trees at last catch fire from 
 blazing thorns, by the aggressive display of Indian fanaticism ; 
 
 * Letter to the Times, from Colonel X. Lees, late Principal of the Mahommedan 
 College, October 14, 1871. 
 
 r
 
 274 OUH RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. [CHAP. X. 
 
 and while the natives proclaimed that a treacherous Govern- 
 ment had been detected in entrapping them into Christianity, 
 English laymen went about saying that we were only suffering 
 the divine chastisement that is surely brought down upon a 
 nation by rulers that deny and degrade their own religion. If 
 the more violent Mahornedans had preached holy war, it must 
 be remembered that a section of the Christian clergy exhaled 
 a strong savour of that very same leaven which causes 
 Mahomedan bigotry to ferment after a manner which some 
 people appear to regard as a peculiar and portentous 
 characteristic of Islam. For in a memorial to Government 
 drawn up by the Bombay Missionary Conference in 1858, 
 requiring the Government to discountenance and deprive of 
 their customary money grants all non- Christian places of wor- 
 ship, the petitioners urged that " even if treaties bind us to 
 support heathen temples, the obligation forbidding such treaty 
 is far superior, as imposed by God Himself, which (obligation) 
 cannot be set aside without drawing down the displeasure of 
 the Almighty.* The missionaries were thus disturbed in 
 conscience by precisely the same problem as that which 
 occasionally hampers loyal but strictly pious Mahomedan s 
 the dilemma between the manifest obligations of honesty and 
 good faith on the one side, and the suggestion of God's dis- 
 pleasure on the other; and the solution proposed by the 
 memorial to our Government is very nearly identical with 
 what in our subjects we call treason the subordination of 
 allegiance to theology, the principle that we cannot keep 
 pledge with persons of a different creed without apostasy from 
 our own. Nor were missionaries the only Englishmen who 
 held political doctrines of this colour during the period which 
 immediately followed the great mutiny ; for though the chief 
 governors and councillors of India were proof against such 
 arguments, and untouched by such passions, yet about this 
 time there appeared in certain parts of Northern India a bias 
 toward such combinations as the Bible and the sword, and a 
 disposition to entertain the idea that the Government might 
 
 * Parliamentary Papers.
 
 CHAP. X.] EFFECT OF THE MUTINY. 275 
 
 sever its connection with heathen endowments by the sharp 
 knife of confiscation. 
 
 As the heats generated by the mutiny gradually cooled 
 down, the extreme tension of the situation relaxed ; but the 
 events of those years probably intensified the desire of our 
 Government to be rid of the connection between Churches 
 and State in India. The Home Secretary issued a fresh 
 despatch on the subject, and after much correspondence the 
 Act was passed, hi 1863, which relieved officers of Govern- 
 ment from all duties which embraced the appointment to 
 religious offices, the superintending of lands assigned for 
 pious uses, the appropriation of religious incomes, the pre- 
 servation of sacred buildings, or the management in any form 
 of establishments belonging to the Hindu or the Mahomedan 
 religion. Such properties and agencies were to be made over 
 absolutely to local trustees or committees to be once for all 
 appointed by the Government, after which the Government 
 positively ceased to nominate or in any manner to interfere. 
 The check on the trustees resembles that which was devised 
 by the Archbishop of Canterbury for the English clergy in 
 the scheme which the Upper House rejected in 1872; any 
 person interested in any mosque or temple, or in the per- 
 formance of the worship or service thereof,* may sue before 
 the civil court the trustee, manager, or member of the com- 
 mittee for misfeasance, breach of trust, or neglect of duty ; and 
 the civil court may direct specific performance of any act, 
 decree damages, or remove from office. Next followed, in 
 1864, the law by which Government proclaimed that it would 
 no longer appoint the semi-ecclesiastical Mahomedan Kazis, 
 whereby the dissociation between the State and the religious 
 institutions of the natives of British India was completed ; all 
 civil disabilities on account of religion had by this time been 
 abolished,! and the Government may have been flattered with 
 
 * This may mean (says the Act) an t I should perhaps except some in- 
 
 person having a right of attendance, or direct and intricate impediments to mar- 
 having been in the habit of attending riage or divorce, which still hampered 
 at the performance of the worship or persons who changed caste or creed. 
 sen-ice. These have since been mostly removed. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. [CHAP. X. 
 
 the hope that it had at last attained the true equilibrium of 
 toleration. 
 
 How far we are still, nevertheless, from any such consumma- 
 tion in India may be calculated by a survey of the present 
 state of religious politics in India, and by marking the move- 
 ments in different camps. Christianity has been liberated 
 from her unfair disadvantages, and other creeds have been 
 deprived of their unfair privileges ; we have thus been 
 brought nearer than ever before to liberty and equality in 
 religions. But fraternity is as distant as ever, for equality 
 stimulates rivalry ; and it is in the electric religious atmosphere 
 of India that the two great monotheistic Faiths which each 
 claim all mankind as their due heritage by divine ordinance 
 Christianity and Mahomedanism now confront each other 
 face to face, as they have never met before throughout history, 
 in one great neutral country of paganism. Both maintain 
 that the heathen have been given unto them for a possession, 
 and in their competition for proselytes the antagonists find 
 themselves at last not unevenly matched. The Mahomedan 
 faith has still at least a dignity, and a courageous unreason- 
 ing certitude, which in Western Christianity have been 
 perceptibly melted down and attenuated by the disease 
 of casuistry and by long exposure to the searching light 
 of European rationalism; whereas the clear, unwavering 
 formula of Islam carries one plain line straight up toward 
 heaven like a tall obelisk pointing direct to the sky, without 
 shadow of turning. It thus possesses a strong attraction for 
 Hindus who are seeking an escape from the labjiinth of 
 sensual Polytheism, but who yet require something more 
 concrete and definite in the way of a belief than is offered by 
 their indigenous speculations about Deism or Pantheism ; 
 while the vigour and earnestness of the high message announced 
 so unflinchingly by Mahomed conquer the hearts of simple folk, 
 and warm the imagination of devout truth-seekers. It is by 
 these weapons that the Mahomedan now enlarges his borders 
 among the Hindus, and the emulation between the two propa- 
 ganda, now left entirely to their own resources by our Govern- 
 ment, neither encouraged nor discouraged, must needs be close
 
 CHAP. X.] GRIEVANCES OF THE MAHOMEDANS. 277 
 
 enough to present the unique spectacle of two powerful and 
 enthusiastic religions, contending one against the other and 
 both against the greatest polytheism surviving in the world, 
 whose gradual dissolution will necessarily throw open to the 
 higher faiths a wide field of proselytism. When forces are thus 
 ranged and opposed, the parties actually engaged are apt to be 
 impatient of and to disregard the neutral flag of toleration; 
 nor does our Government at present obtain unanimous applause 
 for its appearance in the character (so novel on the Asiatic 
 stage) of an impartial bystander, prejudiced only in favour of 
 order and material prosperit}'. And thus it has come to pass 
 that our neutrality has been challenged simultaneously, yet from 
 different and indeed opposite points of view, by Hindus, Ma- 
 homedans, and various energetic partisan leaders of Christians 
 in England.* 
 
 Of these several parties the most important in India, 
 because the most united, are the Mahoinedans, whose griev- 
 ances have from time to time obtained much sympathy and 
 vivid representations from English writers. In 1871, Dr. 
 "\V. W. Hunter published a book styled " Our Indian Musul- 
 mans," upon the condition of the Mahomedans in India, 
 wherein the British Government was somewhat hastily charged 
 with deliberate misappropriation of the Mahornedan endow- 
 ments ; also with having abolished their law officers, the Kazis ; 
 for as the Madras High Court has formally decreed upon a 
 dispute between two claimants for the office that according to 
 precise Mahomedan law a Kazi can only be appointed by the 
 State, it has been maintained that the State, by ceasing to 
 appoint Kazis, has virtually abolished an indispensable religious 
 office. These heavy accusations were endorsed by Colonel "W. 
 Nassau Lees, in a pamphlet which brought together various 
 articles and letters on the subject ; and the following quotation 
 exemplifies the point from which he opened fire upon that 
 eternally besieged citadel of religious Neutrality. 
 
 * In 1860, 2,049 petitions were pre- of the Bible into all Government schools 
 sented to Parliament for the admission and colleges in India.
 
 278 OUR KELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. [CiiA?. X. 
 
 "Starting," he says,* "from our o \yn standpoint of strictly religious neutrality, 
 both Hindus and Mahomedans might reasonably object to a considerable sum 
 out of the revenues raised by the sweat of their brows being devoted annually to 
 the maintenance of an Established Church for the benefit of Christians, be 
 they Government servants or not, while no annual grant at all is made for the 
 support of Hindu and Mahomedan places of worship, or for their clergy. " 
 
 Now the view here taken is avowedly that which is in accord- 
 ance with English ideas on the subject; and it might have 
 been safely declared not to be the Indian view, since there is 
 every reason to doubt whether either Hindus or Mahomedans 
 would of themselves have ever discovered any objection on 
 principle against the small annual grant made to the Christian 
 Churches in India. But the assertion that no annual grant at 
 all is made for Hindu or Mahomedan religions is indeed the 
 unkindest cut of all, and is enough to make our unlucky Indian 
 Government abandon in despair its long pursuit after the true 
 method of toleration. For generations, as has been explained 
 above, we haVe been charged with apostasy because we admini- 
 stered and scrupulously nurtured large assignments from the 
 revenue to Hindus and Mahomedans in every part of India ; . 
 and only a few years ago the Bombay Missionary Conference 
 pointed out to Government, with compressed indignation, 
 that 
 
 "According to the best information obtainable by your memorialists, the 
 number (26,589) of idol temples and shrines in the Bombay Presidency alone 
 receiving support (by payments from the Treasury and from sources under 
 Government control) from the Government is much larger than the number of 
 Christian churches receiving Government support in Great Britain, and scarcely, 
 if at all, inferior to the entire number of churches of all Christian denominations 
 whatsoever in the British Islands. If your memorialists are correctly informed 
 seven lakhs (70,000) are annually expended from the Govern- 
 ment treasuries in the Bombay Presidency, and a still larger sum (87,678) in 
 the Madras Presidency. " 
 
 In Madras the surplus funds lying in the treasuries to credit 
 of religious institutions amounted in 1856 to several hundred 
 thousand pounds ; and the total annual payments up to 1859 
 were about 100,000. One devout person in Southern India, 
 
 * Times, Oct. 20, 1871.
 
 CHAP. X.] SURPLUS FUNDS IN THE TREASURIES. 279 
 
 \vlio states in a petition that he leads a "reclusive life," claimed 
 25,000 due to him from the treasury in 1847. Throughout 
 the vast Bengal Presidency and the great provinces directly 
 administered (like Nagpore and Oude) by the supreme Govern- 
 ment, the allowances in money or in kind, and the endowments 
 of land to religion, were found to be in great number ; nor do 
 even these accounts include the numerous estates set aside for 
 the support of Hindu and Mahomedan places of worship all 
 over British India. These estates are settled in perpetuity, 
 free of land-tax, on the institutions to which they belong, and 
 it is certain that such exemptions from assessment are tanta- 
 mount to a direct provision measured by the amount of revenue 
 which would have accrued to the State if the lands had not 
 been assigned to religious services. One would suppose that 
 in no country of the world were the great popular religions so 
 richly endowed from the public revenue as in India ; neverthe- 
 less Colonel Lees assured the readers of the Times that a few 
 scattered British chaplains and priests are the only clergy for 
 whom the toiling Indian sweats. 
 
 From the passage which I have quoted above, and from 
 another to the same purport,* it is by no means plain what 
 religious policy Colonel Nassau Lees would recommend. 
 
 * "Are we to take from the people from a pamphlet, being reprint of letters 
 
 of this country 47,000,000 of annual and articles by W. Nassau Lees, late 
 
 revenue for the purposes of the Govern- Principal of Mahomedan College, &c. 
 
 ment of the country, and allow not one 1871. 
 
 rupee of those millions, the greater por- Of this sum 16,47,269 rupees 
 tion of which has been raised by the (164,726) is incurred in the Civil de- 
 sweat of their brows for the mainte- partment, and is distributed as follows : 
 nance of their religious institutions? To the Church of England, 15,02,739 
 Are we to spend annually out of these rupees (150,273) ; the Church of Scot- 
 revenues 150,000 on bishops, priests, land, 1,07,704 rupees (10,770); and 
 deacons, ecclesiastical establishments, the Roman Catholic Church, 36,825 
 maintained solely for the spiritual wel- rupees (3,682). In the Military de- 
 fare of a few thousand Englishmen, and partment 1,97,559 rupees (19,755) are 
 leave the 150,000,000 of our Hindu and paid to Roman Catholic chaplains ; and 
 Mahommedan subjects to provide for 22,798 rupees (2,279) to Presbyterian 
 the care of their own souls out of the chaplains. There is also an expenditure 
 pittance our Revenue collectors may upon ecclesiastical buildings of 2,40,595 
 leave them for their private purposes, rupees (24,059). Parliamentary Be- 
 on the plea that their religions are turn. 
 monstrous superstitions 1 " Extract
 
 280 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. [Ciuf. X. 
 
 "Would lie have us enhance the present enormous revenues of 
 the Mahoinedan and Hindu establishments by an additional 
 money grant ? Or would he desire us to discontinue the al- 
 lowances made to Christian ministers mainly for performing 
 religious services to our Christian officials and soldiers ? The 
 latter alternative has probably suggested itself to an influential 
 party in England ; for returns showing the total annual expen- 
 diture on account of Christian ecclesiastical purposes have 
 been called for by Parliament, and the English Nonconformists 
 are naturally deliberating whether the British Government 
 shall not be pressed to cut off all this subvention from the 
 State to the Churches in India. 
 
 Now the expediency of paying chaplains for the British army 
 is not likely to be questioned ; and as to the general provision 
 by the State for ministry to different Christian sects in India, 
 this is not the place for discussing either the system of Church 
 establishment, or that of concurrent dotation. But it is worth 
 while to point out that if the English Parliament determines to 
 suppress altogether (as the Corntists would say) the theologic 
 budget in India, this affirmation of the principle involved will 
 inevitably bring to the front, sooner or later, a much larger and 
 more serious question; for it is not easy to see how the 
 Christian ecclesiastic allowances can be forbidden except on 
 the broad principle that the State has no business to recognise 
 or support any particular religious sentiment, and that it is 
 mere indirect persecution to tax a man for contributions toward 
 the maintenance of liturgies from which he dissents. That 
 principle might be logical enough, but then it hardly admits of 
 partial application ; we can hardly strain at such a gnat as this 
 budget allotment to Christianity, and swallow such camels as 
 the Mahomedan and Hindu endowments. It is of little use to 
 relieve the native conscience of the burden of contributing 
 towards a Protestant bishop, if we still leave the people paying 
 rates and taxes indiscriminately to idols and to Islam, without 
 the remotest connection between the creed of the individual tax- 
 payer and the creed which his money may go to support. But a 
 motion in England to forbid the Indian Government from dis- 
 bursing public money to any religious institution would not find
 
 CHAP. X.] FUNCTIONS OF A NEUTRAL STATE. 281 
 
 much favour among Indians ; since the chief gravamen of 
 recent complaints made against us by natives in India lies in 
 allegations that we have been disestablishing these institutions 
 and revising their endowments, that we have refused to 
 appoint Kazis or to retain any kind of religious patronage, and 
 that we have either thrown up the superintendence of religious 
 foundations or attempted to reform them. 
 
 The truth seems to be that we have got to a climax of the 
 conflict between Eastern and Western opinion as to what are 
 the proper functions of a neutral State. Neutrality in the 
 West means complete secularisation of the State's functions ; 
 disestablishment is largely accepted in principle, and disendow- 
 ment is a question of public utility. In the East these ideas 
 are entirely new ; and of all the various kinds of new wine 
 which we have latterly been pouring into old bottles, none 
 is more likely to disagree with the Indian taste and consti- 
 tution. In India they have no conception of the animosity 
 against Establishment which has been fostered in England by 
 Acts passed to enforce unity of religious profession and uni- 
 formity of clerical teaching, by the old attempts to drive wan- 
 dering sects like sheep into one fold under one official shepherd. 
 As there has never been one nation or one religion in India, so 
 a national Church establishment, excluding all others, has never 
 been imagined. That the Sovereign should provide decently for 
 his own persuasion is regarded as natural and decorous ; that 
 he should distribute revenue allotments (or continue them) to 
 every well-defined religious community is thought liberal ; that 
 he should administer to all religious properties and interests is 
 right and proper ; that he should ignore them all and provide 
 not even for his own faith would be a policy comprehensible 
 only by those who had studied English polemics, and one without 
 precedent in Asia. Lord Shaftesbury's recent declaration that 
 he would sooner have a child brought up as a Papist than 
 under no religion at all, would be approved ; while the Non- 
 conformist who would rather disendow all churches and schools 
 than continue endowments or grants to institutions from 
 whose teaching he dissented, would be thought unreasonable. 
 The Oriental would judge our quarrel over English pauper
 
 282 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. [CHAP. X. 
 
 children as Solomon judged the dispute between two women 
 for the possession of a son. Lord Shaftesbury Avould be she 
 who would give up the child rather than let it die ; the Non- 
 conformist would be the woman who would sooner it were dead 
 than made over to a rival. 
 
 And assuredly some'of the wisdom of Solomon is needed to 
 bring the Indian Government out of its straits without running 
 upon some rock of offence. We are like a man who should 
 desire to set his watch so as to keep true time in two 
 different longitudes at once. In the meridian of Greenwich 
 establishments and State endowments belong to an obsolete 
 system ; in the meridian of Delhi disestablishment (by which 
 is here meant disconnection of the State from the religious 
 institutions of the country) has caused much dissatisfaction ; 
 and of course disendowment would be to rob a great many 
 deities and religious communities. It has been said latterly, 
 and with some reason, that the English Government acted 
 prematurely, and upon incomplete knowledge of all the 
 considerations involved, when it resolved to sever the ancient 
 chain which bound the religious institutions of each pro- 
 vince round the feet of the Government which annexed 
 them, and when we. thus, in liberating ourselves from being 
 plagued with old-world fancies, threw away the repute and 
 leadership which accrued to the sovereign of India from being 
 universally recognised as the authority whose conge d'elire was 
 required, or whose arbitration was accepted, in all nomi- 
 nations and successions to important religious office or estate. 
 In the Madras Presidency the superintendence of " no less than 
 seven thousand six hundred Hindu establishments had hitherto 
 been vested in the officers of Government ; and this was more 
 than a nominal superintendence; the people regarded the 
 district officer as the friendly guardian of their religion. . . ." ' 
 Speaking of the aversion of the people to the abandonment by 
 Government of the management of a famous pagoda in North 
 Arcot, the district magistrate wrote: "No persuasion or 
 reasoning could effect a change in the resolution they had 
 
 * Note by Under-Secretary, Madras (Parliamentary Papers).
 
 CHAP. X.] RELIGIOUS OFFICES HEREDITARY. 283 
 
 taken ; the management of this pagoda, they said, had heen 
 in the hands of the ruling power for ages back, the innovation 
 proposed was contrary to established custom, and, if persisted 
 in, religious worship in their temple would cease." Without 
 doubt the people greatly exaggerated the effects of the change ; 
 but their feelings thereupon are illustrated by the foregoing 
 quotations. Nor is it to be forgotten that religious offices and 
 properties in India have very generally yielded to that peculiar 
 tendency which governs the course of all rights and interests 
 throughout the country ; they have to a great extent become 
 heritable family possessions on a service tenure ; and we cannot 
 attempt to alter the regular succession by inheritance, except 
 on extreme necessity. Even the semi-religious duties of the 
 Kcizi had become usually hereditary, and his appointment by 
 the State a mere form, long before the Act of 1864, long 
 indeed before the English took over from Mahomedans or 
 Marathas their dominion in India. It is quite a mistake to 
 infer that the result of ceasing to appoint Kazis was to lay our 
 Musahnan subjects under some such interdict as in the middle 
 ages disabled Christian priests from giving the " sanction of 
 religion to the marriage tie ; "* such a bewildering confusion of 
 ideas cannot be seriously entertained by a writer of ability and 
 high culture. But the form of confirming each succession or 
 election did survive, and to abolish it was not to render the 
 Kazi independent of infidels, but to cast a slur upon his status, 
 to lower his dignity, and even to render his tenure of office less 
 absolutely incontestable. Undoubtedly these slights are felt ; 
 and it is questionable whether the motives were sufficiently 
 grave and urgent which induced the Government to dissolve 
 the natural and traditional tie between Church and State, as 
 we should call it ; because this formal act not only involved a 
 loss of power, it also drew attention to the religious anomaly of 
 a Mahomedan community under Christian rulers; it raised 
 
 * "The Mahomedans . . . accuse us 'imperilling their souls, by denying them 
 
 of having brought misery into thousands the means of performing the duties of 
 
 of families by abolishing their law their faith." Our Indian Mussulmans, 
 
 officers, who gave the sanction of religion p. 145. 
 to the marriage tie ; they accuse us of
 
 284 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. [CHAP. X. 
 
 precisely the points which we ought to smooth down. The very 
 fact that we had succeeded, in some parts of the country, to 
 Musalman sovereigns should have made us more careful to 
 supply their exact place, and to continue their functions as 
 nearly as possible ; instead of passing a self-denying ordinance 
 to strip off the prerogative which every Mahomedan king exer- 
 cises as an attribute of his rulership. " She who doth hold 
 the gorgeous East in fee," the English Queen, rules over more 
 Musahnans than does the Osmanli Sultan ; our policy should 
 be to prove that we are proud of this great sovereignty, and 
 to lift up the heads of our Muslim fellow-subjects until they 
 also feel the pride of living under the most powerful monarch 
 in Asia. 
 
 But to go further into this complicated discussion would 
 require much more space than is here available. The object 
 of this chapter has been to give some account of the oscil- 
 lations during the present century of our religious policy in. 
 India, and to point out certain misunderstandings which seem 
 to have been at the bottom of our attempts to apply very 
 modern European principles to the adjustment of our relations 
 with Asiatic institutions. At first we were over careful to con- 
 ciliate native prejudices by showing official respect and defe- 
 rence to rites and ceremonies of a nature largely repugnant 
 to European habits of thought on such matters ; and we were 
 far too anxious to prove that we had no notion of giving 
 umbrage to powerful creeds by favouring Christianity, which 
 had no political importance. This overshot the mark, and natu- 
 rally displeased European opinion ; so we gave Avay to a strong 
 reaction, and at one time we borrowed from the religious 
 politics of Great Britain to an extent which laid us open to 
 complaints that the English Government, in its endeavour to 
 assume an impartial and irresponsible attitude toward all 
 religions, had not sufficiently regarded the material interests of 
 the native creeds and rituals, or their prescriptive claims upon 
 the ruler, whoever he may be, of their country. And if the 
 Indian people, as a body, hold that the Indian Government 
 should not dissociate itself entirely from the superintend- 
 ence of their religious establishments and endowments, it is
 
 CHAP. X.j THE KfiY-NOfE OP OtR POLICY. 283 
 
 no consolation whatever to them that Parliament should 
 also be prepared to forbid all State provision for Christian 
 Liturgies. 
 
 If, as may be suspected, we have occasionally missed, in the 
 course of those transactions, the right meaning and scope of 
 that perfect neutrality in religious matters which is very 
 properly announced as the keynote of our policy, probably the 
 cause may be that we have been influenced by the reminiscences 
 of controversies that have been going on over a very different 
 political situation at home. In England an assurance of neu- 
 trality would probably mean that the Government had deter- 
 mined to have nothing whatever to do with the affairs, temporal 
 or spiritual, of any sect or creed ; in India the declaration is 
 generally taken to convey a welcome guarantee that the Queen 
 will not favour one religion more than another ; but it is not so 
 welcome if it is found to mean the complete renunciation by 
 their governors of all direct authority or headship over the 
 management of the temporal interests of their religions. Such 
 a course of action is foreign to all historic experience of the 
 relations between secular and ecclesiastic authorities through- 
 out Asia. It may be the only course now open to the English 
 in India ; nevertheless another might be learned from observing 
 the organisation of all great Asiatic governments, and from the 
 example of every ruler over divers tribes or nationalities 
 namely, that in certain conditions of society the immediate 
 authority and close supervision of a monarch over the powerful 
 religious interests with which he has to reckon at every step, 
 is a matter of political expediency, not an affair of doctrine or 
 opinion, but a recognised duty of the State. To relinquish 
 this position is to let go at least one real political advantage 
 which accrues to us from our attitude of perfect neutrality, that 
 of enabling us to superintend and guarantee the religious 
 administration of all sects with entire impartiality, and with 
 the confidence of our subjects. There is no reason whatever 
 to regret the abolition of the old regime under which public 
 officers were literally agents and managers for religious insti- 
 tutions ; that system was rightly condemned. But to cut away 
 all the historic ties between Church and State, to free Asiatic
 
 286 OUR RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA. [CnAP. X. 
 
 religions from every kind of direct subordination to the 
 executive power, would be to push the principle further in 
 India, where it is not understood and has no advocates, than 
 has as yet been attempted even in any country of Europe, 
 where it is supported by a large and increasing party.
 
 CHAPTEE XL 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN INDIA. 
 (Fortnightly Review, 1872.) 
 
 The striking appearance presented by the religious aspect of India as a survival 
 of the world of prse-Christian ages Geographical and historic reasons why 
 India has been thus preserved, whereas all Asia west of India has been 
 levelled by Islam, which only partially established itself in India Incoher- 
 ence and confusion of religions in India, to be accounted for mainly by its 
 political history India has never been organized, as a whole, into one great 
 State ; and it has been dilapidated by incessant wars The multitude of gods 
 and rites recalls the description of polytheism in the Roman empire, given by 
 Eusebius Analogy between the effect on ancient polytheism of the establish- 
 ment of the Roman peace, and the possible influence upon Hinduism of the 
 English government in India Speculation as to the future of Hinduism under 
 civilized influences and an ordinary government Probable disappearance or 
 complete transformation of existing ideas and worships The English have 
 only to superintend gradual moral and intellectual progress ; their empire the 
 most efficient instrument of civilization among dissociated communities. 
 
 No one examines attentively the extraordinary religious con- 
 fusion that still prevails throughout the great continent of India 
 without marking it as one very peculiar characteristic of her 
 social condition. For whereas primitive paganism, with all its 
 incoherency, deficient alike in organic structure and in domi- 
 nant ideas, has been utterly extinguished many centuries ago 
 in Europe and throughout Western Asia, yet, wherever and 
 whenever we cross the border or land on the shore of India, 
 we may find going on before our eyes the things of which we 
 read in ancient books. "We seem to step suddenly out of the 
 modern world of formal definite creeds, back into the disorderly 
 supernaturalism of prse-Christian ages. After making allow- 
 ance for every difference of manners, creed, and climate, and 
 for innumerable distinctions of detail, we may still fancy that 
 in looking over India we catch a reflection of classic poly- 
 theism. There we seem to have the nearest surviving repre- 
 sentative of a half- civilised society's religious state, as it existed
 
 288 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN INDIA. [CHAP. XI. 
 
 before Christianity and Mahomedanisin organized and cen- 
 tralised the beliefs of all nations, from Ireland to the Indus. 
 To those, indeed, who collect their notions of Indian religion 
 out of the traditional scriptures and sacerdotal ordinances, the 
 elaborate apparatus of Brahmauic mythology and ceremonial 
 may appear to furnish forth a comprehensive system. But 
 closer observation discovers a whole jumble of contradictory 
 ideas and practices, a medley of popular superstitions under- 
 lying the authoritative ritual, and that total indifference to 
 plan or fundamental unity which is the surest symptom of 
 religion in a rudimentary and unorganised condition. 
 
 The seclusion of India within difficult geographical frontiers 
 will, of course, explain much of her religious eccentricities. 
 And the contrast which she now presents, when compared with 
 Western Asia, may be directly accounted for by the course of 
 her known history. Political vicissitudes seem to have power- 
 fully affected religious development, while the half-conquest of 
 India by the Mahomedans was only able to check and disturb 
 consolidation. The mountains and desert tracts which guard 
 her north-western and western borders acted as breakwaters 
 against the first flood-tides of Musalman invasion ; those great 
 waves of enthusiasm were nearly spent before they reached 
 this far Eastern region ; they could not be beaten back or kept 
 out, but their force was stopped and scattered. Subsequent 
 inroads of fierce Central Asian hordes gradually beat down all 
 sustained opposition, and the political supremacy of Islam was 
 established. But the Mahomedans gained their footing gradu- 
 ally, and held it precariously : they never completed the terri- 
 torial conquest of India, and on the whole they made little 
 way against the customs and creeds of Hinduism. In western 
 countries their overpowering political preponderance had 
 pressed down flat and crushed out the old religions of subject 
 races ; the ancient and flourishing Zoroastrian worship, for 
 example, was utterly extinguished in Persia. In India 
 so little real progress toward extirpating polytheism had 
 been made, that seven hundred and fifty years after Mahmud 
 of Ghazni destroyed the famous idol at Somnath, Mahomedans 
 were still fighting with idolaters oa the plains of Northern
 
 CHAP. XI.] HINDUISM DISORGANIZED. 289 
 
 India. An eye-witness to the great battle of Paniput, in 1761, 
 describes how the Musalman cavalry charged with the cry of 
 Yd Allah, while the Marathas came on with their shouts of 
 Hur, Hur, Mahadeo. The two armies appealed to different 
 gods : the divinities of India were still separated into hostile 
 camps, as in the days of the Trojan war. In India this might 
 be still an every-day incident ; but such war-cries have not been 
 heard for many centuries in any of the battles that have been 
 fought on the fields of Europe or Western Asia ; though men 
 have contended fiercely enough to ascertain by ordeal of 
 battle which revelation of the One God is true, who was his 
 messenger, and what may be the right interpretation of the 
 message. 
 
 But though India was never thoroughly subdued by the sword 
 of Islam, and though the country only became partially Ma- 
 homedan, yet the whole framework of her institutions was shaken 
 and dislocated by incessant resistance. The Mahomedans dis- 
 organized Hinduism without substituting any strong religious 
 edifice of their own, as they managed to do elsewhere. The 
 military adventurers, who founded dynasties in Northern India 
 and carved out kingdoms in the Dekhan, cared little for things 
 spiritual ; most of them had, indeed, no time for proselytisrn, 
 being continually engaged in conquest or in civil war. 
 They were usually rough Tartars or Moghals ; themselves ill 
 grounded in the faith of Mahomed, and untouched by the true 
 Semitic enthusiasm which inspired the first Arab standard- 
 bearers of Islam. The empire which they set up was purely 
 military, and it was kept in that state by the half-success of 
 their conquests and the comparative failure of their spiritual 
 invasion. They were strong enough to prevent anything like 
 religious amalgamation among the Hindus, and to check the 
 gathering of tribes into nations ; but so far were they from 
 converting India, that among the Mahomedans themselves 
 their own faith never acquired an entire and exclusive mono- 
 poly of the high offices of administration. They only managed 
 to maintain for several centuries an absolute government ad- 
 ministered by a few great officers, and surrounded by a hierarchy 
 of captains of thousands and ten thousands, who held assign-
 
 290 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN INDIA. [CHAP. XI 
 
 ments of land on service tenure at will of their sovereign. The 
 throne itself can hardly he said to have been hereditary, so often 
 and so successfully was the inheritance disputed, and the dynasty 
 changed. Such an empire as this, upheld at home and abroad 
 entirely by violence and the fortune of war, must always have 
 been independent of spiritual influence, because the whole 
 system detained religious growth and arrested religious assimi- 
 lation. And, as a matter of fact, among Indian Mahomedans 
 their religion was never a power in the State. That great 
 ecclesiastic corporation of the Ulema, which formed itself in 
 the constitution of the Turkish empire, has maintained the 
 theocratic idea of Islam by framing laws, interpreting tradi- 
 tion, regulating the services and ritual of the faith, administer- 
 ing the endowments, and otherwise asserting itself palpably 
 as a recognised authority, not beneath, but side by side with 
 the temporal ruler. At one period, indeed, the Ulema over- 
 awed the throne, and their decrees could pull down or set up 
 its occupant : their authority has always increased whenever 
 the military activity of the sultans declined ; and they are still 
 very influential. Their chief, the Sheikh ul Islam, sits in the 
 privy council, and expounds a law which binds sovereign as 
 well as subjects. But in India the English, on succeeding 
 to the paramount supremacy, found no counterpart of the 
 Ulema, and hardly a trace of any such balance of powers ; nor 
 does the purely religious element of Mahomedan supremacy 
 seem, even at its zenith, ever to have worked out there any 
 separate constitution or enduring influence. Their Establish- 
 ment, as we might call it, was never organised or even 
 regularly endowed by the orthodox tithe ; for, although large 
 grants were made to devotion and charity, yet at no time do 
 we hear of a great college or connected body preserving and 
 expounding the sacred law. 
 
 If, however, the Musalmans were never able to settle and 
 develop their own spiritual institutions in India as they did in 
 countries completely subdued by them, they were at least quite 
 strong enough to counteract and depress the authority of the 
 indigenous priesthoods. Whatever may at one time have been 
 the sacerdotal power of the Bralimans, it is certain that the
 
 CHAP. XI.] MAHOMEDAX TOLEKATIOX. 291 
 
 long predominance and proselytizing success of Mahomedans 
 must have seriously lowered the general level of their popular 
 reputation and sacred influence. Any hope of their eventually 
 building Hinduism up into some higher stage of belief, must 
 have been ruined and dispersed by foreign conquest ; so 
 that the general effect of the long ruinous wars and political 
 troubles which fill the annals of India during the Mahomedan 
 period was to keep all religion in a dispersed and dilapidated 
 state. The whole tradition of the empire was, for Maho- 
 medan despotism, remarkably tinged with religious indifference. 
 Akbar, the greatest of Indian emperors, was rationalist and 
 tolerant to a degree which distinguishes very plainly the general 
 tone of Mahomedanism in India from that which prevailed 
 about the same time elsewhere. Aurungzeb was a successful 
 Richard III. His hypocrisy served him among the Mahorne- 
 dans in his intrigues for the throne, but his pious practices 
 stirred up more fanaticism against him than on his side. 
 When he died, in 1710, there followed the great debacle and 
 dissolution of an empire that rested upon force, with no bond 
 of union more elastic and less liable to snap suddenly, 
 if we except the weak and incomplete lien of Mahomedan 
 faith. The character and consequences of the events which 
 preceded British supremacy in India have, perhaps, been 
 seldom adequately estimated. There intervened a period 
 of political anarchy greater and more widespread than the 
 Indian continent had experienced for centuries. It was a 
 mere tearing and rending of the prostrate carcass, a free fight 
 with little definite aim or purpose beyond plunder or annexa- 
 tion of land revenue. The first Maratha captains were 
 energetic and unscrupulous guerrilla leaders. They scarcely 
 cared more for speculative notions of caste or creed than the 
 wild Turcomans who followed the standard of Nadir Shah or 
 of Ahmed Shah the Affghan, or than the adventurers of 
 various creeds and nationalities who were disputing the spoils 
 of empire in Bengal or in the Dekhan. It is remarkable that 
 in the warlike Maratha federation, which subsisted by violent 
 inroads and plundering, the paramount power had, by the 
 eighteenth century, fallen into the hands of a Brahman family. 
 
 IT 2
 
 292 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN INDIA. [CHAP. XI. 
 
 Not only was the Brahman Peshwa a military chief who com- 
 manded troops in person, but his Maratha army was mainly 
 officered by Brahmans ; and as the western Brahmans are by 
 custom and profession remarkable rather for intellectual and 
 literary capacity than for physical energy or hardihood, this 
 conversion of them into soldiers shows how far the military 
 spirit of the times had prevailed over sacerdotal or Levitic 
 tradition. 
 
 Thus at the end of the last century India was further than 
 ever from an} r thing like a universal or uniform religion ; and 
 as there were no nations, so was there not in any part or 
 province of the whole continent what we in Europe call a 
 distinct national faith. It may be assumed that the formation 
 of nationalities aids powerfully the concentration of religious 
 beliefs, and that when a nation has once got shaped into 
 political existence, it soon fits itself with a creed of its own, 
 the stronger sect gradually absorbing all weaker species. There 
 were signs in India that nations might have been eventually 
 generated out of the decomposition of the Moghal empire, 
 for some of the large tribes were drawing together under one 
 head, and fixing themselves territorially and politically ; but 
 just at this point the English intervention turned the whole 
 course of Indian history. 
 
 In this manner the political vicissitudes which have be- 
 queathed to us India may be admitted to explain why a 
 country which two thousand years ago had already reared 
 and propagated over Eastern Asia two such vast popular 
 religions as Brahmanisin and Buddhism, should still be 
 struggling with religious anarchy, and should have failed so 
 completely in the uniting and building up some such religious 
 institutions as have been completed, not only in all other great 
 Aryan countries, but throughout Western Asia ? Here is India 
 still full of the mythologies, mysteries, and metaphysical 
 theosophies of the ancient world, not lying one below the 
 other, as in the religious stratification in which all these 
 fossils may still be discovered even in Europe, but mixed and 
 crowded together without order or coherence. The Chris- 
 tianity which we profess at this day in England is the outcome
 
 CHAP. XL] COXFUSIOX OF EELIGIOXS. 293 
 
 of an immensely long upward growth ; the fruit of a tree 
 whose roots are in primitive ages; yet the distance which 
 separates Protestant England from the scenes and manners of 
 the Pentateuch is no unfair measure of the breadth which lies 
 between Englishmen and Hindus along the line of religious 
 evolution. Take, for instance, the story of Micah, in the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of the Book of Judges ; 
 how he had a house of gods, and made silver images, and 
 consecrated one of his sons to be his priest ; how he after- 
 wards hired a wandering Levite to be his house-priest, and 
 how one day six hundred Danites, appointed with weapons of 
 war, earned off the images and the Levite together. Listening 
 while this narrative is read before a Sunday congregation, one 
 is amazed and absorbed by looking back over the extraordinary 
 chain of events and filiation of ideas which have brought the 
 annals of an ancient Syrian tribe to be read periodically in the 
 villages of Great Britain. The story thus presented could 
 only have come down to us from a far-off country and time ; 
 just as a broad river in a hot rainless plain must have risen in 
 mountains long distant. And as a man enjoys the sight of the 
 snow-fed waters of the Indus flowing full in midsummer 
 between scorching sand-banks two thousand miles from its 
 source in Thibet, so is he filled with the sense of vast intervals 
 of space and time, of picturesque contrast between Now and 
 Then, and of the long winding course of history which lies 
 between the idol chapel of Micah in Mount Ephraim and the 
 reading of an afternoon lesson in an English Protestant church. 
 Now what strikes one in India is that this stream of religious 
 development, strong and perennial as it is, never has cut for 
 itself a clear channel in which it could gather volume and flow 
 on ; it has only spread abroad like a vast swamp under the 
 Himalayas, a range which marks one of the main religious 
 watersheds of the world. To Europeans the episode of Micah 
 is apt to be puzzling ; the learned commentator in Dr. Smith's 
 Dictionary of the Bible is quite unable to reconcile the mani- 
 fest inconsistencies of Micah's practice with the authorised 
 ritual, or to explain the conduct of the Danites. " It is," 
 he remarks, " startling to our Western minds, accustomed to
 
 294 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IX INDIA. [CHAP. XL 
 
 associate the blessings of order with religion, to observe how 
 religious were these lawless freebooters." We need not stop 
 here to discuss how far the Western mind is justified histori- 
 cally in the habitual association of order with religion : to the 
 writer a religion is evidently a definite code of morals, resting 
 upon an established system of theology ; and he forgets that 
 perils and adventures are apt to stimulate devotion. But while 
 to an European scholar this picture of Syrian life is dim with 
 the mists of three thousand years, to anyone who has lived in a 
 lawless part of India the picture would be striking by its famili- 
 arity, and the supposed inconsistencies would be good proof of 
 its authenticity. The very details of the narrative would adjust 
 themselves to an Indian scene with little essential alteration, 
 and would cause no surprise in Rajputana, though such an 
 incident is now hardly intelligible to students in the Western 
 world. Not since the days of Micah has India made any clear 
 step in the general advance of religious ideas or discipline, so 
 as to place its whole population solidly on a higher spiritual 
 level. During so many centuries of spiritual wandering in the 
 wilderness the Hindus have constructed no systematic fabric, 
 no catholic organisation of religion, no tabernacle whither all 
 their tribes go up ; whereas all other races of equal and even 
 lower civilisation, many of inferior intellect, have built for 
 themselves some such edifice. The face of the land is covered 
 with innumerable temples, shrines, and sanctuaries, with 
 places of prayer and altars of sacrifice. But as out of the 
 ruins of early Indian sanctuaries no clear procession of styles 
 can be traced, the earlier being often the more perfect, so we 
 can follow no plain upward series of spiritual conceptions ; 
 and the creeds and ceremonies in dairy use are a mosaic of old 
 and new superstitions. They resemble some of their temples, 
 which we can now see built over and out of the debris of 
 earlier edifices ; stones carved with the emblems of one god 
 fitted into the chapel of another, phallic symbols in a niche 
 which once contained Buddha, and outside a Mahomedan 
 cupola surmounting the stone lintel and pillars of ancient 
 Hindu architecture. It is by no means to be supposed that in 
 India no tendencies have been displayed, or no efforts made,
 
 CHAP. XL] WANT OF ORGANIZATION. 295 
 
 to rise into a higher life or a purer air ; on the contrary, the 
 whole religious history of India is full of such attempts. In a 
 preceding chapter the entire landscape of Hinduism has been 
 described as alive with incessant movement and change, with 
 the constant struggle for existence of a multitude of religious 
 species, among which are many rudimentary survivals of high 
 conceptions deformed and degenerate. Out of the host of 
 saints and devotees whom Indian superstition generates, there 
 has often arisen some spiritually-minded man who reveals a 
 new light, who cries aloud for a great moral change, who 
 creates and propels a deep movement in the hearts of people. 
 Such teachers have left their mark on Indian society, and their 
 sects endure, but their true impulse gradually subsides ; the 
 lamp is passed from hand to hand, but its light grows fainter 
 and fainter in the darkness of ignorant terror ; it remains as a 
 mystic spark to a few initiated, and as a mere portent to the 
 vulgar who live in irrational fear of malignant deities. Since 
 the collapse of Buddhism in India no religious system has 
 acquired such a dynamic purchase or leverage upon the minds 
 of men as to lift a great body of the Hindus clean out of the 
 lower depths of superstition up on to the firm ground of an 
 organised and progressive faith. 
 
 This, then, is in many ways the most noteworthy pheno- 
 menon to one who surveys India, its religious condition. And 
 I have ventured to suggest that this dilapidated and disor- 
 ganised state of popular Hinduism may be ascribed, for its 
 more immediate cause, to the political catastrophes of the 
 people, to the fierce, disorderly, and precarious existence 
 which, as societies, they have led for so many centuries ; so 
 that the military spirit long maintained untempered predomi- 
 nance. More especially did the continual scrambling wars of the 
 eighteenth century scatter piecemeal the elements of religious 
 unification, and thereby arrest religious development. When, 
 therefore, the English became lords of India, they found no 
 well-disciplined fanatic monotheism, as was found in Egypt or 
 Algeria, to be dealt with, no great influential priesthood to be 
 managed ; Mahomedanisni had already lost its political ascend- 
 ancy ; while Hinduism was, if one or two powerful sects and tribal
 
 296 THE EELIGIOUS SITUATION IN INDIA. [CHAP. XL 
 
 groups be excepted, in a state of much confusion and dis- 
 union. 
 
 If it is reasonable to suppose that this religious prostration 
 of India is nearly connected with its political misfortunes 
 through many generations, then one can hardly avoid specu- 
 lating on the consequences to be anticipated from its rapid 
 restoration to substantial order and peace under the steady 
 irresistible administration of the British. 
 
 It has been already observed that this strange multitude of 
 gods and variety of rites among the Hindus may be imagined 
 to represent the panorama of classic paganism. Eusebius of 
 Csesarea, in his book on the Theophaneia, gives a descrip- 
 tion of the lawless supematuralisin of the civilised world before 
 the triumph of Christianity, which might almost apply word 
 for word to India at the present day. He recites how the 
 heathen made gods of the fruits of the earth, of their own 
 base passions, and of animals; also how they published of 
 certain men that "after undergoing a common mortality they 
 became gods and demigods ; imagining that the divine essence 
 moved about the sides of graves and among the monuments of 
 the dead;" how they made images of man and beast, and 
 sacrificed to invisible demons ; how their rites were shameful 
 and their offerings bloody. He goes on to denounce the 
 philosophers, who "by mere discovery of persuasive words, 
 making no experiment even after the truth," pretended to 
 discover the origin of all things, and " determined Best to 
 be the chief good ; " while others said that the sensible word 
 was God, and others again denied the imposition of any plastic 
 hand upon matter. There is so much in this description that 
 applies to India at the present time that any one who could 
 take a general survey of the country might be struck by the 
 resemblance. He might almost imagine himself (to use a 
 fanciful illustration) removed to one of those distant stars 
 of which the light only reaches our earth in sixteen hundred 
 or eighteen hundred years, so that a reflection of what passes 
 on earth must traverse as many centuries before it can strike 
 the retina of a gazer from the star ; and where, consequently, 
 the inhabitants, if they have vision powerful enough to discern
 
 CHAP. IX.] ANCIENT POLYTHEISM. 297 
 
 what is going on here below, may see at this moment the 
 whole Roman Empire spread out before them ; with all the num- 
 berless temples and high places of classic heathendom. Now, 
 says Eusebius, the wonder of the matter is, that during the pros- 
 perity of this vile polytheism "there prevailed wars, conflicts, 
 commotions, and the reducing of cities ; but with the desola- 
 tion and suppression of paganism came on entire peace with 
 every good thing without drawback." Of course the main 
 conclusion drawn out by the Bishop of Cffisarea is that the 
 world was pacified by Christianity, nor is anyone likely to 
 gainsay the immense political impression which must have 
 been made by the greatest religious and moral reformation in 
 all history. But he also points out emphatically the way 
 in which the Roman conquests had driven a crushing and 
 levelling roller over all the ancient barriers that cut up 
 the old world by isolating and imprisoning societies, had 
 knocked down these partition walls, and let in air and 
 light. He sees very clearly that a profound peace did of 
 itself operate upon polytheism to its discredit, decay, and ruin. 
 Because, he says, " human life had undergone a change to a 
 state henceforth of peace and rest ; the divine revelation was 
 shown forth at the time which was suitable. Nor were these 
 multitudes of Rulers, princes, Tyrants, and Governors of the 
 people . . . the one Empire of the Romans had extended 
 itself over all; and the peaceless uncompromising enmity 
 which had so long been the portion of nations came to an end. 
 And as the knowledge of one God was, by the teaching of our 
 Saviour, delivered to all men ; so also one king was established 
 over the whole Roman Empire, and a profound peace pre- 
 vailed. . . . Two singular advantages also sprung up 
 among mankind, the Instruction that was in righteousness and 
 the Empire of the Romans." Anyone could send merchan- 
 dise, or go himself, whithersoever he pleased the west would 
 come to the east, and the east to the west, without danger. 
 In short, so great and manifest were the advantages of the 
 Roman rule to the spread of one religion, that it was clearly 
 fore-ordained for the dissemination of the Gospel. " Who will 
 not confess this, when he has considered that it would not have
 
 293 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN INDIA. [CHA?. XL 
 
 been easy to send forth disciples, when all the nations were 
 divided one against another? . . . But God, who is over 
 all, had restrained the wrath of the worshippers of demons in 
 the cities, by the fear of the great Empire." 
 
 The quotation might have been given at much greater 
 length ; for Eusebius is filled with the idea that the Roman 
 Empire had been appointed as a great war engine to beat down 
 and demolish the feuds and jarring antagonisms of the pagan 
 world, to put away barbarous misrule, and the tyranny of 
 " Satraps in every city." The rapid fading away and collapse 
 of these immemorial superstitions before the steady mainten- 
 ance of peace and law over an immense territory is one of the 
 most wonderful phenomena of the world's history, however 
 we may seek to account for it. Those superstitions had been 
 engendered and fostered by ignorance and isolation ; they were 
 the shadows and phantasmagoria of human passions, and of 
 inexplicable calamities from the earliest times the memory of 
 man ran not to the contrary thereof. In a few centuries the 
 whole fabric and apparatus of polytheism had broken up and 
 melted off the surface of the civilised nations, whose pacifi- 
 cation and orderly government were then seen to have been 
 the necessary forerunners and pioneers of a wide spiritual 
 reformation. 
 
 If we may draw a broad analogy between the social and 
 political changes worked upon the Western world by the 
 Roman conquests, and that which is being worked upon the 
 great continent of India by English dominion, then it may not 
 be rash to prolong the parallel, and to speculate on the pro- 
 bability of some consequences following in the latter case not 
 unlike those which ensued in the former. We are changing 
 the whole atmosphere in which fantastic superstitions grow 
 and flourish. We may expect that these old forms of super- 
 naturalism will suddenly thaw and subside without any 
 outward stroke upon them, and without long premonitory 
 symptoms of internal dissolution ; like icebergs that have at 
 last floated into a warmer sea, which topple over at the invi- 
 sible melting of their submarine base. At this moment Hin- 
 duism still overshadows the land ; the intricate jungle of creeds
 
 CHAP, xi.] INDIA'S RELIGIOUS FUTUKE. 299 
 
 and worships appears thick and strong as ever ; yet one may 
 conjecture that its roots are being effectually cut away. Un- 
 certainty and insecurity prolonged what ignorance and stagna- 
 tion had produced; but the old order has now changed, 
 giving place to new. The last stand made against the new 
 system of peace and law by the warlike and unruly elements of 
 the population was from 1846 to 1858. Never perhaps in all 
 the history of India has more decisive fighting been com- 
 pressed into twelve years; the English scattered two formid- 
 able disciplined armies, the Sikh army and their own sepoys, 
 and dissolved two incipient kingdoms that might have hardened 
 into nationalities : they prevailed over the momentary fanaticism 
 of the Hindu and the enthusiasm of the Mahomedan ; they 
 employed these two forces to each counteract and repress the 
 other; they disarmed India, and closed for the present its military 
 era. We have now established reasonable personal security 
 and free communications ; we are giving to the Indians leisure 
 and education, the scientific method and the critical spirit ; we 
 are opening to them the flood-gates behind which Western 
 knowledge is piled in far greater volume than the stream of 
 Grecian philosophy which the Romans distributed over their 
 empire, when they made the source accessible, and its outflow 
 easy. It is not easy to conceive any more interesting subject 
 for historical speculation than the probable effect upon India, and 
 consequently upon the civilisation of all Asia, of the English 
 dominion ; for though it would be most presumptuous to attempt 
 any kind of prediction as to the nature or bent of India's religious 
 future, yet we may look forward to a wide and rapid transfor- 
 mation in two or three generations, if England's rule only be 
 as durable as it has every appearance of being. It seems possible 
 that the old gods of Hinduism will die in these new elements 
 of intellectual light and air as quickly as a net-full of fish lifted 
 up out of the water ; that the alteration in the religious needs 
 of such an intellectual people as the Hindus, which will have 
 been caused by a change in their circumstances, will make it 
 impossible for them to find in their new world a place for their 
 ancient deities. Their primitive forms will fade and disappear 
 silently, as witchcraft vanished from Europe, and as all such
 
 300 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IX IXDIA. [CHAP. XI. 
 
 delusions become gradually extinguished. In the movement 
 itself there is nothing new, but in India it promises to go on 
 with speed and intensity unprecedented; for she has been 
 taken in tow by Europe, where we are now going forward 
 with steam at high pressure ; and herein seems to lie the pecu- 
 liar interest, perhaps the danger, of the Indian situation. At 
 certain epochs the progressive nations of the world find it 
 necessary to readjust the intellectual equilibrium, that is to 
 say, to establish afresh a certain harmony between what they 
 believe and what they know. One of the earliest symptoms 
 that knowledge and belief are falling out of balance is per- 
 ceptible in what has been called the malaise religieux, which 
 was seen in the Roman Empire before Christianity cured 
 it, and which one may fancy to be visible in India already. It 
 may possibly be that very "spirit of unrest " which Dr. W. W. 
 Hunter has detected among Indian Mahornedans ; as it is pro- 
 bably at the bottom of the Mahomedan revival, which Mr. W. 
 G. Palgrave* believes to be takiug place throughout all Islam. 
 It seems certainly indicated by numerous sectarian advances 
 among the Hindus towards a more spiritual kind of creed ; 
 toward mystical interpretations, at least, of substantial poly- 
 theism, and toward such an abstract dogma as that upon whicli 
 is founded the profession of the Braluno Somdj. In the North 
 it is fermenting among various sects ; and in the South it ap- 
 pears in the demand recently made to Government by educated 
 Hindus for the reform of their religious endowments, a demand 
 that will carry us and them far if we attempt to comply with it ; 
 for any serious attempt to purify the abuses of polytheism and 
 to establish the external worship upon a decent and rational 
 system, can hardty fail to let in views and principles that may 
 disintegrate the very foundations of the whole edifice. 
 
 Thus there may be grounds for anticipating that a solid uni- 
 versal peace and the impetus given by Europe must together 
 cause such rapid intellectual expansion that India will now be 
 carried swiftly through phases which have occupied long stages 
 in the lifetime of all other nations. The Hindu now makes in 
 
 * F reiser's Magazine, Feb. 1872.
 
 CHAP. XI.] INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON INDIA. 301 
 
 two days a journey that occupied a month ten years ago, 
 because the English have laid down their railways before the 
 Indians had invented the paved road ; and his mental develop- 
 ment may advance by similar overleaping of intermediate im- 
 provements. And -whereas hitherto new religious ideas have 
 constantly sprung up in India, and have as constantly withered 
 or been dissipated for want of protection and undisturbed 
 culture, any such ideas that may hereafter arise will be 
 fostered and may spread uninterruptedly, if they have the 
 principle of persistent growth. Some great movement is likely 
 to come about in India, if only the peace lasts ; but what may 
 be the complexion of that movement, and whither its gravita- 
 tion, is a question which time only can answer. Orderly 
 Christian rule has given to Islam in India an opportunity for 
 becoming regenerate and for reuniting its strength, which it 
 owes entirely to us. We have restored its communications 
 by sea and by land; we have already felt some of the con- 
 sequences of pulling down the barriers which Kanjit Singh 
 and his Sikhs set up on our north-western frontier between 
 the Mahomedans of India and the rest of Western Asia. 
 Mahoinedanism may yet occupy a larger space in the history 
 of Indian rationalism ; but it must make haste, or the country 
 may drift beyond it. Some may think that Christianity will a 
 second time in the world's history step into the vacancy created 
 by a great territorial empire, and occupy the tracts laid open 
 by the upheaval of a whole continent to a new intellectual and 
 moral level. But the state of thought in Western Europe 
 hardly encourages conjecture that India will receive from that 
 quarter any such decisive impulse as that which overturned the 
 decaying paganism of Greece and Rome just at the time when 
 the Pax Eomana had at last brought local beliefs into jarring 
 collision one -with another, and into contact with the profound 
 spiritualism of Asia. The influerice of Europe on India is 
 essentially industrial and scientific ; England's business in 
 particular is to construct there some firm political system under 
 which all other social relations may be reared and directed ; 
 but here comes in the difficulty of founding and keeping steady 
 any such edifice without the cement of some binding idea. It
 
 302 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN INDIA. [CHAP. XI. 
 
 is in the religious life that Asiatic communities still find the 
 reason of their existence, and the repose of it. When the 
 Indian has gained his intellectual freedom, there remains to be 
 seen what he will do with it ; and the solution of this problem 
 is of incalculable importance to our successful management of 
 the empire. The general tendencies of modern thought are 
 toward doubt and negation ; the sum total of what we call 
 civilisation is to such a society as that in India a dissolving 
 force : it is the pouring of new wines into old skins ; the 
 cutting away of anchors instead of hauling them up, so that in 
 the next emergency there are none to throw out. Conquest 
 and civilisation together must sweep away the old convictions 
 and prejudices ; and unless some great enthusiasm rushes in tc 
 fill the vacancy thus created, we may find ourselves called to 
 preside over some sort of spiritual interregnum. 
 
 Such transitional periods are apt to be troublesome to 
 governments. In India the English difficulty is that, whatever 
 the religious movement may be, we cannot expect to take part 
 in or guide it, because we are in many ways so far ahead of, or 
 at least too far removed from, the mass of the people whom we 
 have to manage, that our superiority begets want of sympathy, 
 and in our desire to lead them we lose patience and dis- 
 crimination. On the other hand there is already springing 
 up among the natives of India an advanced party, of those 
 who are easily inoculated with the Voltairean spirit, with 
 contempt for irrational beliefs, and for institutions that seem 
 absurd on the face of them. But all our European experi- 
 ments in social science have taught us the unwisdom of 
 demolishing old-world fabrics which no one is yet prepared 
 to replace by anything else. Caste, for instance, looks un- 
 necessary and burdensome, it is wildly abused by Europeans,* 
 to whom the Brahmanic rules of behaviour seem unmeaning 
 and unpractical ; but these things will tumble quite fast enough 
 
 * " Caste is the devil's yoke fair to Satan, but which betrays a 
 
 Hindu widowhood is Satan's master- curious tendency toward that very same 
 
 piece. . . . Juggunath was invented superstitious polytheism (the belief in 
 
 by devils." See "A Plea for Indian a multitude of evil spirits) which the 
 
 Missions," by Alexander Forbes, 1865 ; writer is denouncing. 
 a pamphlet which is not only un-
 
 CHAP. XI. j VAGUE NOTIONS OF PROGRESS. 303 
 
 without our knocking out their keystones by premature legisla- 
 tion. It is hardly our interest to bring them down with a 
 crash. "We have ourselves to overcome the rather superficial 
 contempt which an European naturally conceives for societies 
 and habits of thoughts different from those within the range of 
 his own ordinary experience ; and also to avoid instilling too 
 much of the destructive spirit into the mind of young India : re- 
 membering that for English and natives the paramount object is 
 now to preserve social continuity. M. Pierre Lafitte, in his Con- 
 siderations generates sur Vensenible de la Civilisation Chinoise, 
 quotes from a book* in which an English Protestant Missionary 
 describes China as undergoing a succession of moral earth- 
 quakes, and congratulates Europe on the total ruin of " fossil 
 prejudices," bigotry, and superstition, which these " terrible 
 convulsions " are causing. Storms and hurricanes, Mr. Mylne 
 had observed, purify the air. But M. Lafitte remarks that this 
 is to welcome a state of violent agitation ending in complete 
 anarchy ; and that to talk of convulsions as the conditions of 
 progress has a dangerous resemblance to revolutionary jargon, 
 though the writer may not mean it. Hurricanes clear the earth 
 as well as the air, and earthquakes are not veiy discriminating 
 in their operations. It is certain, at any rate, that moral 
 earthquakes and cyclones in the Indian climate will severely 
 test the stability of our rule, and we are by no means concerned 
 to encourage them. M. Lafitte, in the lecture just mentioned, 
 points out the vague notions of progress and civilisation upon 
 which people rely who desire to pull down a society which they do 
 not comprehend, or whose real aim is sometimes no more than 
 the exploitation of the East by the West. He protests, for 
 example, against the English raising a jubilee over the re- 
 marriage of Hindu t widows, and he thinks we had no business 
 whatever to make war on the old custom by legalising breaches 
 of it. It is possible that M. Lafitte himself may have been 
 verging on the error of judging the East by the West, and may 
 not have recollected that in India very many girls become 
 widows at an age when they would still be in an European 
 
 * La Vie re*elle en Chine, par le Reverend C. Mylne. 1858.
 
 304 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN INDIA. [CHAP. XI. 
 
 nursery. Here is good cause for interference, and there are 
 other cases in which the action of our own law courts, in 
 stereotyping and enforcing invariably customs that were natu- 
 rally very elastic and varying, tended to check the natural 
 modifications according to circumstances, the sloughing off of 
 decayed forms, so that special legislation became necessary. 
 Yet withal there is something to be said against our passing 
 any laws to abolish social rules which do not concern us 
 personally, and which do not openly violate morality ; and 
 there is everything to be said against being impatient with 
 people who, belonging to a different social formation, are re- 
 luctant to give up hastily the very principles on which their 
 society has been moulded. Such impatience is akin tothe in- 
 justice with which, as has been often remarked, we are too much 
 accustomed to treat the past, forgetting that written records 
 tell us very little indeed of what really went on, and can still less 
 explain how and why people felt and acted a few centuries ago. 
 This is, indeed, the reason why an opportunity of studying 
 closely the condition and progress of such a country as India 
 is most valuable, because we can there look round at things 
 which we can hardly realise by looking behind us on them. 
 We are turning back, as it were, along the broad path of 
 history, and by seeing with our own eyes the scenes we have 
 often tried to look at through old books blurred with ignorance 
 and prejudice, we get at more clear notions of and sympathy 
 with those bygone times, when men from whom we are de- 
 scended who were of like passions with ourselves, nor inferior 
 in intellect yet firmly held beliefs which their posterity rejects 
 with contempt, and conscientiously did deeds which we now 
 read of with horror and amazement. 
 
 All that the English need do is to keep the peace and clear 
 the way. Our vocation just now is to mount guard over India 
 during the transitional period which may be expected to follow, 
 much as we used to station a company of soldiers to keep 
 order at Jagannath's festival in the days of the East India 
 Company. Jagannath himself maj 7 be safely left exposed to 
 the rising tide of that intellectual advancement which the people 
 must certainly work out for themselves if they only keep peace
 
 CHAP. XI.] CONCLUDING REMARKS. 305 
 
 and have patience. No doubt this negative attitude, this 
 standing aloof, is an imperfect and not altogether well secured 
 position, for a political system founded mainly upon considera- 
 tions of material interests and well-being has been declared by 
 high philosophic authority to be unstable.* We have not yet 
 sailed out of the region of religious storms in India ; and 
 though spiritual enthusiasm may be gradually subsiding in 
 fervour, yet it may also tend to combine and organize 
 its forces, as polytheism melts down and concentrates. 
 Against such impulses, among men who will still die for a rule 
 of faith, as our forefathers did so often, material considera- 
 tions must occasionally avail little. But there is, at any 
 rate, one gospel which the English can preach and practise in 
 India, the gospel of high political moralitj*, which, because it 
 is a complete novelty and new light among Asiatic riders, 
 should for that reason be the characteristic note of our 
 administration ; and to maintain it we may risk much mis- 
 understanding of motive. We must even endure temporary 
 loss of that reputation for high-handed consistency, what- 
 ever it maj" be worth, which is to be maintained by uphold- 
 ing a blunder once committed, and by stooping to the un- 
 trained public opinion which would applaud it. We cannot 
 undertake in any way the spiritual direction of Hindus ; 
 but neither are we prepared to take lessons from them upon 
 questions of public morality. A certain line of conduct may 
 be congenial to the notions of native princes or people ; but 
 our governors and chief rulers go to India, not to be taught, 
 but to teach, the duties of rulership, and to instruct the 
 consciences of half-barbarous communities. 
 
 Finally, we may hope that all reflecting and far-sighted 
 natives of that class which we are rapidly training up in large 
 towns to political knowledge and social freedom will perceive 
 that England's prime function in India is at present this, to 
 superintend the tranquil elevation of the whole moral and intel- 
 lectual standard. Those who are interested in such a change 
 
 * " Une experience decisive a main- seulement surdesinterets, independnm- 
 tenant prouve 1'iustabilite necessaire de incut des affections et des convictions, 
 tout regime puremeut materiel, fonde COMTE, Cours de Philosophic. 
 
 x
 
 -306 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IX INDIA. [Ca\?. XI. 
 
 in the ethics of their country, in broadening the realms of the- 
 known and the true, must see how ruinously premature it is to- 
 quarrel with the English Government upon details of adminis- 
 tration, or even upon what are called constitutional questions.. 
 The peculiar crisis and conjuncture of Indian affairs at the end 
 of the last century brought out one supremely strong govern- 
 ment by the same pressure of circumstances which has struck 
 out the type of all empires. A modern empire means the 
 maintenance of order by the undisputed predominance of one- 
 all-powerful member of a federation ; and where representative- 
 assemblies, in the English sense of the term, are impossible, it 
 is the best machine for collecting public opinion over a wide 
 area among dissociated communities. It is the most efficient 
 instrument of comprehensive reforms in law and government, 
 and the most powerful engine whereby one confessedly superior 
 race can control and lead other races left without nationality 
 or a working social organization. It breaks up the antipathies, 
 narrowness, and exclusive antagonism which always check the 
 growth of earlier civilisations, and which have hitherto lain 
 like rusty fetters on India. If ever the imperial system was. 
 necessary and fitted to a time and country, it is to India as we- 
 now see it. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 30 LIST OF WORKS 
 
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