man in the movement after the guru, has seceded from the Samāj; and one of the sons of the guru, his brother-in-law, his sister-in-law, two graduates and some others have come out with him. The bulk of the members have, however, remained. The seceders have formed The Society for the Promotion of Higher Life. Their position is the old teaching without the guru. Meantime the guru has published the letters of confession 1 written to him by Dev Ratan in former years, and seeks to show from them what a bad man he is;-a proceeding which suggests many thoughts. What the outcome of all this will be no one can tell.

LITERATURE. OFFICIAL: Devaśāstra, by S. N. Agnihotri, Lahore, Jivan Press, Rs. 5. (The chief scripture of the Samāj; in Hindi.) Dev Dharm, Lahore, Deva Samaj Office, price 1 as. (An account of the teaching of the sect, in English, in fifty pages.) A Dialogue about the Dev Samaj, Lahore, The Jivan Press, 1912, I an. (A brief account of the Samāj and its work.) CRITICAL: Pandit Agnihotri and the Deva Samāj, by Dr. H. D. Griswold, Lahore, 1906. (A clear account of the Samaj.) A Lecture on Pandit S. N. Agnihotri and His Atheistic Propaganda, by Kashi Ram, Lahore, N. W. Indian Press, 1908.

II. TWO MINOR GURUS

Two young Hindus, belonging to our own day, the one a Telugu, the other a Tamil, have each sketched a system and gathered a few disciples. Both have been deeply influenced by Christ; yet, the main teaching of each is Hindu; and they both wish to be worshipped as gurus. They are of no importance as leaders, but their teaching may be worth notice as further evidence of the character of Indian thought to-day.

1. The Telugu guru 2 is not quite ready yet to appear in public to expound his system. His thought, as it at present exists in his mind, seems to be fundamentally Hindu, but with

1 P. 178, above.

'My informant is one of his disciples, whom I met in Madras.

a good deal of Christianity worked into it. He declares that his system is for all men, and that he selects what is good from all religions.

At present he seems to be a pantheist. The whole world is God, and we are part of God. God is not a Spirit. God is not Sat, Chit, Ananda, except in so far as the universe deserves these titles. God is non-moral. He has no will. He does not act. He does not listen to prayer, and does not receive sacrifice. God does not answer prayer: prayer automatically answers itself.

He condemns idolatry entirely.

He finds all metaphysics in the Rigveda. He acknowledges that Hindu mythology is absurd, and explains Brahmā as sthūla, i.e., the material world, Vishņu as antaḥkaraṇa, i.e. man's inner faculties, and Śiva as the first cause. He asserts that there is no mythology in the Rigveda. He is writing a Commentary on it. In his attitude to the Ṛik he stands very near Dayananda.

He bids his followers concentrate the mind on certain words or phrases from the Rigveda (e.g. the Gayatri, the most famous of Hindu prayers), because he holds they are instinct with meaning. They are to concentrate the mind on that, until only one thought remains. He believes in the power of Yoga methods, but says they are dangerous.

He calls Sankara and Buddha great philosophers. He has not much respect for Muḥammad. He acknowledges that the Gita is not an utterance of Krishna.

He says the world is eternal. He does not believe in the re-creation and destruction of the world. He believes in karma and transmigration; but he does not seek deliverance himself at all; nor does he admire men who seek deliverance. He desires rebirth, in order to work for the good of humanity. This is curiously like the attitude ascribed to the Bodhisattvas in Mahāyāna Buddhism.

Moral law is made by man. What is best for society is moral. In moral action he would advise us to copy Jesus. He holds that the life of Jesus was entirely given up to doing good; and he says that He died for men. He also declares that Jesus is now a living angel, who can answer the prayers of Christians.

He urges his followers above all things else to philanthropic action. He also urges them to prayer and moral action. He insists on moral asceticism.

He is a Brahman; yet he eats with Christians in secret. He is in favour of mixed marriages, even between people of different races. He is anxious to make Brahmans less conservative; but, as he has not yet appeared publicly as a teacher, he conceals his anti-caste tendencies. He is opposed to polygamy, but is not in favour of widow-remarriage, nor in favour of marrying girls after puberty. The age of the marriage of men ought to be raised. He is a married man with a family. He lays no stress on the monastic life, but makes working for humanity the prime thing.

Though he has not proclaimed himself a public teacher as yet, he has gathered a number of friends around him and formed a sort of society. Weekly or fortnightly a meeting is held. He presides; some one reads a paper in Sanskrit, and he comments on it.

The disciples consider him worthy of divine honour. Each bows down individually to him.

2. The young Tamil has been rash enough to publish a little book to explain his position. It is simply a rhetorical exercise, containing no systematic thinking. The elements contained in it are drawn mainly from the Saiva Siddhanta and from Christianity, but Vaishnavism is not quite neglected. The Christian elements are distinctly subordinate to the Hindu, and the need of the guru is one of the most prominent points. He describes, in a mystical way, his own meeting with his guru,

whom he calls the Anointed, and to whom he attributes his conversion. His language throughout is modelled on the Bible; but in every case Christian truth is volatilized, so as to become equivalent to Hindu doctrine. Baptism, the Holy Ghost, Regeneration, the Kingdom of God, Eternal Life, and other such phrases are scattered about his pages everywhere; and many texts are quoted from the Gospels; but all are emptied of their real meaning.

CHAPTER IV

FULL DEFENCE OF THE OLD RELIGIONS

1870-1913

At the beginning of our third chapter we noted the rise in India about 1870 of a new spirit, which generated many religious movements, roughly divisible into two series, one marked by defence of the old, tempered by reform, the other eager to defend the old in almost every particular. We deal with this latter series in this chapter.

1. BEGINNINGS

The earliest stirrings of the new spirit appeared in and around Calcutta. In 1872 Raj Narayan Bose, one of the leaders of the Ādi Brāhma Samāj,1 delivered a lecture on The Superiority of Hinduism over all other Forms of Faith, which attracted a good deal of attention. The very next year, the idea of the equality of all religions, which has become so closely associated these last thirty years with the defence of Hinduism, found organized expression at Barahanagar, a few miles to the north of Calcutta. Mr. Sasipada Banurji, a Kulin Brahman, who had early turned to various forms of social service, and had become a member of the Brahma Samāj in 1865, established a religious association, which he called the Sadhāran Dharma Sabha, or General Religious Association, in which Hindus, Brähmas, Christians, Buddhists 2 HBS., I, 248.

1 P. 46, above.