4. A CASTLE IN THE AIR

A Muḥammadan, who shall be nameless, has written a little book which it is perhaps kindest to regard as the product of a diseased mind. It is worthy of mention merely as another indication of the present state of affairs in India. Its folly may also serve to relieve my sober narrative. It is an attempt to fuse Islam, Christianity and Hinduism. A pantheistic theology and transmigration are mingled with Muḥammadan ideas and diluted Christian ethics. The writer calls himself the Holy Ghost, the very God and such like. Like Sivanārāyaṇa, he proposes one language and one Scripture for all men, and also a universal religious conference. From that there might emerge a universal religious empire. Constantinople would be the centre of this empire; the English would be its guardians; and the Promoter himself would be the spiritual teacher and head of the whole !

We now turn to a group of movements which have one striking feature in common, namely, their use of the person of Christ. They are a peculiarly interesting and instructive group; for two of them are Muḥammadan in origin, and two are Hindu.

5. THE AḤMADĪYAS OF QADIAN

1. The first is a very successful and combative sect which arose in the Panjab in the eighties, largely as a reaction from the striking success of a Christian mission in the Central Panjab and from the fierce onslaught of Dayānanda and his Samāj.

In the village of Qadian1 in the Gurdaspur district of the Panjab, there was born, about 1838, in an ancient Muḥamma

1 I am indebted for most of my information about this sect to Dr. Griswold of Lahore. See his pamphlet, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and his article in The Moslem World for October, 1912.

dan family which had long been known for its attachment to the mysticism of Islam, viz., Sufiism, a boy called Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Very little is known about his youth or education; so that it is not possible to trace the growth of his mind, as may be done in the case of Dayananda. He began to teach about 1879, and died in 1908.

2. The whole movement rests on his personal claims. He declared himself to be the Christian Messiah, the Muhammadan Mahdi, and the final avatara or "Incarnation" of the Hindus. In one of his latest utterances he said,

My advent in this age is not meant for the reformation of the Mohammedans only, but Almighty God has willed to bring about through me a regeneration of three great nations, viz., Hindus, Mohammedans and Christians. As for the last two I am the promised Messiah, so for the first I have been sent as an Avatar.1

The last claim, to be Hindu avatara, was made for the first time towards the end of his life, and has had no results. He spent his life in trying to prove himself the Mahdi of Islam as well as the Christian Messiah, in seeking to shew that in him Christianity and Islam unite and culminate.

The conception is rather an unusual one for a Muslim; for, according to ordinary Muḥammadan belief, the Messiah and the Mahdi are distinct persons;2 and the common expectation is that the Maḥdi will be a man of blood, a character which it would be impossible to combine with Christ. The Mirza gets over this last difficulty by declaring that the traditions which speak of the Maḥdi as a man of blood are all forgeries, that the Guided One (i.e. the Maḥdi) is to be a man of peace. Thus, the controlling idea of his conception of himself as a prophet is the character and work of Christ. It

1 Review of Religions, November, 1904, p. 410.

2 Yet some groups assert that Jesus is the only Maḥdi that will ever

come.

seems almost as if he had first come to believe himself to be the Messiah, and had then added the idea that he was the Maḥdi as a sort of inference from his position in Islam. In any case, nearly the whole of his apologetic is built up with the object of proving himself the Messiah. With that, then, we begin.

He does not profess to be Jesus Christ returned in propria persona. He claims to be the fufilment of the prophecy of the Second Coming, on the ground that he has come in the spirit and power of Jesus. In order to make this claim seem reasonable, he uses two series of arguments.

A. He first sets about proving that Christ did not die on the Cross, rise from the dead, and ascend to Heaven.1 He acknowledges that, if Jesus really died, rose, and went to heaven, then Christianity must be true, and he himself must be an impostor:

If Christ was in reality exalted in bodily form alive to heaven, then there is no need of further controversy, and my claim to be the promised Messiah is in vain. The reason is that my claim is based upon the natural death (wafat) of the Son of Mary.2

He avers that, while Jesus was truly crucified, He was taken down from the cross seemingly dead, but really in a swoon, recovered from His wounds, came to India, lived for many years and finally died in Cashmere like any ordinary mortal. The materials he uses to establish these propositions are as follows:

a. He revives the old swoon theory of the death of Jesus, citing as confirmation the facts, that He was on the cross for only a few hours and that His legs were not broken. He also uses the phrase, "Why seek ye the living amongst the dead?"

1 He asserts that the Gospels were deliberately corrupted by Christians. * Griswold, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, 5.