AND ITS RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY BY THE REV. JOHN ROBSON, M.A. FORMERLY OF AJMER. EDINBURGH: WILLIAM OLIPHANT & CO. GLASGOW: DAVID ROBERTSON. LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS & CO. 1874 [All rights reserved.] TO THE Rev. John Wilson, D.D., F.R.S. OF THE FREE CHURCH MISSION, BOMBAY, WHO, DURING FORTY-FIVE YEARS, WHILE SEEKING FAITHFULLY TO COMMEND TO THE HINDUS THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, HAS SHOWN HIMSELF A DILIGENT AND APPRECIATIVE STUDENT OF THEIR LITERATURE AND RELIGION, This Book is Dedicated AS A MARK OF AFFECTION AND ESTEEM. PREFACE. THIS book is offered to those who take an interest in India, and especially in Indian missions, as an attempt to enable them better to understand the religion of the great majority of the people of that land. I have found prevalent in this country ideas of Hinduism very different from those which a twelve years' practical study of it in constant contact with its followers has led me to form. Generally, among friends of missions, there is an undue depreciation of Hinduism,-an ignoring or an ignorance of the amount of truth and vitality still to be found in it; whilst, among those indifferent or hostile to missions, there is an equal ignoring or ignorance of the falsehood which vitiates that truth and poisons that vitality. Not only does Hinduism contain a subtle philosophy, express high moral truths and enjoin many social virtues; it even in one guise or other embodies many of the leading religious truths which Christianity teaches. But that there is in it an |