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.

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 Adi 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, Brahmas, Christians, Buddhists 2 HBS., I, 248.

1 P. 46, above.

and Muslims were allowed freely to express their own religious beliefs, so long as they condemned no one. The following is a description of its work:

Its two main features were, first, a spiritual union, held every week, of the followers of various religions on the basis of commonly-accepted principles - a union in which prayers and other spiritual exercises took place and were joined in by all; and, secondly, a platform for the preaching of diverse opinions by their advocates, a platform where the most perfect freedom and toleration were allowed consistently with brotherly feeling and general co-operation; for no one was allowed to vilify or ridicule the beliefs and practices of another.1

The work has died out at Barahanagar. But, within recent years, Mr. Banurji has started it again in Calcutta. The institution is named the Devalaya, or "Divine House." The building is his own, and stands in the compound of the Sadhāran Brahma Samāj. He has made over this property to a group of trustees, so that it may be used for the purposes described by the donor. It is most curious to note how similar Sasipada's original idea is to those which, a few years later, were expressed by Rāmakrishna, and later still, by Theosophists.

We may also note that in 1873, at the very time when he was starting his General Religious Association at Barahanagar, a group of Hindus formed in Calcutta the Sanatana Dharma Rakshini Sabha, or Association for the Defence of the Eternal Religion. They were anxious to found a Sanskrit School in the city to counteract modern tendencies. One of the reasons why Dayananda Sarasvati visited Calcutta was that he hoped to help this society. A few years later the Hindus of the South began to move in the same direction, as we shall see.

1 The Devalaya, by S. N. Tattvabhushan, 19.

* Ib., 26.

•Swami Dayanand Saraswati, 28, Madras, Natesan. Cf. above, p.109.

2. RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA

But the man who really made these ideas current coin in India was a Bengali ascetic, known as Rāmakrishna Paramahamsa.

1. Gadadhar Chatterji1 was born in the village of Kamarpukur in the Hoogly district of Bengal, on the 20th of February, 1834,2 in a poor but orthodox Brahman family. The accounts which are published of his life already tend to be mythical. Even the best biography that exists, which was written by one of his pupils, and published by Max Müller, decidedly tends here and there towards the marvellous; and a large volume, published by another of his disciples, and called the Gospel of Sri Rāmakrishna, imitates the Christian Gospels so carefully in many minor points that one wonders how far the assimilation has gone. Yet the main events of his life stand out quite clear, so that we can trace, in large measure, the growth of this gifted man's mind.

Even when quite a boy, he showed wonderful powers of memory and considerable interest in religious books and stories. He received no education. His father died when he was about seventeen; and he then went with his elder brother, Pandit Ram Kumar, down to Calcutta, to try to make a living. For some time he was employed as pūjārī, or ministrant, in certain Hindu families in the northern part of the city, his duty being to see to the worship of the household idols. But a wealthy Bengali lady built rather a striking temple at Dakshineśvara, four miles north of Calcutta, on the bank of the Hugli River; and, when this temple was opened on the 31st of May, 1855, his elder brother was appointed chief priest. Soon after, Gadadhar was appointed one of the assistant priests.

1 The details of his life are taken mainly from Max Müller's Rāmakrishna. Where I differ from him, I give my authority.

2 See the Gospel of R., p. 1. Müller's date is clearly wrong.