Gandhi are a standing challenge to the organized Christianity of the West. The only organizations patterned after the West that are likely to appeal to the Hindus and make any headway in the country are the Society of Friends (Quakers), the Ethical Culture Society and the Community Church. My own connection with the Community Church, I may confess, is more for the community aspect of the movement than the church aspect. On the whole, it may well be said that Christianity has done a great deal toward fermenting the religious thought of India and is likely to play a great part in the New Rennaissance.

Thus, we see that four great cultural forces of the world have contributed toward the making of modern India: namely, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Christianity-not to mention the small groups of Zoroastrian Parsees and Jews who have enriched India by their peculiar tho limited contributions. What has India, on her part, given to the world? This leads. us to the consideration of:

V. INDIA'S CONTRIBUTION TO

CIVILIZATION

In

A startling thought comes up to our mind. Ceylon there is a remarkable tree, probably the oldest living thing in the world, planted there in 245 B. C. from a cutting of the Bo Tree under which the Buddha had received "enlightment" about 2500 years ago. The life of a single tree-how many generations it has spanned, how many kingdoms it has seen rise and fall, how many nations born and destroyed, how many historical episodes it has commemorated! Let us pause and reflect before passing judgment on any people by reading fragmentary accounts of a century or two. In a fit of absent-mindedness Lord Curzon, the arch-imperialist of England, declared that the history of India has left deep imprints on this terrestrial planet. On this one point we heartily agree with His Lordship.

The dawn of Aryan civilization broke for the first time on the horizon, not of Greece or Rome, not of Arabia or Persia, but of India, which may be called the motherland of metaphysics, philosophy, logic, astronomy, science, art, music and medicine, as well as of truly ethical religion. Although students in the schools and colleges of modern Europe and America are generally taught that the Greeks and Romans were the fathers of European civilization and that philosophy and science first arose in ancient Greece, still it has been proved by the Oriental scholars of Europe and by all impartial students of history that ancient Greece was greatly indebted to India for many of her best ideas in philosophy, science and intellectual culture, as also for many of her ethical and spiritual ideals.

If we read the writings and historical accounts left by Pliny, Strabo, Megasthenes, Herodotus, Porphyry and a host of other ancient authors of different countries, we shall see how highly the civilization of India was regarded by them. In fact, between the years 1500 and 500 B. C. the Hindus were so far advanced in religion, metaphysics, philosophy, science, art, music and medicine that no other nation could stand as their rival or compete with them in any of these branches of knowledge. On the contrary, many of the nations which came in contact with the Hindus through trade or otherwise, accepted Hindu ideas and moulded their own after the Hindu pattern. For instance, the science of geometry was first invented in India by the Hindus from the Vedic rules for the construction of sacrificial altars; from these rules they gradually developed geometry, and it has been admitted by the great scholars that the world owes its first lesson in this science not to Greece but to India. The Pythagorean theorem so-called was known in India at least two centuries before Pythagoras was

born-it is to be found in the Sulva Sutras (which form part of the Kalpa Vedanga), dating from the eighth century before Christ. There is a Greek tradition that Pythagoras visited India, and most probably he did, because in his writings we find such ideas as were very common among the Hindus but which were unknown to other nations. Probably he learned from the Hindus his first lessons in geometry, mathemetics, the doctrine of pre-existence and transmigration of souls, and of final beatitudes, ascetic observances, prohibition of eating flesh, vegetarianism, the conception of the virtue of numbers, and lastly, the idea of the fifth element, which was unknown in Greece and Egypt at that ancient time. The Egyptians and Greeks admitted four elements, but ether as an element was known only among the Hindus of those days. Professor E. W. Hopkins, in his Religions of India, says "Before the 6th century B. C. all the religious-philosophical ideas of Pythagoras are current in India."

Buddhism discouraged the Vedic sacrificial rites, and therefore geometry fell out of use but geometrical truths now began to be represented by algebra and arithmetic. The Greeks could not rival the Hindus in the science of numbers. The world indeed owes decimal notation to India. The Arabs first learned it from the Hindus and then introduced it into Europe. It was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and arithmetic as a practical science would have been impossible without decimal notation. The Hindus have also given algebra (Vijaganita) to the Western world through the Arabs, who translated it in the eighth century A. D.; and Leonardo da Pisa first introduced it into Europe in the thirteenth century. So the world received its first lesson in algebra from India. The Hindus were also the first teachers of plane and spherical trigonometry. The great Indian mathematician Bhaskaracharya (1114-1150) wrote exhaustive treatises on all these subjects and his works contain

solutions of remarkable problems which were not achieved in Europe until the 17th and 18th centuries.* In astronomical observations, the Hindus were the first to fix the lunar mansions, lunar Zodiac, and the divisions of the constellations. The Chinese and Arabs borrowed these from India.* ** They first developed the science of music from the chanting of the Vedic hymns. The Sama Veda was especially meant for music. And the scale with seven notes and three octaves was known in India centuries before the Greeks had it. Wagner's conversation with Schopenhauer throws a flood of light on his indebtedness to Hindu music-particularly in his idea of the "leading motive."

Many Oriental scholars maintain that the writings and teachings of many of the Greek thinkers and writers, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others, were saturated with Hindu influence. The Hindu philosophers leading an ascetic life in Greece were called Gymnosophists. Says Sir William Jones, "It is impossible to read the Vedanta, or the many fine compositions in illustration of it, without believing that Pythagoras and Plato derived their sublime theories from the same fountain with the Indian sages." The idea of the Logos which formed the cornerstone of the philosophy of Plato, of the Neo

*"A striking history has been told of the problem: to find X SO that ax2+b shall be a square number. Fremat made some progress toward solving this ancient problem, and sent it as a defiance to the English algebraists in the seventeenth century. Euler finally solved it, and arrived exactly at the point attained by Bhaskara in 1150. A particular solution of another problem given by Bhaskara is exactly the same as was discovered in Europe by Lord Brounker in 1657; and the general solution of the same problem given by Brahmagupta, in the seventh century A. D., was unsuccessfully attempted by Euler, and was only accomplished by De la Grange in 1767 A. D. The favorite process of the Hindus known as the Kuttaka was not known in Europe till published by Bachet de Mezeriac in 1624 A. D."-"Civilization in Ancient India," by Romesh Chunder Dutt, Vol. II.

**The science of algebra indeed received a remarkable degree of developmnt in India; the application of algebra to astronomical investigations and to geometrical demonstrations is a peculiar invention of the Hindus; and their manner of conducting it has received the admiration of modern European mathematicians."-"Civilization in Ancient India."

Platonists, of Philo, and later of the Fourth Gospel first arose in India, and various references to it are to be found in the Vedas.

As already observed, the Buddhist missionaries carried the message and sublime ethics of Buddha to Syria, Palestine and Alexandria before the advent of Jesus the Christ. These preachers influenced the Jewish sect known as the Essenes; and the Roman historian Pliny, who lived between 23 and 79 A. D. thus described the mode of living of the Essenes: that they lived like hermits, without having any possessions or any sexual relation, being celibates and associates of palm-trees. It can be shown that they belonged to the sect founded by the Buddhist monks from India who lived in Syria, Palestine and Egypt. Philosophers like Schelling and Schopenhauer, and Christian thinkers like Dean Mansel and Dr. Millman admit that the sect of Essenes arose through the influence of the Buddhist missionaries who came from India. Moreover, it is a well-known fact that John the Baptist was an Essene. Ernest Renan, in his Life of Jesus, speaking of John the Baptist, says: "He led there a life like that of a Yogi, clothed with skins or cloth of camel's hair, having for food only locusts and wild honey. ** * We might imagine ourselves transported to the banks of the Ganges, if special features had not revealed in this recluse the last descendant of the grand prophet of Israel." Again he says: "The teachers of the young were also a species of anchorites, resembling to some extent the Gurus (spiritual preceptors) of Brahminism. In fact, might there not in this be a remote influence of the Munis (sages) of India? Perhaps some of those wandering Buddhist monks who overran the world, as the first Franciscans did in later times, preaching by their actions and converting people who knew not their language, might have turned their steps to Judea, as they certainly did toward Syria and Babylon. * * * Babylon did become for some time a true focus of Buddhism. Budasp (Bodhisattva) was reputed a wise Chaldean,