"All this world of 'I' and 'mine' is due to the action of Nescience. In truth Vasdso the inner self of all alone exists." The Vishnuis the oldest and best of all the Furabas. It is not so very encyclopædic in character as some of the others which attempt, though very imperfectly, to deal not only with religion and philos sophy, but als with medicine, astronomy, etc., are. Some of these Puranas like the Bhagwata appear to have been written after the ad vent of the Mahomedan rule. But most of them reproduce traditions that had long been current in India, though in a much altered form. The five principal gods of the Puranas-Siva, Surya, Vishnu, Sakti, and Ganesha are represented by the followers of each as paramount deities and all others as subordinate to them. But the opinion of standard writers, like Nilkantha, the commentator of the Mahábhárata, is that each of these Puranas deals with one aspect of Brahm and that their object is not to lower one deity at the expense of another, but to prepare one of a lower stage of religious or philosophic development for the Adwaita, the goal of all. This explanation is very fair, and is supported by the Puranas themselves. It is impossible to give any idea of the contents of these enormous treatises which occupy no less than 400,000 verses, the Padma alone containing 55,000. They are the work of men who recast ancient mythologies and incorporated in them modern cults. There is much in them which is very crude and fantastical, but their doctrines are not always so absurd as is generally supposed. Discrimination in reading these treatises and separating the truth from dogma is, however, always necessary. The most popular are the Vishnu and the Bhagvata Puranas. The latter is the giver of bread to many a Pandit of these times. It consists of 18,000 verses containing good poetry and is a work of great literary merit, but has no value as a history. The others are not generally read.

The Tantras.

The last portion of our religious literature is the Tantras. A Tantra is supposed to treat of creation and its subsequent generation, determination of the nature of a mantra, installation of gods, description of sacred places, the duties of various modes of life, the establishment of Brahmins, the various elemental substances, rules regarding charms, the creation of gods, trees, heavenly bodies, ancient legends, discourse upon treasures, fasts, purity and impu

rity, bells, nature of men and women, kingly duties, rules for making gifts and the duties of each Yuga, worldly affairs, the knowledge of the self, etc The Tantras are, moreover, divided into Yamalas, Agama and Tantras. But all treat of the above more or less. The Mahanirvana, which is the best, contains some very good prayers. The others cannot be said to represent a healthy state of the national mind, nor do they belong to an age when truth was the essence of religion.

Now-a-days, however, it is not Sanskrit but the vast mass of religious lit erature in the vernaculars of each Province Vernacular li- of India has done largely towards moulding the terature. character of the people. The Rámáyana of Tulsi Dass, who flourished in the seventeenth century, exercises a more powerful influence on the ordinary Hindu man or woman of Upper India than the Rámáyana of Valmiki. The songs of Surdass, who lived at the court of Akbar, are more largely sung in Northern Hindustan than the hymns of the Vedas. The Granth Sahib of Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, and the sayings of Kabir, are more largely quoted by ascetics and others in the Punjab than those of the Upa nishads. In Bombay, Tukaram and Namdeo are more popular than Sankara, while in Bengal Chaitanya exercises a greater influence than any of the heroes or the gods of ancient times Most of this literature is pure and unsectarian, and is a protest against the dogmatism of the priestly class and trammels of caste.

It is, however, thought by many that our literature is more transcendental than practical, that we did not look the facts of life straight in the face, that we concern ourselves with speculation than with affairs of every-day life, and that devoted to our traditions, as we are, we cannot hope to compete with the nations of the west. Light, it is said, comes from the east, but till the light of the west has driven out much of what has obscured the light of the east, the India of to-day cannot rise, nor can the hopes and beliefs and aspirations of the people be made loftier. The east must now adjust itself to its new environments and adapt its religious literature to its present requirements, by making selections of what is suited to present needs and what is not. There is much but not the whole truth in this. Our ancient Indian literature is a vast sea full of

both pearls and shells, and the former must be dived and brought out, and the latter thrown aside. Ancient India had arts and sciences suited to its needs. Not only in poetry, drama, fiction, law, philosophy, but also in astronomy, medicine, chemistry, mathematics and physical science, our people made progress which challenges the admiration of western scientists. The researches in Hindu Chemistry made by Professor Roy show that in that branch of science the Hindus were never inferior to any nation of antiquity. The medical treatises of Charaka, Susruta and Vagbhata have extorted admiration from European doctors. Astronomy was long the fôrte of the Hindus. The science of numbers in the west owes its origin to India. In architecture, the caves and temples of Bhuvaneshwar and other places show the progress made by Indians in this direction. The iron pillar at Qutab, near Delhi built in the time of Pirthi-raj, was the work of men who did without machinery what modern iron foundries would scarcely be able to do with machinery. The descriptions of courts and camps of kings, the accounts of houses, streets and markets, and the trade of the country found in our epic and dramatic literature and the writings of Greek and Chinese travellers, show what the Hindus were capable of The inner world was, however, to them more important than the outer world, and yet even in the latter by observation alone they did things which have yet to be done by the applied sciences of modern times. Had it not been for the depressing influence of repeated foreign invasion and foreign supremacy, the Hindus would not have been left so weak in the domain of science, nor so exclusively introspective as they subsequently came to be. The time has now come for taking a more correct view of our literature, and accepting only that portion of it as is authoritative and deserves to be accepted in the light of The problem to be faced is the realization of a single united Indian nationality amidst complexity, the growth of ages, and for that the ideal of the rishis, viz., unity amidst diversity, cannot be too steadily kept in view.

reason.

II-SOCIAL AND PERSONAL.

संगच्छध्वं संवदध्वं सं वो मनंसि जानतां

Unite, consult together. Let your minds think the same thoughts.

(Rig Veda)

I.-CASTE.

Its universal character.-The first great feature of Hindu society, and one which strikes an outside observer most forcibly, is its rigid division into castes, precluding the members of a lower from rising higher in the social scale, and thus standing in the way of the progress of the individual and formation of nationality. Caste in some form or other is the normal condition of all society everywhere, and every community, no matter what its religous or social development may be, requires for its well-being teachers, rulers, producers of wealth, and servants and labourers Even in the most democratic countries of the west, such divisions of society have always been, and shall always be found, and the well-being of society requires that the whole of these functions be discharged on a definite and a well-organized plan But while in other countries accession from one class to another is possible, and depends largely upon personal merit, in most cases upon the possession of wealth; in modern India it is not so, though this was clearly the case in India of the past. In Europe, even though each class tries to exclude all interlopers from its ranks in the beginning, yet it is possible to get an admission into a class above one's own, if one is qualified for it. It was also the same in ancient India. While, therefore, the usual broad distinctions of society mentioned above ought to remain, the question for consideration is, whether the rigidity of the present system of caste in India ought not to be so relaxed as to remove the barrier which it places in the way of the progress of the Indian people.

But is caste in modern India the division of society according to occupation or locality or both, or do other elements also enter into its composition? It is defined by Mr. Risley, the Census Commissioner, as "a collection of families or groups of families, bearing a

common name which usually d notes or is associated with, acommon occupation, claiming common descent from a mythical ancestor, human or divine, or professing to follow the same professional calling and regarded by those who are competent to give an opinion as foming a single homogeneous community. A caste is invariably endogamous in the sense that a member of the larger circle denoted by the common name may not marry outside that circle. But within the circle there are usually a number of smaller circles, each of which is also endogamous " (Census Report, page 517.) This is a fairly accurate definition of caste as it now exists, though it does not apply to the division of society found in India of the past. There, they were not endogamous nor so isolated as to form separate and distinct communities, each having nothing in common with the other

In the gramas of the five Aryan people (panch janah) of the Vedas there were nobles, leaders and kings (rájanya), counsellors, priests, prophets and judges, working men, builders of roads and wielders of ploughs and rearers of cattle, but no division of caste. It is only in the Purusha Sukta (Rig Veda, book X, hymn 90) that we meet for the first time "the Bráhmana proceeding from the mouth of the Purusha, the Rájanya from both his arms, the Vaisya from both his thighs, and the Sudra from his feet." (Verse 12.) But this represents a symbolical and not an actual creation from Purusha the Primeval Being, and the meaning, of course, is that the Brahmana who had the privilege of addressing the gods in prayer was the mouth of the Deity, the Kshatriya who had the duty of wielding the sword and protecting the people represented his arms, the Vaisya who attended to trade and agriculture, his thighs, and the Sudra who laboured and toiled for the general body of the Aryans, his feet. It would be an insult to the intelligence of those Aryans who sang: "We have all various thoughts. and plans and diverse are the ways of man; the Brahmana seeks the worshipper, the carpenter bis ripe and seasoned wood, the physician the sick. I am a bard, my father is a physician, my mother lays corn upon the stone; striving for wealth, we follow our desires with varied plans like cows" (Rig Veda IX., 112-1, 2 and 3), to represent the great Purusha sacrifice to be an actual creation of the universe. References to the five tribes of the Aryavs, the Turvasas, the Anus, the Druhuyus, the Yadus and