of life, was the goal of the Hindus of those times. There is therefore no wonder that they attained to the high degree of civilization which they reached. And the decline of their successors was in proportion to their departure from their ideals. And yet in no period of their history have the Hindus been altogether lost to the law of truth, duty and self-abnegation observed by their ancestors Even during the most depressing regimes which followed the loss of their independence, they showed in the field a spirit of courage and devotion to the cause for which they were fighting, in the council room a sagacity and in the hermitage a keen and devoted search after truth, a desire to rise above the finite and the tran sitory, which have always challenged the admiration of their contemporaries. India, though fallen, was unlike other nations of antiquity never lost. Its national life, though weak, was extinct, and it only required the better and more peaceful influences, it now fortunately possesses, to rekindle it.

never

There is at present much dissatisfaction in Indian society with many of its existing institutions, and the wisest and the best intellects of the country are busy in carefully examining them and finding out which of them stands in the way of its progress, and which of them furthers it. It is the same with our religious institutions also, and a return to purer forms of worship and the elimination of all accretion due to superstition or later innovation, is the goal which many an Indian is trying to set before his countrymen. The lives of the gods, and the heroes of the Hindu pantheon, are being carefully scrutinized to find out the real significance of our ancient mythology, and the true import of stories, which in the name of many gods, describe only the manifold powers of the one True God of the Rishis of ancient India.

[I.—WHAT IS HINDUISM

Before dealing with some of the chief institutions of our society it may perhaps be of some use to show what is meant by the terms "Hindu" and "Hinduism." The word Hindu is not found in the Vedas, the Smritis, the Itihasas or the older Puranas, nor is it of Sanskrit origin. In the Sastras the word Arya is used to denote the five tribes who lived in the early home of our ancestors who chanted the

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hymns and performed the sacrifices mentioned in the Vedas. In Manu the country between the Saraswati and the Drishadwati rivers was said to be the Brahmávarta-desha, the land of the gods, and the usages prevailing there, were described by him as the usages of the good. The country known as Kurukshetra, the Matsya, the Panchala (Panjab) and Sursena (about Mathura), was known as the Brahmarshi-desha and one less sacred than the Brahmávarta: From the people of these parts the other people of the earth learnt their usages. From the Himalaya to the Vindhya mountains to the east of Kurukshetra and west of Prayága (Allahabad), the country was known as the Madhya-desha (middle region). From sea in the east to the sea in the west and between the Himalaya and the Vindhya mountains, the country was known as Aryávarta. This was the India of those days, forming a part of the Bharatkhand, probably the continent of Asia, which in its turn was comprised in the Jambudwipa the world of that period. (Manu, Chapter II. 17 22.) The word Hindu is apparently a corruption of Sindhu, the name of the Indus river in the Panjab, and Sapta Sindhu, the country of the seven rivers of the Vaidic literature was known as the Hapta Hindu in the Zend, and the Hindavas in the old Persian literature and the Panjab of to-day. Later Persian writers use the word Hindu as signifying black. It would, therefore, be a double mistake, first to call the whole of the Aryan people as described by the Vedic and subsequent writers to be Hindus, and then to attempt to trace back all that now goes under the name of Hinduism to the purer sources of the Aryan religion. Manu called the usages of the good by the name of dharma, without any addition whatever, and it may be nearer the mark to trace to ancient times so much of the modern usages as can be traced and try to purify them in the light of what ancient lawgivers laid down as the indications of dharma. They were not only the Vedas and the Smritis, but also the usages of the good, righteous behaviour, and satisfaction of one's own conscience. Hindu, Hinduism, Hindustan can, however, no longer be discarded without creating much confusion and giving rise to much misunderstanding. But if we keep in mind the fact that Hinduism is the name given to a vast social organization composed of divergent elements by foreigners, and that the ideal to be aimed at is the purification of our society, we may keep the name and explain some of

our institutions with reference to our ancient books. Both foreign and Indian thinkers who have attempted to construct from observed facts one definition, which would be applicable to Hindu society of to-day, have failed in their attempts to do so. The elements are too complex and diversified to admit of such a definition. Sir Alfred Lyall describes "Hinduism to be the religion of all the people who accept the Brahminical scriptures, as a tangled jungle of disorderly superstitions, as a collection of rites, worships, beliefs, traditions, mythologies, that are sanctioned by the sacred books and ordinances of the Brahmins, and are promulgated by Brahminic teaching." Sir Denzil Ibbetson describes it to be "a hereditary sacerdotalism, with Brahmins for its Levites, the vitality of which is preserved by the social institution of caste, and which may include all shades and diversities of religion native to India, as distinct from the foreign importation of Christianity and Islam, and from the later outgrowths of Buddhism, more doubtfully of Sikhism, and still more doubtfully of Jainism.'' Mr. Risley, Census Commissioner for India, at page 351, Volume I. of his Census Report for 1901, describes it to be "Animism more or less transformed by philosophy, or, to condense the epigram still further, as magic tempered by metaphysics." The fact is, says he, "that within the enormous range of beliefs and practices which are included in the term Hinduism, there are comprised two entirely different sets of ideas, or one may say two widely different conceptions of the world and of life. At one end, at the lower end of the series, is animism, an essentially materialistic theory of things which seeks by means of magic to ward off or to forestall physical disasters, which looks no further than the world of sense, and seeks to make that as tolerable as the conditions permit. At the other end is pantheism combined with a system of transcendental metaphysics." On the other hand, one Indian writer describes 'Hinduism to be that which the major portion of the Hindus follow,' and another calls the Hindus "to be those who accept the Vedas, the Smritis, the Puranas and the Tantras as the basis of religion and the rule of conduct who believe in re-incarnation in one Supreme God Brahma and in the law of retributive justice.'' Each of these definitions is correct, but only partially. The Census Commissioner's would have approached nearest to the mark so far as modern Hindu society is concerned, if he had

omitted the word two both from the sets of ideas and the conceptions of the world and of life. To say that Hinduism is that which the majority of Hindus believe or follow, or that it is that which is not Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Mazdaism or Hebraism, or that it is a tangled jungle of superstition or beliefs, rites, traditions and mythologies found in Brahminical books, does not help us in knowing what it is. There are, however, some basic ideas which are common to all who are now known as the Hindus. These are-(1) distinction of caste, (2) the supremacy of Brahmins, at least in theory, (3) the sacredness of the Vedas and the cow, (4) the law of Karma and re-incarnation and a belief in God, These beliefs are more or less current in all Hindu society wherever it may be found. If you call the holders of these beliefs to be followers of the Sanatana dharma, you will have to use the term in a wider sense than that in which it is now used. Dharma is that which supports and holds together, and Sanatan is ancient. Therefore the principles of a healthy and pure life, both in social and religous matters, would go more under the name of Sanatan dharma than dogma. Paradoxical as it may seem, dharma is eternal and therefore there is no necessity of calling it Sanatana. In ancient India, also, the difficulty of defining dharma was felt as much as it is now. Says Yudhisathira in the Mahábharata in reply to the Yaksha's question as to what was the path: "Argument leads to no certain conclusion, the Srutis (Vedic texts) are different from one another, there is not even one Rishi whose opinion can be accepted as infallible-the truth about religion and duty is therefore hidden in the cave of the heart, that alone is the path along which the great have trodden." (Vana Parva, Chapter 312.)

The only thing, therefore, possible is, to take those of our institutions which form the basis of our society and describe them as they were in times past and as they are now, and show how they could be reformed or remodelled to suit existing conditions. The task is one of great magnitude requiring both time and knowledge more than I can command. But if I succeed in directing attention to the salient features of our society, I shall not have written in vain,

III.-THE HINDU IDEA OF TIME.

I would start with giving the Sastric idea of time, together with a brief account of some of the most revered sources of our religion. No Hindu undertakes anything without a sankalpa (will-desire), and this sankalpa tells him without the aid of books the various divisions of time known to his ancestors. He is told that it is the half of the second part of Brahma's day, the Vaivaswat Manvantara, and the first quarter of the Kali age, together with the year, month, date and day of the ceremony. The day of Brahma, the Manvantara, and the Kali age are not known to the generality of readers, and I shall therefore describe them from the sastras. Modern thinkers in the west dismiss the Hindu's idea of time with a smile of contempt and limit the origin of the Vedas to not more than 4000 B.C. Formerly it was much less. But now this is the generally received period. On the other hand, the Hindus look upon both the Veda and the world as beginningless (Anádi); and birth and death of the individual or creation and dissolution of the world are nothing but the objectification and subjectification of Brahman. Dharma (truth-duty) is without a beginning. Its phases may vary, but absolute truth is the same, was the same, and shall be the same everywhere. Hinduism is, therefore, the only religion which has no personal founder, because truth and duty, which are its essence, are without beginning. The modern mind does not accept this, and requires to know its origin, but without

success.

The sastras are, however, not without definite ideas of time. According to them, one Káshthá consists of fifteen nimishas or twinklings of the eye, thirty káshthás make one kalá, thirty kalás make one muhúrta, thirty muhúrtas, a day and night of human beings, thirty days and nights a month, which is divided into two fortnights, the light (shukla) and the dark (krishna), six months make an ayana; and the year is composed of two ayanas-the Uttarayana (the northern path), and the Dakshinayana (the southern path). The Uttarayana is the day and the Dakshinayana the night of celestials. A thousand years of the celestials constitute the Kali yuga, whose two twilights are of a hundred years each. Two thousand years with two twilights of two hundred years each constitute the Dwâpara yuga, 3,000 years with two twilights