Hindustani

“ Everyone knows, whatever shortcomings the Hindus may have, he is ever endeavouring to serve God in a gentle, pious and devout spirit, and to perform the duties of social and domestic life according to His will. “Every householder must be devoted to his God. Whatever work he does, he must do unto the glory of God.” If you admit that there was pure religion and pure morality among the Hindus, you must also admit that the system of caste distinctions was not known to my ancestors. ”

“ Would it be too much to ask of our Hinduism that it should unite us in concrete relations with this India of ours, the resort of our gods, the retreat of our rishis, the motherland of our ancestors? The relation of good works with our own land,—are we not to gain that for each one of ourselves, rather than leave it to others, and take our hearts off elsewhere? ”

“ India’s contributions to the world’s study of philosophy, science, religion, and social organization are legion. While the continent of Europe was still in a state of barbarism, the Hindus invented the sciences of grammar, arithmetic, and astronomy. They were already masters of a perfect alphabet, of a polished language, and of the most complete systems of law and social ethics that the world has ever seen. When the forefathers of the Anglo-Saxon races roamed in forests with painted bodies, the Hindus had an extensive literature, an established religion, and a developed civilization. ”

“ THE PUNDITA RAMABAI SARASVATI.
In spite of all the attacks that have been made upon it from time to time, by Buddhism, by Mahometanism, and by Christianity, in spite of the undermining influences of education and of civilization, Hinduism still reigns supreme over the minds of millions of the people of India. ”

“ The revival of Hinduism during the paling days of the Gûpta empire had vastly increased the power of the Brahman. In brief, Purânic Hinduism--that is, religion based on the Purânas, as distinct from the Vedas--with all its hair-splitting, its overlay of ritual by ritual, was at its zenith. From birth to death a man--even the meanest man--was in the grip of innumerable petty commandments.
The very gods he worshipped had changed. ”

“ The definition which would cover the Hindu of the modern times is that he should be born of parents not belonging to some recognised religion other than Hinduism, marry within the same limits, believe in God, respect the cow, and cremate the dead. ”

“ The Hindustanee arose from intercourse between the Muhammadan invaders and the people they had subdued. It is written in the Persian or Arabic character, and draws its vocabulary mainly from the Persian and Arabic languages. It is the language of law, of commerce, and of ordinary life to many millions. The Hindee in its various dialects, some of which almost rise to the dignity of languages, is the vernacular of the vast Hindu population of North-Western India. It rests mainly on the Sanscrit, and is written in the Sanscrit or Deonagree character. ”

“ For Hindus are the most devout Nature-worshippers on the face of the earth. To them, beauty of place translates itself as God's direct cry to the soul; and in the isolated glade of Kajiar, with its sweep of shelving turf, its encircling pines and deodars, and its towering snow-peaks standing sentinel in the north,—deity reigns supreme; deity and the great grey ape of the Himalayas. ”

“ It should be remembered that Westerners have lived in India so long as to have become perfectly well known to all the people. Moreover, the Western garb and habits of life represent to the Hindu honour, influence, power, and culture. In his heart of hearts the Hindu highly respects, and is always ready to listen to, that man of the West who is true to himself and stands before him for what he is and for what he teaches. The ordinary Hindu is not stupid enough to be deceived as to a man's nationality or true position in life because of his change of clothing or food. ”

“ In regard to India, therefore, you must not look only into her condition today, but travel back in imagination thousand of years, and see what she was in ancient times of primitive Hindu simplicity and purity. Even in the earliest books of the Hindus, the Vedas, which must be regarded as the earliest record of Aryan faith – even in them you find glimpses of high moral and religious truths which are unmistakable – not duly formed and organised religious thought, but the crude instincts and aspirations of the human mind in the state of religious infancy, seeking the Deity. ”

“ He attributes a great deal of this to one particular missionary, but also to education. It was quite clear that, when once the Hindus allowed their boys to be so thoroughly well instructed as they are at the Hindu College, they must see through the horrible absurdities of their own religion, and then, though a single Hindu who loses his caste can hardly withstand the persecution of his countrymen—in short, can hardly live—yet if any number change their religion, they become a refuge to each other, and make the conversion of more much easier. ”

“ There, in these two examples, the great social problems of India present themselves—caste and the social inferiority of women, and in the English language we see India confronted with ideas different from her own. Take a third illustration from the socio-religious sphere. Few Hindus think of Hinduism as a system of religious practices and doctrines to be justified by reason or by spiritual intuition, or by the spiritual satisfaction it can afford to mankind. No, Hinduism is a thing for Indians, and belongs to the Indian soil. ”

“ Is the intellectual history of India nothing but the longest page in that unwritten chapter of the world's history—the history of human error? If not, if truth is still to be gleaned from the recesses of Hindu philosophy, where and how can we find it? What is in fact the real place of Hindu philosophy in the history of Science? ”

“ I maintain that, to know Hinduism, is to feel a deep sympathy with the people who have inherited it as their faith, and to desire to bring to them the Gospel of life and of salvation in Christ Jesus. The people of India are, perhaps, the most religious upon earth. In this respect they are very unlike the Japanese and Chinese, who are worldly, prosaic, practical. Hindus are poetic, other-worldly, and spiritually minded. They have a keen instinct for things of the spirit. They are, also, very unlike the people of the West. Among Westerners, religion is largely an incident in life. ”

“ It is that which makes him the dull, narrow-minded, noble, fearless, reliable man that he is. The moving forces of the Hindu are quite different; they are, first, Religion; and second, Affection; and it is these which make him so hopelessly unpractical, so abominably resigned, yet withal so tender and imaginative of heart. Abstract duty to the Hindu has but little meaning. He may perform his religious exercises and his caste injunctions carefully enough, but it is because he realises clearly the expediency of so doing. ”

“ To love leisure, ideals, and peace has been the criterion of Hindu wisdom. Those who have closely studied the history of the Hindu nation know the illumination, the peace, the joy, the strength that its lessons bring into the lives of those simple, virtuous people.
Hindu civilization has been, on the whole, humane and wholesome, and the life of the people of India has been one of unalloyed usefulness and service to humanity. India has always been the home of various religions and its people have always been divided into innumerable faiths. ”

“ It will be a pleasure to such as love India and her peoples to read the work of a highly educated, intelligent and travelled author, in which the destruction of all Hindu individuality is not considered per se as a merit, but in which on the contrary it is regarded as wrong in fact, in art, and in imagination to impair the ancient self- sufficient and highly complex civilization, to the task of providing a substitute for which Europeans and new Hindus are alike wholly unequal. ”

“ On the whole, however, when we survey the history of India, and compare it with that of Western Asia, we may say that although the Hindus are perhaps the most intensely religious people in the world, Hinduism has never been, like Christianity, Islam, and to some extent Buddhism, a religion established by the State. ”

“ Enmeshed in vicious traditions and false doctrine, its philosophy and purer teachings known only to a cultured few, the Higher Hinduism "powerless to be born," is only the illusion which it would teach that all else is, while practical Hinduism hangs like a blight over a land whose people are as the sands of the sea for multitude. ”

“ Religious asceticism has been the ideal of the Hindu life from time immemorial. The man who has given up all earthly pursuits and wanders with beggar's cup in hand from place to place, making pilgrimages to the holy places of India, or who separates himself entirely from men and devotes years to the solitude of the wilderness in the cultivation of piety,—he it is who is the admiration of the whole Hindu community. And it is for this very reason that so many men in India to-day don the yellow robe of this profession, and make capital out of this sentiment of the people. ”

“ It is well to remember here that that modern product—the Hindu of Western culture who is so much in evidence today in India and who sometimes comes West in flowing orange robes and turban to urge his mongrel philosophy upon our fellow-countrymen—is not the type of Hindu appreciated by, or representing, the people of that land. ”

“ There is nothing in the life of a Hindu devotee, whether it be eating, sleeping, bathing or travelling, which is not religiously prescribed both as to time and method. And utterly regardless of the significance of these rites or the appropriateness of them to his life, he deems their observance as essential to his salvation and finds in their daily keeping the highest satisfaction and completest assurance of his spiritual progress.
The Hindu is no rationalist in his religion. ”

“ Many features of Hinduism, its steady though slow conquest of India, its extraordinary vitality and tenacity in resisting the attacks of Mohammedanism, and its small power of expansion beyond the seas are explained by the fact that it is a mode of life as much as a faith. To be a Hindu it is not sufficient to hold the doctrine of the Upanishads or any other scriptures: it is necessary to be a member of a Hindu caste and observe its regulations. ”

“ For Hinduism is India--India is Hinduism. When the last trace of the metaphysical Monism which underlies every aspiration, every action, has disappeared, India and Hinduism will have disappeared also, but not till then.
So as time crept on, and under slack rule Mahomedan began to fight Mahomedan, each petty governor playing for his own hand, his own independence, the Râjputs raised their dejected heads, and, seizing every opportunity, strove to recover part at least of their own. ”

“ And the Christian preacher's or teacher's vivid portrayal of the Christian's heaven too often denotes to the Hindu only one of the many purgatorial heavens of his religion, and rarely suggests to him the supreme test of the value of our faith as contrasted with his own. The glories of our heaven do not appeal to the stolid, weary, transmigration-ridden soul of the Hindu as they do to the youthful, hopeful, buoyant soul of the Christian. ”

“ Thus as we look at the Hindu from the various standpoints of life and character we see how strange a compound he is, and how unlike the man of the West at nearly all points in our examination. He is preëminently weak where we are strong, and he manifests strength where we seem to need it most. His religion has developed within him traits and tendencies which, through these many centuries, have wonderfully wrought in his life and character, and have largely made him what he is today. ”

“ The standard of character is undoubtedly far higher among us than it is among Hindus, and this standard, protesting as it does against wickedness, and calling us to aspire after goodness, is in itself an incalculable benefit to a community. For many a day it has been my settled conviction that Hindus are vastly better than, looking at their religion, we could expect to find them, and that we on the other hand fall far below the excellence to which our religion summons us. ”

“ Similar instances might be given from other parts of India. A Hindu who has in any way lost caste and been in consequence repudiated by his relations and by the society of which he has been accustomed to move, would naturally be attracted towards a religion that receives all without distinction, and offers to him a grade of society equal in the social scale to that from which he has been banished. ”

“ From the rudest polytheism up to pantheism, and even to an atheistic philosophy, all is within the Hindu pale, like fantastic cloud shapes and vague mist and empty ether, all within the same sky. To the student of Hinduism, then, the first fact that emerges is that there are no distinctive Hindu doctrines. No one doctrine is distinctive of Hinduism. There is no canonical book, nowhere any stated body of doctrine that might be called the Hindu creed. The only common measure of Hindus is that they employ brahmans in their religious ceremonies, and even that does not hold universally. ”

“ The sky which bends over all, the beautiful and blushing dawn which like a busy housewife wakes men from slumber and sends them to their work, the gorgeous tropical sun which vivifies the earth, the air which pervades the world, the fire which cheers and enlightens man, and the violent storms which in India usher in those copious rains which fill the land with plenty—these were the gods whom the early Hindus loved to extol and to worship. ”