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Based upon caste, the most rigid of all social classifications, Hinduism has secured for some 3,000 years or more to the higher castes, and especially to the Brahmans, the highest of all castes, a social supremacy for which there is no parallel elsewhere.
This is in accord with the spirit of Hinduism namely, the fluidity of doctrine, and the free choice of guru or religious teacher, as set forth in a previous chapter although it is still an advanced position for a Hindu to take up publicly.
Far from it. Hinduism proper is to them a mere plaything, or a festival pastime. On special Hindu holidays, and perhaps on occasions of pilgrimage, they will visit these Hindu temples and bring their offering to the deities of Brahmanism.
In all these states, which spread right across Middle India from the Arabian Sea to the Gulf of Bengal, Islam remained the dominant power; but, even whilst trampling upon Hinduism, it did not escape altogether the inevitable results of increasing contact with an older and more refined civilisation.
Still, it is just to say that the doctrines mentioned are characteristic of Hinduism and are repudiated only by eccentric sects. Perhaps the idea which has had the widest and most penetrating influence on Indian thought is that conception of the Universe which is known as Saṃsâra, the world of change and transmigration.
Hinduism is constantly in extremes: sometimes it exults in the dances of Kṛishṇa or the destructive fury of Kâlî: more often it struggles for release from the transitory and for union with the permanent and real by self-denial or rather self-negation, which aims at the total suppression of both pleasure and pain. This is on the whole its dominant note.
It is here that we come nearest to the origins of Tantrism, for though the same beliefs may have flourished in Udyâna and Kashmir they did not spread much in the Panjab or Hindustan, where their progress was hindered at first by a healthy and vigorous Hinduism and subsequently by Mohammedan invasions.
It has an unfortunate but distinct later phase known in Sanskrit as Mantrayâna and Vajrayâna but generally described by Europeans as Tantrism. This phase took some of the worst features in Hinduism, such as spells, charms, and the worship of goddesses, and with misplaced ingenuity fitted them into Buddhism. I shall treat of it in a subsequent chapter, for it is chronologically late.
Hinduism has no recognised Theological Faculties as training schools for the priesthood. Buddhist monasteries of the early Christian centuries we do read of, institutions corresponding to our universities, to which crowds of students resorted, and where many subjects were taught; but the Hindu lore is transmitted otherwise.
The laxity of many Nonconformists, and some others, concerning baptism, gives him some ground for making this petition. To take a measure of Christian morality into Hinduism, to place the Bible alongside their other sacred books, and to worship Christ along with Krishna, would satisfy modern Hindu aspirations without entailing much practical inconvenience.
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