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The Indian mind is open to new religious ideas, while the religious customs of India remain almost unaffected, because the priesthood of Hinduism is two-fold. One set of priests, called purohits, are merely the celebrants at worship and ceremonies; the second set, called gurus, theoretically more highly honoured, are or were the religious teachers of the people.
The Pundas officiate in the temples; the Gangaputrs, the sons of the Ganges, minister at the waterside; the Purohits are the family priests; and the Pundits, the most esteemed of all, are the learned men who study the Shastres, and expound them to the people as occasion requires.
The Pundits, the guardians and expositors of their sacred books; the Pundas who minister in the temples; the Gungaputrs who serve at the river side; the Purohits, the family priests; the Gurus, the father confessors and guides of the people; and the Jyotishees, the astrologers, with their families and relations, would be stripped of their honour and gain, of their very means of living, if Hinduism was at once abandoned.
It has already been explained how the creed of Hinduism is dissolving while its practices remain; to restate the fact otherwise now The hereditary purohits continue to be employed many times a year in a Hindu household, as worship, births, deaths, marriages, and social ceremonies recur, but the hereditary gurus as religious teachers have become practically defunct.
The modern middle-class Hindu is in need of a guru. For mere purohits, as such, he has a small and a declining reverence; but holy men, as such, his instinct is to honour one of the pleasing features of Hinduism.
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