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Certainly nowhere else on earth is there a country where the entire life of the people is so molded by their spiritual beliefs. Two children are born the same day. The one, of high-caste parentage, Brahminism has irrevocably decreed shall be all his life, no matter how stupid or vicious, a privileged and "superior" being, to whom all lower orders must make obeisance.
"I have set myself a task," he explained, "which, if it could only be continued from generation to generation in our own family until it was completed, would make the name of West immortal. This is nothing less than to publish an English translation of the Buddhist Djarmas, with a preface giving an idea of the position of Brahminism before the coming of Sakyamuni.
If the policy of 'deliberately' disturbing their 'contentment' which the Viceroy and the Secretary of State have announced is carried out; if, through the 'whispering galleries of the East, the word is passed that the only authority that can maintain law and order and secure the gradual building-up of an Indian nation is weakening; if, as is proposed, the great public services are emasculated; then the fierce old animosities will break out afresh, and, assisted by a recrudescence of the reactionary forces of Brahminism, they will within a few years bring to nought the noblest work which the British race has ever accomplished."
Buddhism does not present the same fatalistic theory of creation as Brahminism, but it introduces even a more aggravated fatalism into human life. Both alike load down the newly-born with burdens of guilt and consequent suffering transmitted from previous existences.
Practices out of which Buddhism may be developed are another. It has been already suggested that the ideas conveyed by the terms Sramanoe and Gymnosophistoe are just as Brahminic as Buddhist, and, vice versâ, just as Buddhist as Brahminic. "The earliest dates of specific Buddhism are of the same age as the earliest dates of specific Brahminism.
The very antithesis of Brahminism, Islam, with its doctrine that all Believers are brothers, could not fail to attract multitudes of low-castes and out-castes, who by conversion might rise to the status of the conquerors. This is the main reason why the Mohammedans in India to-day number more than 70,000,000 over one-fifth of the total population.
It forms a kind of connecting link between Buddhism and Brahminism, and preaches the destruction of all other beliefs, which, it declares, are corroded by falsehood. In sympathetic admiration for the spirit of the young man, the Djainites asked him to stay with them; but Jesus left them to settle in Djagguernat, where he devoted himself to the study of treatises on religion, philosophy, etc.
Indeed the force of evolution could not stop here; for, since even this primordial Buddha rested upon Ossa of hypothesis piled upon Pelion of hypothesis, there must be other hypotheses yet to come, and so the Tantra system, a compound of old Brahminism with the magic and witchcraft and Shamanism of Northern Asia burst into view.
At least 50 per cent of the adherents of Brahminism are married before they are ten years old and 90 per cent before they are fifteen. This also is an ancient custom and is due to several reasons. Fathers and mothers desire to have their children settled in life, as we say, as early as possible, and among the families of friends they are paired off almost as soon as they are born.
Thus there arose in Buddhism, by a departure from the doctrine of the master, a new polytheism. This was afterwards, through the influence of the Brahminical priestly caste, suppressed in India, but spread over other parts of Asia, to the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and also to China. e. Later modification of Brahminism in connection with the worship of Siva and Vishnu.
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