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gation to that country, which needs not
our philosophy, education, ethics and social
life as much as it needs the Gospel and
the life of Christ.

of the plastic and compromise-loving Hindu. Add to this a primitive divine revelation to mankind before the development of races began and the fact that God, "who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways, has not left himself without witness," (Acts 14: 16-17) and it will be readily seen that Hinduism, in religious

religion rather than vice versa.

Not the doctrines of Christianity, but some of its external features have had their origin in India. Such for instance are the institutions of monastic and conventual life, the retirement from the world and self-torture of hermits, the use of bells for churches, of rosaries, of pictures and relics of saints, all of which it is difficult to account for in any other manner than that they have come to us through Buddhism, which originated in India, and which during its early stages made its influence felt over the whole Orient.

The writer professes no sympathy with the theosophic craze, or with the assertions of the Vedantist and Theosophist that Christianity has borrowed a large portion of her teachings and forms of relig-matters, has borrowed from the Christian ious life from Hinduism or rather Buddhism. On the contrary all the ethnic faiths of Asia, such as Zoroasterianism, Mohammedanism, as well as those just mentioned, which had their origin in India, can be shown to be greatly indebted to the Christian religion for many of their sublimer elements. We know that even in the time of Solomon India came into contact with Judaism. In the early centuries of the Christian era the Hindus, who were not prohibited, as at present, from foreign travel, frequently visited the Occident. Many were sent as embassies to western countries. The emperors Claudius and Trajan, Autonius Pius and Diocletian, received such embassies from Ceylon and India. In A. D. 274 a body of Hindus were carried by Aurelius to Rome to grace his triumph. According to Ptolemy there were many Hindus at Alexandria in the beginning of the third century, who doubtless felt the power of Christian truth through such men as Clement and Origen. In like manner also we should remember the early turning of Christians towards the East. While it is still doubtful whether the apostle Batholomew established the Christrian faith in Southern India, yet it is an historic fact that Christians have lived there and have striven to promulgate their faith among the Hindu community for at least sixteen centuries. The Syrian church, or "St. Thomas Christians" in India, who are nearly all Protestants, number their adherents by the hundred thousands. So it cannot be gainsaid that the Christians for many centuries have not been without influence in shaping the religious thought

A few years ago it was generally thought that Brahmanism was little else than the insane ravings of well-meaning, but unguided, or rather misguided, denizens of darkness, their whole literature was considered a mass of intellectual and moral rubbish. How much the verdict of Western scholars has changed need not be mentioned. We are not prepared to accept the statement of the great pessimistic German philosopher who exclaimed, "In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life-it will be the solace of my death." And yet the religious truths contained in the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and many other sacred books of the Hindus are numerous and spiritually helpful. Many descriptions of divine attributes and actions, expressions of piety and devotion stand, for poetic diction and for flights of the imagination, second to none in the world.

The contributions of India to our intellectual life, however, are more numerous than the

religious, and these have placed us under another debt of gratitude. Dr. Matheson maintains that "It is not too much to say that the mind of the West, with all its undoubted impulses towards the progress of humanity, has never exhibited such an intense amount of intellectual force as is to be found in the religious speculations of India. . . . These have been the cradle of all Western speculations, and wheresoever the European mind has risen into heights of philosophy, it has done so because the Brahman has been the pioneer. There is no intellectual problem in the West, which had not its earliest discussion in the East, and there is no modern solution of that problem which will not be found anticipated in the East." This may be regarded as rather strong language, yet this Scotch divine undoubtedly knew what he was writing about.

Poetry. The Brahmans have been at once the composers and the keepers of their sacred literature, the philosophers, the men of science, the law-makers and the poets of the Hindu people. The amount of their intellectual activity and philosophical speculation several thousand years before Christ was enormous. Some of their philosophical treatises are still used as textbooks in our great European universities. The Mahabharata is the greatest epic poem ever written. It contains 220,000 lines, while the Iliad of Homer does not amount to 16,000 lines and Virgil'sÆneid contains less than 10,000. Fables of animals have from old been favorites in India. The Sanskrit Pancha-tantra, or "Book of BeastTales," which every Telugu missionary must study to perfect himself in classical Telugu, was translated into Persian as early as the sixth century A. D., and thence found its way to Europe. Goethe's great poem, "Reinecke Fuchs," is based upon it and the animal fables of ancient India are the beloved nursery stories of Germany, England and America at the present day.

It is to the Hindus that we owe the first

Arab

system of medicine. In this branch of learn ing the Brahmans learned nothing from the Greeks, but taught them much. medicine was founded on translations from Sanskrit works about 800 A. D. European medicine, down to the seventeenth century, was based upon the Arabic. The Indian physician, Charaka, who is supposed to have lived before Christ, was often quoted in European books of medicine written in the middle ages.

"There were only two nations in the whole history of the world," says Max Müller, "which have conceived independently and without any suggestions from others, the two sciences of Logic and Grammar, the Hindus and the Greeks." The Sanskrit grammar of Panini, compiled about 350 B. C., is still the foundation of the study of language. In this subject the Brahmans were far before the Greeks or Romans, or indeed any European nation down to the present century. Plato knew only of noun and verb, the distinction of the numbers was first pointed out by Aristotle. In the Pratisakya, on the contrary, we meet at once with an exhaustive classification of the parts of speech. Panini was probably the greatest grammarian that ever lived. The Sanskrit or "perfected speech" was used only by the learned. The common people spoke a similar form of the same language, called Prakrit. From this old Prakrit the modern dialects of India descend, hence also the similarity of our own Telugu grammar with that of the Sanskrit language.

The Indian syllogism is five membered: I, Assertion, the mountain has fire; 2, Reason, because it has smoke; 3, Proposition, all that has smoke has fire; 4, Assumption, the mountain has smoke; 5, Deduction, therefore, it has fire.

In arithmetic the Hindus have the glory of inventing decimal notation. The science of algebra received a remarkable degree of development in India; the application of algebra to astronomical investigation and

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to geometrical demonstrations is a peculiar
invention of the Hindus; and their manner
of conducting it has received the admira-
tion of modern western mathematicians.

The Brahmans had also an art of music
of their own. The seven notes which they
invented, at least four centuries before
Christ, passed through the Persians to
Arabia and were thence introduced into
European music in the eleventh century
A. D. Indian music with its complex
divisions or modes and numerous sub-
tones, prevent it from pleasing the Euro-
pean or American ear, which has been
trained on a different system; but it is
highly original and interesting from a sci-
entific point of view. Dr. McLane, a for-
mer collector of the Nellore district in In-
dia, who has made a thorough study of
this subject, claims that "real music can
only be found in India." This is probably
an extreme view; it is a fact, however, that
the people of India much prefer their own
music to ours.

Occultism.-The Hindus claim to have sixty-four different arts and sciences. Many of these are of an occult nature. A

few have recently been introduced into Western countries through the theosophist propaganda and Swami Vivekananda's preaching in America and England. I mention some of these: No. 12, The science of prognosticating by omens and augury; No. 36, The art of summoning by enchantment; No. 51, The art of walking in the air and of becoming invisible; No. 54, The art of leaving one's body and entering another lifeless body or substance at pleasure; No. 62, The art of preventing the discovery of things concealed. It must be confessed that this last one is a rather doubtful contribution and a bad legacy, but possibly the only one that can be mentioned. The sooner we give it back to India the better, or the more speedily we can supplant it by the highest of all sciences and the religion of Jesus Christ the better for India and ourselves. India owes 11S little, but we are heavily indebted to it. "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more." (Luke 12: 48.)

THE HINDU ON HINDUISM

A VERY influential paper, The Hindu,

the organ of orthodox Hinduism in Madras, says of the present Brahman priesthood:

"Profoundly ignorant as a class, and infinitely selfish, it is the mainstay of every unholy, immoral, and cruel custom and superstition, from the wretched dancing girl who insults the Deity by her existence, to the pining child widow, whose every tear and every hair of whose head shall stand up against every one who shall tolerate it, on the day of judgment."

And of the endowed temples and shrines it says in another issue: "The vast majority of these endowments are corrupt to the core. They are a festering mass of crime and vice and gigantic swindling."

The Reis and Rayyet, an influential newspaper of Northern India, sneers at Mrs. Besant's ecstasies over the "Beauties of Hinduism" and utters these scorching words: "When an English lady of decent culture professes to be an admirer of pantric mysticism and Krishna worship, it behooves every well wisher of the country to tell her plainly that sensible men do not want her eloquence for gilding that which is rotten."

The Indian Nation, another orthodox paper, says: "The pure, undefiled Hinduism which Swami Vivekananda preached, has no existence to-day; has had no existence for centuries . . . . as a fact abomination worship is the main ingredient of modern Hinduism."

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* A RICE CONVERT * *

BY THE AUTHOR OF "AN HONORARY MISSIONARY"

LYING in my hammock, half awake and

half asleep, I was dreamily watching

a sinuous and slowly moving bulge on the white canvas cloth over my head. I knew it represented a snake, but I knew also that he would not harm me if I let him alone, and I waited to see if he would capture the rat which inspired his slow and stealthy progress across the cloth ceiling of my room. Outside, the hot and brilliant noon of India reigned supreme. Not a living thing seemed to move in its Even the deathly and enveloping heat.

punkah-wallah, overcome by the noontide fervor, had fallen asleep. I was all the hotter for lack of the feeble artificial breeze he had been making, but was too

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I never could make up my mind to adopt the ingenious plan of some white men in India, who arrange a dish of water, so placed that when the punkah-wallahi, overcome by the heat and drowsiness, drops asleep, and the whirring rope ceases to act, by pulling a string, the sleeper gets an involuntary bath. I always thought how little I should like it myself. Then again the dish of water would serve only once and the Hindu would fall asleep many times. So my punkah-wallah often slept at his ease, while I rolled and perspired with the heat.

The bulge in the cloth ceiling was al

most to the wall of the room. A quick shake of the cloth and a small squeak showed that my friend the snake had helped to make the number of rats in the thatch of my house one less in number. I shared his satisfaction at his success, and involuntarily turned to try again for another sleep.

As I turned my eyes toward the doorway I saw that one of the sharp, brilliant rays of sunshine which penetrated the semi-darkness of my room through every crack in door and shutter, was interrupted by some object, and with lazy curiosity I watched developments. Something was surely moving across the floor of my room. What it was and how it got there I could not tell.

As it came nearer into a little brighter ray of sunshine on the floor I saw that my guest was a man,—a tall, athletic Hindu, with the stripes of his caste in the centre of his forehead, and dressed in the snowy turban and robes of his class. "What do you want?" I sharply asked. My uninvited guest salaamed profoundly, and with deep, melodious voice replied, "May it please the Sahib, I am a Christian."

Con

This was decidedly interesting. verts from the higher castes of India are too rare a sight to a missionary to be neglected. With a vigorous pull on the string I stirred my sleepy punkah-wallah into action, and turning to my uninvited guest I asked him how he became a Christian.

I found he did not believe in idols, either that they were gods or that they had any power for good or ill. He had been a fakir in the past and had learned by experience the worthlessness and hollowness of priestly pretensions, and the falseness of the claims of the Brahmans.

As, with the courtesy native to the Hindu, and with soft, melodious voice, he told his story my heart rejoiced at this new recruit for Christianity. With graceful

and persuasive gestures, he emphasized his desire to leave his old religion and to become a follower of the God of the Christians. With a caution learned by long experience of Hindu ways I began to question him.

"What will your friends say if you leave the Hindu religion and become a Christian?"

A cloud passed over his countenance as he replied: "They will cast me off, but I will serve the mission. I shall give up my family and I shall lose my work, but I will become a servant of the mission."

Alas! there came to light the hidden subtlety of the Hindu mind. The idea of sacrifice without compensation is unknown to the Hindu. If he builds a temple it is for merit; if he fasts it is that he may gain favor; if he walks on burning coals, lies upon a couch of spikes, permits himself to be hung by a hook from a lofty pole, or throws himself under the wheels of the car of Juggernaut, he always expects to gain more than he will lose.

My hopes failed. I explained to the would-be convert the necessity of sacrifice for his new faith. I told of the unrewarded sacrifice of Jesus Christ, how He gave Himself for us, and all for our good, expecting nor gaining nothing in return. I urged the new convert to follow in the footsteps of the Savior.

"The words of the Sahib are good, they are true. I believe them," was his reply. "But without work I cannot live. Can I not serve the mission?"

It never came to me before with so much force, the great contrast between a convert to Jesus Christ in a Christian land and a Christian convert in a heathen land. In the home land the convert finds everything to help. Friends cluster around him; the arms of the church are open to receive him; he enters more fully even into the current of life in the best and highest

sense.

Before the Christian convert in India

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