BENGAL.
291
while these sheets were passing through the press (1884), and has left a Some of his more zealous fol-
blank in the Indian religious world.
lowers already disclose an inclination to accord divine honours to their
The number
beloved teacher and friend.
Brahmo opinions
is
considerable.
result of education has
the formation of religious, social, or political associations in
60
the country, about
in
who hold
of educated natives
Another
all
been
parts of
They
number, with 2000 members.
are
directed chiefly to educational matters, and to the abolition of the cruel restrictions
imposed by custom or
superstition.
Great religious
low -castes. Holy men or teachers spring up, sometimes close to Calcutta, sometimes in secluded Districts, and make thousands or hundreds of thousands of converts. The Vaishnava sect is now the prevailing one in Bengal. Among the low -caste Districts of the east, especially in Assam, it absorbs almost the whole of the inferior classes of the Hindus. It starts from
movements
also
take
place
among
the
a revolt against the spiritual bondage imposed by the distinctions of caste.
Aboriginal Creeds
.
—Besides the
45^ millions of Hindus, and the 22
millions of Musalmans, a great residue remains.
It consists,
with the
exception of the two small bodies of Christians and Buddhists, of semi-
and distinctly non-Aryan races, who number 2. millions These peoples dwell, for the most part, among the lofty ranges and primeval forests which wall in Bengal on the north, east, and south-west, or upon the spurs and hilly outworks which these mountain systems have thrown forward upon the lowlands. Some of them represent the simplest types of social organization known to modern research. Their rudimentary communities are separated by religion, custom, and language from each other and from the dwellers on the plains. Many of them, till lately, looked upon war as the normal condition of human society, and on peace as an unwelcome temporary break in their existence. For ages they have regarded the lowland Hindus as their natural enemies, and in return they were dealt with as beasts of chase by the more civilised inhabitants of the valleys. Within the present generation, human sacrifice continued an obligatory rite among some of them a rite so deeply graven upon their village institutions, and so essential to the annually recurring festivals of their religious year, as to seriously occupy the Indian Legislature, and to aboriginal
in Bengal.
—
require a
special
agency to suppress
like foreign rule renders
possible under their
it
it.
Their jealousy of anything
the wisest policy to leave
own hamlet communities and
them
as
much
petty chiefs.
as
Never-
form the most hopeful material yet discovered in Bengal humanizing influences of Christianity, and of that higher level
theless, they
for the
of morality and civilisation which Christian missions represent.
One
of the most noteworthy features of the Indian Census of 1881,
as
