Page:The religions of India.djvu/193

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V.

HINDUISM.

Sect the very essence of Hinduism.—Place which the Veda and ancient tradition hold in it.—Part which the Brahmans play in it: as having adopted while they control the new religions, though these have never been entirely subject to them.

The sectarian or neo-Brahmanic religions, which we embrace under the general designation of Hinduism, and which are at the present time professed by about 180,000,000 people^[1] in British India, Nepal, Ceylon, Indo-China, the Sunda Isles, at the Mauritius, at the Cape, and as far as the West Indies, where they have been imported by the Coolies, do not form a whole as homogeneous as ancient Brahmanism, still less Buddhism and Jainism. In spite of the efforts made at different periods and from different points of view to reduce them to a kind of unity, they have steadily resisted every attempt to group them systematically. They constitute a fluctuating mass of beliefs, opinions, usages, observances, religious and social ideas, in which we recognise a certain common ground-principle, and a decided family likeness indeed, but from which it would be very difficult to educe any accurate definition. At the present time it is next to impossible to say exactly what Hinduism is, where it begins, and where it ends. Diversity is its very essence, and its

1. According to the census of 1S72, the population of British India amounted to 245,000,000, of whom 140,000,000 were Hindus. In this number were not included the half-naturalised populations, who are socially excluded from Hinduism, but who, in a religious point of view, cannot be entirely separated from it.