Bennington semi-weekly banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 1894-1902, 1894-08-07
DISCONTINUED WITH THEIR GODS.
Deities of India Failed to Give Their Wor-
shippers Entire Satisfaction.


The gods Of India are everywhere, and
yet they seem to be nowhere. The religion
has been one long winter of discomfort
One prolonged struggle on the part of the
people to worship many gods under many
shapes, while always on the point of be-
lieving in one single divine essence as the
cause and creator Of all things; hand to
hand fight between polytheism and mono
theism, in which the priests have continual
ly endeavored to play the part of concili-
ators.
Vishnu and silva are now the chief con-
tending parties, and the priests have tried
to make them agree by adding third SUI
preme deity in the shape Of Brahma. OF
this fact ingenious searohers after collat-
eral evidence for Christianity have made
capital, saying that Brahma, Vishnu and
silva are inseparable, and thSt the Hindoos
are evidently In possession of the dogma OF
the trinity. AS a matter of fact this 10
pure nonsense and contains as much truth
as the parallels that have been drawn be-
tween Christ and Buddha, Christ and
Krishna, Napoleon the Great and Apollo.
Archbishop Whately, in his great squib,
showed once and for all the absurdity Of
such demonstrations.
For the chief of the Buddhist institu
lions was the monastery, and in no Gath
Ollie country have the mendicant and priest
ly orders ever hourished in such numbers,
in such wealth or in such power as they
did in India during the 800 or 900 years
which elapsed from the rise to the extinc
ton of Buddhism. The monks took the
VOWS of poverty and mendicancy as indi-
viduals, but the order, as q body, owned
vast estates, magnificent buildings and
untold riches Their error lay in severing
themselves too much from the people, in
making their religion too abstract for pop
ular comprehension, in leading lives which
were too secluded to admit breadth of view
and too well provided with good things
for any great intellectual activity. They
have left but little behind them worthy to
be ranked as literature.
In countries where people I've much IN
the open air, dress simply when they dress
at all and eat what they can get it requires
little effort of imagination or skill Of pen
to make them seem as primitive as ono
pleases. AS matter of fact, where it is
very easy to live, or at least where little
thought or labor is requisite to obtain the
means of living, nation endowed with
any natural activity Is very likely to de-
vote it's energies to intellectual pursuits,
and the result is sure to be state Of na-
tional thought which, in spite Of scanty
clothing and rice for breakfast, dinner
and supper, will turn out the very reverse
of primitive. India Is such q country, and
so far as the AryanE are concerned always
has been. What it was before the Aryan
conquest we have no means Of knowing,
but it is not at all likely that the modern
religion and customs belonged tc the abo-
regimes prior to that date. 1t seems much
more natural to suppose that the Vedio
hymns and the Vedic faith-if we may SO
call it-were at all times the exclusive
property of the higher classes of the Ar
vans, and that popular religions existed
among the masses as they do now stimuli
taneously with the highly civilized belief
of the Vedic Brahmans. The word brah-
mana, as designating a member Of the
priestly caste-distinguished from the
brahman, the officiating priest and singer
of the sacred versas-is found only in the
very latest of the hymns, showing that
no such distinction was necessary before
the fusion Of the classes which probably
accompanied the southwark migration
Marion Crawford in Century.