The Dalles times-mountaineer. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1882-1904, 1896-11-28
JlscoNTENTED WITH The GODS
Hindoos Constantly Struggling Betweer
Polytheism and Monotheism.


Polytheism and Monotheism.
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 al
ways on the point of believing in one
single divine essence as the cause and
creator of all things; hand to hand
fight between polytheism and monothe-
ism, in which the priests have contin-
ually endeavored to play the part OF
conciliators. Vishnu and silva are now
the chief contending parties, and the
priests have tried to make them agree
by adding third supreme deity in the
shape of Brahma. OF this fact ingen-
ious searchers after collateral evidence
of Christianity have made capital, say
ing that Brahma. Vishnu and silva are
inseparable, and that the Hindoos are
evidently in possession Of the dogma OF
the trinity, says writer in the Cen
trry. AS q matter Of fact this is pure
nonsense, and contains as much truth
as the parallels that have been drawn
between Christ and Buddha, Christ and
Krishmn, 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 Buddhist institutions
was the monastery, and in no Catholic
country have the mendicant and priest
ly orders ever fourished in such num-
bers, ir such wealth or in such power
as they did in India during the eight
or nine hundred years which elapsed
from the rise to the extinction OF Budd,
hism.
The monks took the vows Of poverty
and mendicancy as individuals, but the
order, as 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 popular comprehension, in leading
lives which were too secluded to admit
of any breadth of view and too we'll
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 live 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 one
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, a nation en-
dowed with any natural activity is very
likely to devote its energies to intel
lectual pursuits; and the result is sure
to be state of national thought which,
in despite of scanty clothing and rice
for breakfast, dinner ana supper, will
turn out the very reverse Of primitive.
India is such q country, and, so far as
the Aryans are concerned, always has
been. What it was before the Aryan
conquest we have no means of know
ing, but it is not at all likely that the
modern religions and customs belonged
to the aborigines prior to that date. 1t
seems much more natural to suppose
that the Vedic hymns and the Vedic
faith-if we may SO call it-were at all
times the exclusive property Of the
higher class of Aryans and that popu-
lar religions existed among the masses,
as they do now, simultaneously with
the highly-civilized belief of the Vedic
Brahmans. The word brahmana, as
designating a member of the priestly
caste distinguished from the brahman,
the officiating priest and singer of the
sacred verses), is found only in the very
latest of the hymns, showing that no
such distinction was necessary before
the fusion of the classes which proba-
bly, accompanied the southwark migra-
tion.