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vol. title: Vol Four of The Theosophical Society of The Arya Samaj of Arya-wart vol. period: Sept 1878 – Sept 1879 pages in vol.: 350 |
< The Arya Samaj of Bombay (continued from page 8-226) >
forth the Arya Samaj and the Theosophical Society have to work hand-in-hand; and from their co-operation we expect mighty results.
Before we conclude we wish to address a few words to our readers. We have been charged by the Bombay Missionary papers, as having taken to blow the Theosophical trumpet. By our friends we have been accused of doing too much of a good thing. We will only reply, that we are not like those who are afraid to proclaim the truth—not once, nor twice, but as often as we can. Why should we be ashamed to speak well of and take more than a passing interest in the society, whose aims are noble, and which promises to arouse the youth of India to high thought and noble deed?
Religion in India
The current number of the Calcutta Review has an able and interesting article on ‘Religion in India’ from the pen of Mr. H. G. Keene, District and Sessions Judge of Meerut. Mr. Keene is a well-known Anglo-Indian scholar, and his opinions always command respect, for he ever writes with a full mind and a sympathetic heart. He is not one of those Civilians, who can see nothing in India except a trying climate, a hot sun, fever and cholera, and stupid servants. He is not one of those, who are for ever bewailing the fate that induced them to come out to such a dull, out-of-the-way place as India, and are consoling themselves with brandy and soda, and periodical trips to Simla, Mahableshwur or the Neilgherries. It is quite apparent that Mr. Keene has managed to find out that time does not hang heavy in this country, and that it affords as many resources for an active mind as any other place in the world. If Mr. Keene’s example were followed by the Civilians generally, they would cease to torment themselves and all about them, and employ their leisure hours in doing good to themselves and to the country at large. The English people are said to love all that is antique; and India is essentially the land of antiquities. Religious, scientific, historical associations crop up round each step, and the most neglected corner, if properly questioned, will reply with a thousand traditions to the genuine antiquary.
The subject which Mr. Keene has thus boldly undertaken to despatch in a single article has not been so exhaustively treated as it deserved to be; but that is not, perhaps, his fault. But in the course of a single article he has managed to speak of the different systems of religion that prevailed in India from time to time. Thus he is led to speak of Mahomedanism, Brahminism, Buddhism, Christianity and Brahmoism, and to institute comparisons between them, comparisons not always just and oftener vague and farfetched. Mr. Keene concludes his article by a surmise as to what will be the future religion of India. Mr. Keene speaks of the Hindoo Pantheon as a fabric, covered with a ‘roof of many tinted glass’, and he proceeds to say:—“Many climates and soils have combined to produce its various elements. The proto-Aryan hymns to the Dawn, the Clouds and the Forces that surround man in his days of simpleness; the historical pretension of the later Epic Poems; the didactic triviality of the legal Codes; the monstrous fecundity of the Puranas; and even the subtlety of the Alexandrian Greeks; all these have been absorbed in the multifarious fabric.” This is a tolerably correct view of modern Hindooism. Such views, at least, were held by Hindoos generally before the days of Raja Rammohun Roy. Mr. Keene speaks of the Raja in terms of high eulogy. But we think, that all who have had occasion to speak of the Raja, from Miss Martineau down to Mr. Keene, have unsuccessfully attempted to comprehend the full scope of his life and opinions. Rammohun Roy was a reformer of no common order. He was the first native of India, who revived among his countrymen the love for Vedic liter-<... continues on page 8-228 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Religion in India by Keene, Henry George, Indian Spectator, The, Sunday, May 18, 1879