Historical Outline of the Period

CHAPTER I

MODERN RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN INDIA

HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF THE PERIOD

1. Our subject is Modern Religious Movements in India, that is, the fresh religious movements which have appeared in India since the effective introduction of Western influence. There are two great groups of religious facts the presence of which we must recognize continuously but which are excluded from our survey by the limitations of our subject. These are, first, the old religions of India, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and Muḥammadanism, so far as they retain the form and character they had before the coming of Western influence; and, secondly, Christian Missions, which are rather a continuation of Church History than a modern movement. The old religions are the soil from which the modern movements spring; while it will be found that the seed has, in the main, been sown by Missions. Thus, though these great systems are not included in our subject, we must, throughout our investigation, keep their constant activity and influence in mind.

It seems clear that the effective interpenetration of India by the West began about 1800. The first fresh religious movement appeared in 1828; the intellectual awakening of India began to manifest itself distinctly about the same time; and the antecedents of both go back to somewhere about the beginning of the century. The period we have to deal with thus extends from 1800 to 1913.

In 1800 India was in a pitiable plight. Early Hindu governments seldom succeeded in securing settled peace even in the great central region of the country for any extended period of time; but matters became much worse when the flood of Muḥammadan invasion came at the end of the twelfth century. When the nineteenth century dawned, India had scarcely known peace for six hundred years. Even under the best of the Mughals there was frequent fighting, and a good deal of injustice; under all other Muslim rulers there was practically constant war and frequent outbreaks of barbarity; while the eighteenth century piled misery on misery. It is heartbreaking to read descriptions of India at that time.

We can now see that British supremacy began to assert itself with the battle of Plassey in 1757; yet the rulers had scarcely a definite policy until the opening of the new century; and, even then, Britain had not by any means awaked to the greatness and the splendour of the task set before her in India. We must never forget that the East India Company went to India exclusively for commerce, and that the British Empire sprang altogether from the necessity, which was only very gradually realized, of providing a settled and just government in order to make commerce possible.

2. In 1800 Hinduism, which was the religion of at least three-fourths of the population of the peninsula, consisted, in the main, of two great groups of sects and a mass of wandering celibate ascetics, who were held to be outside society. The two great groups of sects are the Vishṇuite and the Śivaite. The Vishṇuite sects were very numerous, both in the North and in the South, and they were perhaps, on the whole, more homogeneous than the worshippers of Śiva. The leading Vishṇuite sects declare Vishṇu to be the one God, and yet they recognize the existence of all the other divinities of the Hindu pantheon. They also hold that Vishṇu has been incarnate among men a great many times, the latest and chief incarnations being Rāma and Kṛishṇa. Worshippers of Śiva declare that Śiva is the one God, but recognize also all the other gods. A special group of Śivaite sects has to be noticed, namely, those who pay honour to the wife of Śiva as Kālī or Durgā. Both Vishṇuites and Śivaites worship idols, but among Śivaites the phallic symbol is more usual than images of the god. Both sects worship their gurus, that is, their teachers, as gods. Both are fully orthodox in the sense that they retain and enforce with great strictness the ancient Hindu rules of conduct which are summed up under the word dharma. Both sects claim to be Vedāntists, but each has its own interpretation of the philosophy. Around the Hindu community in every part of the country there lived multitudes of degraded Outcastes, held down in the dirt by Hindu law. They number about fifty millions to-day.

When the century dawned, Hindus were in a pitifully backward condition. Their subjugation by the Muḥammadans about 1200 A.D. had been a very serious trampling under foot; and, while the reasonable rule of the Mughals had given them a breathing-space, the terrific convulsions of the eighteenth century had more than undone all that had been recovered. Learning had almost ceased; ordinary education scarcely existed; spiritual religion was to be met only in the quietest places; and a coarse idolatry with cruel and immoral rites held all the great centres of population. The condition of South Indian Hinduism at the end of the eighteenth century is very vividly reflected in l’Abbé Dubois’ famous work, and the Hinduism of the North at the beginning of the nineteenth in the writings of Ram Mohan Ray. The reader may make a rough guess at the state of the Hindu community from the long list of reforms, social and religious, which the early missionaries felt driven to demand¹ and which all the finer spirits within Hinduism have since then recognized as altogether necessary.

Buddhism, which came to the birth about 525 B.C., attained extraordinary greatness before the Christian era, and during the next six centuries not only spread over the whole of Eastern and Southern Asia, but struggled with Hinduism for the primacy in India. Thereafter it steadily declined in the land of its origin ; the Muḥāmmadan conquest all but destroyed it ; and Hinduism gradually absorbed what remained. Thus there were practically no Buddhists in India proper at the opening of the nineteenth century ; but on the Himalayas, in Burma and in Ceylon the faith was still supreme.

Jainism was originally an agnostic philosophy which arose a little earlier than Buddhism, and, like Buddhism, became transformed at an early date into a religion and a rival of Hinduism. By the beginning of our period the ancient Jain community had shrunk to small proportions. They were scattered over a large part of the country, and were wealthy and prosperous ; but there was no vigour in Jainism ; and there was a slow, continuous drift towards Hinduism ; so that the community was steadily dwindling in numbers.

The Parsees are a small community of Zoroastrian Persians who fled from Persia to India in the eighth century A.D., and have since then remained a prosperous business community, very exclusive socially and very faithful to their ancient religion. They originally settled in Gujarāt ; but, since early last century, Bombay has been their chief centre.

In 1800 Muḥāmmadanism in India was very orthodox and very ignorant, and was steadily deteriorating. The collapse of the Muḥāmmadan governments and the steady fall of Muslim character had worked sad havoc in the religion itself.

Muḥammadans formed perhaps one-sixth of the population. They were necessarily discontented and crushed, having been conquered both by the Marāṭha Hindus and by the British. Yet they were not so cowed nor so weak as the Hindus. The British had entered into the heritage of their administration; multitudes of Muslims were still government officials; and Urdu, the hybrid tongue which had grown up as a medium of communication in the Muḥammadan camp, was still the official language in the law-courts and elsewhere. The bulk of public education was thus still Muḥammadan in character; and what men studied most was the Persian and Urdu languages. Yet the Muslim community was steadily declining. There was no living movement of thought and no spiritual leader among them.

3. Can we see what was the cause of the great Awakening which began about 1800 and since then has dominated the life and history of India? How was the Muslim period so barren as compared with the nineteenth century? How is it that European influence produced practically no results between 1500 and 1800? Why did the Awakening begin at that particular point?

The answer is that the Awakening is the result of the co-operation of two forces, both of which began their characteristic activity about the same time, and that it was quickened by a third which began to affect the Indian mind a little later. The two forces are the British Government in India as it learned its task during the years at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, and Protestant Missions¹ as they were shaped by the Serampore men and Duff; and the third force is the work of the great Orientalists. The material elements of Western civilization have had their influence, but, apart from the creative forces, they would have led to no awakening. The proof of all this will gradually unfold itself in our chapters.

It was necessity that drove the East India Company to assume governmental duties. They had no desire to rule India, far less to reform the intellectual, social and religious life of the people. They were driven to undertake first one and then another administrative duty, because otherwise they could not obtain that settled government and those regular financial arrangements without which profitable commerce is impossible. But every step they took led to another; and gradually the conscience of Britain awoke and began to demand that India should be governed for the good of the people. It was during the last decades of the eighteenth century that the old trading company was gradually hammered into something like a government. The men who did the work were Clive, Hastings and Cornwallis. A succession of changes transformed its civil-servant traders, whose incomes depended on their business ability, into administrators living on a salary and strictly forbidden to make money by trading; while the Government itself steadily assumed new functions, and grew in knowledge of the people.

Protestant missionary history in India opens with the Danish Mission, which did very remarkable work in the Tamil country throughout the eighteenth century; but it was the toil of Carey and his colleagues that roused first Britain and then America and the Continent to a sense of their duty to the non-Christian peoples of the world. William Carey, an English Baptist, arrived in Calcutta on the 11th November, 1793, and, after many wanderings, settled as an indigo-planter near Malda in North Bengal. Here he studied Bengali and Sanskrit, began the work of translating the Bible into Bengali, gained his experience and developed his methods. In 1800 he settled in Serampore under the Danish flag; and in the same year he began to teach Sanskrit and Bengali in Lord Wellesley’s College in Calcutta. Then it was not long before the wiser men both in Missions and in the Government began to see that, for the immeasurable task to be accomplished, it was most necessary that Missions should take advantage of the advancing policy of the Government and that Government should use Missions as a civilizing ally. For the sake of the progress of India coöperation was indispensable.

The rise of Orientalism is contemporaneous with the beginnings of good government in North India and with the development of the new Mission propaganda, but it did not touch the Indian mind until later.¹ It was Warren Hastings who took the steps which led to Europeans becoming acquainted with Sanskrit and Hinduism. By his orders a simple code of Hindu law was put together and translated into English in 1776. In 1785 Charles Wilkins, who had been roused to the study of Sanskrit by Hastings, published a translation of the Bhagavadgītā; and Sir William Jones, the first great Sanskritist, published in 1789 a translation of Śakuntalā, the finest of all Indian dramas. Another Englishman, named Hamilton, happened to be passing through France on his way home, in 1802, and was arrested. During his long involuntary stay in Paris he taught Sanskrit to several French scholars and also to the German poet, Friedrich Schlegel. Thus was the torch handed on to Europe. The discovery of Sanskrit led to a revolution in the science of language. About the same time English scholars began the study of the flora and fauna of India, and also of her people.¹

4. But, though history has shown decisively that it was the British Government and Protestant Missions working together that produced the Awakening of India, we must note carefully that, at the outset, the Government vehemently opposed Missions. In order to understand their attitude, we must realize that their only object was trade, and that it was purely for the safeguarding of their trade that they had interfered with the politics of the land. In consequence, they regarded themselves as in every sense the successors of the old rulers and heirs to their policy and method, except in so far as it was necessary to alter things for the sake of trade. There was another point. They had won their territory by means of an Indian army composed mainly of high-caste Hindus, who were exceedingly strict in keeping all the rules of caste and of religious practice. Further, every competent observer was deeply impressed with the extraordinary hold Hinduism had upon the people. Every element of life was controlled by it.¹ In consequence, the Government believed it to be necessary, for the stability of their position, not merely to recognize the religions of the people of India, but to support and patronize them as fully as the native rulers had done, and to protect their soldiers from any attempt to make them Christians. Accordingly, they adopted three lines of policy from which, for a long time, they stubbornly refused to move:²

a. They took under their management and patronage a large number of Hindu temples. They advanced money for rebuilding important shrines and for repairing others, and paid the salaries of the temple officials, even down to the courtesans, which were a normal feature of the great temples of the South.³ They granted large sums of money for sacrifices and festivals and for the feeding of Brāhmans. Salvoes of cannon were fired on the occasion of the greater festivals; and government officials were ordered to be present and to show their interest in the celebrations. Even cruel and immoral rites, such as hook-swinging, practised in the worship of the gods, and the burning of widows, were carried out under British supervision. In order to pay for all these things, a pilgrim-tax was imposed, which not only recouped the Government for their outlay, but brought them a handsome income as well. Reformers in England and India found it a long and toilsome business to get this patronage of idolatry by a Christian Government put down. The last temple was handed over as late as 1862.

b. They absolutely refused to allow any missionary to settle in their territory. Carey got a footing in Bengal by becoming an indigo-planter; and he was not able to devote his whole time and energy to Christian work, until he settled at Serampore, twelve miles north of Calcutta, under the Danish flag. Many missionaries, both British and American, landed in India, only to be deported by the authorities. This policy was reversed by Act of Parliament in 1813.

c. They refused to employ native Christians in any capacity, and they enforced all the rigours of Hindu law against them. In the Bengal army, if any native soldier wished to become a Christian, he was forcibly prevented by the authorities; or, if by any chance he became baptized, he was expelled from the service. This fierce prejudice was so strong even at the time of the Mutiny that the services of thousands of Indian Christians were refused by the Government.

Yet from quite an early date there was a certain amount of collaboration between the Government and Missions. When Lord Wellesley founded, in 1800, the College of Fort William in Calcutta, to give his young Indian Civilians a training in Indian languages and literature, Carey was the only man who could be found to teach Sanskrit and Bengali. He was accordingly appointed Professor; and for many years, though his chief work was in Serampore, he spent one-half of each week in Calcutta, lecturing to Indian Civilians in the morning, and preaching to the poor in the evening. Government also took advantage of the Mission Printing Press at Serampore, where, for the first time in history, Indian languages were printed in their own script; and they departed in one instance from their strict rule of deporting every missionary landing in India, because the new man was a skilled type-founder, and was about to cut, for the mission, Chinese type which the Government would be glad to use. At a later date the great problem of education drew the Government and Missions together.

The present wise policy of absolute religious neutrality was not reached until 1857, when, in the throes of the Mutiny, the East India Company came to an end, and the home Government became directly responsible for India. Since that moment, though many individual government officers, both civil and military, have misinterpreted British neutrality to mean what it certainly meant under the Company, namely, favour to the old religions and opposition to Christian work, yet the attitude of Government as such has been right. Every Christian to-day ought to rejoice that the policy of strict neutrality was adopted when India came under the Crown. Some people wished the Government to take a definite stand in favour of Christianity and to use its money and influence for the bringing of India into the Church; but it is as clear as noonday that that could have brought only disaster to the cause of Christ. No government can ever do the work of the Church; the government official as such cannot be an Apostle.

5. This discussion will enable us to sympathize with a number of ideas which have been influential in certain sections of Anglo-Indian society for a hundred and fifty years, and are still held by some. We can see how it is that men in business and in government have come to believe that we had better not touch the religion and civilization of India, that it is impossible to alter them, or to produce any lasting influence on Indian thought, and that every attempt to introduce change is bad for the people, on the one hand, and a grave danger to British trade and government, on the other.

It is well to notice that from time to time men of scholarship and character have held to the old policy and ideas in these matters. Horace Hayman Wilson, the famous Sanskrit scholar, was opposed to Bentinck’s abolition of satī,¹ and seriously believed that it would cause the Government grave difficulty.¹ As a matter of fact, Bentinck’s judgment was justified. No difficulty of any kind arose. Many noteworthy persons, and masses of business men throughout the nineteenth century have been opposed to educating the Indian. Lord Ellenborough, when Governor-General,

regarded the political ruin of the English power as the inevitable consequence of the education of the Hindus.²

Many a business man in Calcutta echoes this belief to-day, but no serious statesman holds such an opinion. Here is how the attitude of the people of Calcutta to missions was described in 1812:

All were convinced that rebellion, civil war, and universal unrest would certainly accompany every attempt to promote missionary enterprise, and, above all, that the conversion of a high-caste native soldier would inevitably mean the disbanding of the army and the overthrow of British rule in India.³

Gradually the policy of Government was brought into consonance with the political and religious convictions of the people of Britain; yet, in circles little touched by Christian enthusiasm and democratic feeling, the old ideas still persist, and find frequent expression in conversation and public addresses, in articles and books.

Probably no thinking man to-day believes that Western influence is producing no serious effect on the Indian mind; yet we must not forget that one of the greatest publicists who ever lived and wrote in India, Meredith Townsend, held, throughout a long life, that all the efforts of Britain to modify Indian thought and behaviour were absolutely hopeless. Here are two brief quotations from his volume of Essays, Asia and Europe:

All the papers are directed to one end, a description of those inherent differences between Europe and Asia which forbid one continent permanently to conquer the other. . . . It is rather a saddening reflection that the thoughts of so many years are all summed up by a great poet in four lines:

" The East bowed low before the blast, In patient deep disdain ; She let the legions thunder past, Then plunged in thought again.“¹

As yet there is no sign that the British are accomplishing more than the Romans accomplished in Britain, that they will spread any permanently successful ideas, or that they will found anything whatever. It is still true that if they departed or were driven out they would leave behind them, as the Romans did in Britain, splendid roads, many useless buildings, an increased weakness in the subject people, and a memory which in a century of new events would be extinct.²

Dubois held similar opinions :

I venture to predict that it (i.e. the British Government) will attempt in vain to effect any very considerable changes in the social condition of the people of India, whose character, principles, customs and ineradicable conservatism will always present insurmountable obstacles.³

It is necessary, for the understanding of the history of the nineteenth century, to realize how influential these ideas were for many years, though they begin to seem rather old-world and bloodless in the light of the Awakening, and especially of the religious upheaval we have to deal with.

LITERATURE.—The Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India, by Sir Alfred Lyall, London, Murray, 1894. Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, by J. A. Dubois, Oxford, Clarendon Press. A History of Missions in India, by Julius Richter, London, Oliphant. Asia and Europe, by Meredith Townsend.

We shall divide the period of one hundred and thirteen years with which we deal into four sections.

FIRST SECTION : 1800-1828

1. In this year 1800, from which we date the effective interpenetration of India by the West, a large part of the country was already under British rule, and Lord Wellesley was busy bringing the independent native princes within the scope of the empire by means of peaceful treaties. His policy proved very successful, and extended the empire far and wide. In the wars which arose his brother, later known as the Duke of Wellington, played a great part. His policy may be said to have completed itself in 1849, when the last remaining portion of India proper was added to the empire.

2. We have already seen that Carey, his apprenticeship over, had settled under the Danish flag at Serampore in 1800 and had at once become a Government professor in Calcutta. He gave a great deal of time to the translation of the Bible into the vernaculars of India and even into the languages of countries outside India ; but it was chiefly by the winning of actual converts from Hinduism, by his schools, newspapers and literature, that he was able to bring Christian thought effectively to bear on the Indian spirit. But it would have been impossible for him to make his work varied and effective had it not been for his two great colleagues, Marshman and Ward. Carey had been a cobbler, Marshman a Ragged-School teacher and Ward a printer. They were all largely self-taught. They differed greatly from each other, but differed in such a way as to supplement one another. Their methods of work were partly those which had been developed by Danish missionaries in South India in the eighteenth century, partly new. The basis of all their work was preaching and translation of the Bible. To this they added the publication of literature of many types, and very effective journalism. They had a printing press, and in it Indian type was first founded and used. They laid great stress on education, and opened numerous schools around them for both boys and girls. They opened boarding-schools and orphanages. They even attempted medical work, and did not neglect the lepers. They were most eager to send out native missionaries to preach throughout the country, and with that in view built a great college at Serampore, and received from the King of Denmark authority to confer degrees. Their study of Hinduism and the Hindu community convinced them that, for the health of the people, many social and religious reforms were necessary, for example, the total abolition of caste, the prohibition of widow-burning, of child-marriage, of polygamy and of infanticide, the granting to widows of the right to remarry, the prohibition of human sacrifice, of the torturing of animals in sacrifice, of human torture in worship, and of the gross obscenity practised in the streets. They took great care that caste should be utterly excluded from the Church of Christ.

In 1813, when it was necessary to renew the Charter of the East India Company, Parliament insisted, in spite of the opposition of the Directors of the Company, on inserting a clause in the Charter, giving missionaries full freedom to settle and work in India. There can be no question that this was largely a result of the wonderful work done at Serampore. Soon afterwards there was a great influx of missionaries into the country.

During these years a number of individual Europeans did what they could to start Western education in the great cities of India apart from missionary associations. David Hare, a Scotch watchmaker, was the pioneer of English studies among boys in Calcutta; and a Civil Servant, Mr. Drinkwater Bethune, succeeded in starting a school for Hindu girls in the same city. The Hon’ble Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone led both the Hindu and the Parsee community in Bombay to modern education. His name is perpetuated in the Government College of that city.

3. Three men stand out as pioneer Orientalists during these years, the great Colebrooke, to whom almost every aspect of Sanskrit and Hindu study runs back, H. H. Wilson, who published a number of very useful works, and Tod, a military officer, who studied the poetry, traditions and customs of the Rajputs so thoroughly that his Rājasthān is to this day the greatest and most beautiful work upon that people and their country.

4. But for our subject the most interesting name is that of Ram Mohan Ray, the founder of the Brāhma Samāj. We shall deal with his work in our next chapter. Here we note simply that the years from 1800 to 1828 were the years that formed him, and that while he was influenced by Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism, the forces which proved creative in him were unquestionably Christianity and the influence of the West in general. During these years he published almost all his books and conducted a vigorous agitation in Calcutta against widow-burning, which proved of great practical value.

No fresh religious movement worthy of notice appeared during these years.

LITERATURE. — Lyall, as above. Marshman’s History of India. Wellesley and Hastings in Rulers of India Series, Oxford University Press. Life of William Carey, by George Smith, in Everyman’s Library. Carey, Marshman and Ward, by George Smith. For the rise of Orientalism see Macdonell’s Sanskrit Literature, chap. I.

SECOND SECTION : 1828–1870

1. The British Empire in India continued to expand during these years until it covered the whole of India. The last portion to be added, namely the Panjab, was annexed in 1849, at the conclusion of the second Sikh war.

The Mutiny of 1857–1858 extends across the middle of our period like a dark bar, but we need not, in this brief historical outline, attempt to deal with it. It was essentially a reaction, a natural and almost inevitable result of the rapid conquest of the country and of the numerous reforms imposed on a most conservative people. So far from checking the process of the building up of the empire, the Mutiny, in the long run, produced most beneficial results; for the Crown became directly responsible for India; and both policy and method were clarified and simplified, to the immeasurable benefit of India.

Apart from the completion of the empire, the whole activity of the Government throughout this section might be described as one long programme of reform; and this aspect of its work is of more importance for our subject than the extension of the frontiers and the wars that shook down the old rulers. We take the beginning of the Governor-Generalship of Lord William Bentinck as the date of the opening of this section of our period, because he initiated the policy of reform, and began to apply in serious earnest the conviction, which had taken hold of the best minds at home, that Britain must govern India for the good of India. The reforms which he introduced may be best understood if we take them in three groups.

The first group consists of a list of cruel practices which had long been customary in India, and were closely connected with the religious life of the people. The principle on which the government decided to interfere with these religious customs is this, that to interfere with religion as such is beyond the province of rulers, but to prohibit customs which are grossly immoral and revolting to humanity is a most serious duty, even though these customs, through superstition and long tradition, have come to be regarded as most sacred. The chief of these customs prohibited were satī, the burning of a widow along with her husband’s body, thagī,¹ the strangling and robbery of travellers, female infanticide and human sacrifice.

The second group of reforms comes under the head of the recognition of human equality. It was decided that no native of India should suffer in any way because of his religious opinions, but that all should be absolutely equal before the law. The same idea found practical expression in the largely extended employment of Indians in Government service; but the reason the Directors had for asking Lord William to initiate the reform was the necessity of economy.

The third set of reforms gathers round the English language. For years there had been a serious controversy among government officials as to whether Government should support Oriental or Western education. The great success of Duff’s work in Calcutta, which we shall notice below, and the powerful advocacy of Macaulay, who was Legal Member of Council under Lord Bentinck, enabled the Governor-General to decide in favour of modern education. The English language became the official tongue of the empire, and the vehicle of instruction in all higher education. No more momentous decision was ever taken at the Indian Council Board. The working out of a new policy in education was necessarily left to Lord Bentinck’s successors. Government schools and colleges grew and multiplied; medical education was introduced; vernacular education was not neglected; and, in the midst of the throes of the Mutiny, the new system was crowned by the establishment of universities at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.

The results produced by English education in India are revolutionary in the highest degree. The following pages will give much evidence of the extraordinary changes in progress; but, so far as one can see, we have not nearly reached the end of the evolution; and no man can foretell what the ultimate result will be.

Other reforms of considerable magnitude followed. In 1843 an act was passed to render slavery in India illegal; and, in consequence, during the following years vast numbers of people who had been born and brought up in slavery gradually acquired liberty. Lord Dalhousie (1848–1856) introduced many reforms into the administration. His acts led to great improvements in the life and prosperity of the people throughout the vast empire. Amongst these was a law prohibiting certain gross obscenities which hitherto had been common in the streets of Indian cities. A clause had to be inserted excluding the temples, images and cars of Hindu gods from the operation of the law.

But the most far-reaching and precious reform of this section of history was the assumption of the government of India by the Crown. Every part of the service was quickened, purified and invigorated under the new system.

2. In Missions these decades are marked chiefly by great activity in education, especially in English education, and by a brilliant development of missionary method in many directions. The number of missionaries engaged in the Empire increased very greatly during those years; and the area covered by missions expanded with the Empire.

In 1830 a young Scotch missionary named Alexander Duff arrived in Calcutta. He decided to open a school for the teaching of English, believing that nothing would do so much for the opening of the Hindu mind as intercourse with the spirit of the West through the medium of the English language. Ram Mohan Ray obtained rooms for him in which to start his school and brought him some of his earliest pupils. His work rested on two convictions. The first of these was this, that the highest form of education is Christian education, namely, a thoroughly sound intellectual and scientific training, built on the moral and religious principles of Christ. To him the teaching of the Bible was the most essential element in the education he gave. Apart from that, mere intellectual drill might do more harm than good. His second conviction was that a modern education could be given to the Indian only through the medium of English, because their own vernaculars did not contain the books necessary for a modern education. His work opened a new missionary era in India. His school became extraordinarily popular; all the most promising young men of the city flocked to him; and the results of his teaching were very remarkable. Western thought caused a great ferment in their minds, breaking down the old ideas with great rapidity; and the daily Scripture lesson filled them with Christian thought. Soon a stream of fine young fellows began to pass out of Hinduism into the Christian Church, and Duff’s work and Christianity became the most absorbing topic of conversation throughout the Hindu community. Dr. John Wilson started similar work in Bombay and John Anderson in Madras. These were followed by other missionaries in other centres.

During these decades the Christian education of girls was pushed rapidly forward, and its methods well worked out. It was the desire to spread girls’ schools far and wide that led to the rapid increase of women missionaries and finally to a great influx of unmarried lady missionaries. Further contact with the people showed the piteous needs of the women of the upper classes shut up in zenānas; and consequently from about 1854 there was developed a new method of missionary service, the visitation of zenānas by women missionaries and their assistants. It was during this section of our period also that medical missions took shape. During all the previous years a little medical help had been given at various points; but now the Christian conscience of Europe and America was stirred to bring medical help to the millions of the common people of India, for whom no skilled assistance in the time of trouble and death was available. Gradually the idea took shape, and produced the Medical Mission, i.e. a Christian medical man, sent out to heal and to preach, well equipped with knowledge, with medicine and with surgical implements, and backed also with a dispensary, hospital and assistants. Here again the sufferings of the women of India led to something new. Men could not enter the zenānas, and yet in them much of the tragedy of Hindu pain and death took place. Such was the origin of the woman medical missionary, one of the most precious forms of help ever sent to India. Orphanages, widows’ homes and famine relief were all used to some extent during these years, but their full development comes later.

3. The years 1828–1870 saw the flowering of Oriental scholarship. Hodgson discovered the literature of Northern Buddhism during his residence in Nepal from 1833–1844. Roth published his epoch-making treatise on The Literature and the History of the Veda in 1846, and, in collaboration with Böhtlingk, began the issue of the great Petersburg Lexicon in 1852. Max Müller’s Text of the Ṛigveda was issued between 1849 and 1875. Meantime Prinsep and Cunningham laid the foundations of our knowledge of Indian art, epigraphy and archaeology. Even at this date the work of Oriental scholars did not influence the Indian mind seriously.

4. The new educational policy of the Government created during these years the modern educated class of India. These are men who think and speak in English habitually, who are proud of their citizenship in the British Empire, who are devoted to English literature, and whose intellectual life has been almost entirely formed by the thought of the West. Large numbers of them enter government service, while the rest practise law, medicine or teaching, or take to journalism or business. We must also note that the powerful excitement which has sufficed to create the religious movements we have to deal with is almost entirely confined to those who have had an English education.

It was in Bengal and Bombay that the results of the new policy became first conspicuous. The Bengalis in the East and the Parsees and Marāṭhas in the West took very eagerly to English education. Madras followed, and took quite as much advantage of the new situation. The Muḥammadans on the whole held back, but one prominent man, Sir Syed Aḥmad Khan, was far-sighted enough to see the folly of this attitude and did all he could to bring his people into line.

5. We have already noticed Ram Mohan Ray’s activity as a writer and social reformer. His greatest achievement coincides with the opening year of this section of our period. In 1828 he founded the Brāhma Samāj, a theistic society, opposed to polytheism, mythology and idolatry, the first and most influential of all the religious movements we have to deal with. But, eighteen months after it was founded, he sailed for England and never returned. The new society would have died, had it not been for the financial support of one of his friends, Prince Dwarka Nath Tagore. In 1842 Debendra Nath Tagore, the youthful son of Rama Mohan Ray’s friend, entered the Samāj, and soon became recognized as its leader. A new period of growth and fruitful labour followed. For nearly twenty years longer the Brāhma Samāj continued to be the most prominent indigenous religious movement. Just after the Mutiny a young Bengali, named Keshab Chandra Sen, became a member, and soon displayed remarkable powers. He led the little community into social reform, philanthropy and also, in some degree, into discipleship to Christ.

From the Brāhma Samāj there sprang in 1867 a kindred organization in Bombay, known as the Prārthanā Samāj. Its most prominent leaders belong to a later day. The Parsees of Bombay were busy at the same time with educational and social reform, but no organization sprang up among them.

We ought also to notice that in 1856, largely as a result of the agitation of a Calcutta Brāhman, Paṇḍit Īśvara Chandra Vidyāsāgara, the Government passed a law legalizing the re-marriage of Hindu widows.

Sir Syed Aḥmad Khan, whose influence on the Muḥammadan community we have already noted, was an eager social and religious reformer, but his most notable achievement was the foundation of the Muḥammadan College at Aligarh, which has done a great deal to rouse the Muḥammadans of North India to accept modern thought and to take their rightful place in government and education in these modern days.

LITERATURE.—Lyall, as above. India under Victoria, by L. J. Trotter, London, Allen, 1886, 2 vols. Bentinck, Dalhousie and Canning in Rulers of India Series. Trevelyon’s Life of Macaulay. The Administration of the East India Company, by J. W. Kaye, London, Bentley, 1853 (describes the great reforms). The Suppression of Human Sacrifice, Suttee and Female Infanticide, Madras, C. L. S. I., 1898, two and a half annas (abridged from Kaye). Richter’s History of Missions in India; and George Smith’s Lives of Duff and Wilson.

THIRD SECTION : 1870-1895

1. Continuous progress in the adaptation of British administration to the needs of India may be said to sum up the policy and the work of the government during those thirty years. A few points ought to be definitely mentioned. Perhaps the greatest social advance made by Government has been the elaboration of the Famine Code, whereby provision is made from year to year for the possible arrival of serious famine. Elaborate instructions, the reasoned outcome of very wide and very varied experience, are also laid down for the guidance of officers who have to deal with famine conditions. A Local Self-government Bill was passed by Lord Ripon’s Government with the definite purpose of educating the people in self-government. Good has certainly resulted from it but not quite so much as was looked for. The only other act which we need notice is the Age of Consent Act, passed in 1891, which prohibits a husband from living with his wife before she reaches the age of twelve.

2. From the very birth of missionary work in India there had been devoted men who had given their lives to toil amongst the Outcastes, but for a long time comparatively little fruit appeared. From 1876 to 1879 the South of India suffered from an appalling famine. Everywhere missionaries threw themselves into the work of saving life and alleviating distress; and this piece of disinterested service brought its reward. From 1880 onwards great masses of the Outcastes of South India passed into the Church of Christ. The movement has since spread to the North. It has proved the most signal of all the object-lessons given to India by Christians.

Women’s work for women, and medical work, both of which took shape, as we have seen, before 1870, have become greatly expanded and still further improved in method since then. These years have also seen the organization of systematic Christian work for lepers. Numerous hospitals have been built for them; and in many places badly managed shelters have been brought under Christian care, and are now doing wonderful work. A large proportion of the lepers cared for by Christians become Christians.

The rapid spread of English education has produced a very large student class, studying in three different types of institutions, government, missionary and native schools and colleges. The attention of Christians has been drawn to the moral and religious needs of this interesting group of young men in a number of ways, and also to the still larger group who are beyond the student stage. Methods of work have been steadily improved in Christian institutions. Hostels for non-Christians have been built in considerable numbers, and, under devoted Christian management, have produced such excellent results that there is a loud cry for the extension of the hostel system throughout the country. The student’s magazine, whether connected with a single college or meant for the students of a province, is also a creation of these years. The Young Men’s Christian Association, which had been working among Europeans for several decades, began to reach out to Indians, both Christian and non-Christian, in the year 1889, and has proved singularly popular and efficient. The young Indian Christian likes the Association because of its democratic government and the variety of its activities. To the young Hindu the Association has proved a very great boon in many a town. It is to him at once a happy social club and a centre of religious instruction. Its organization and methods have been copied by every religious group throughout India.

3. If Oriental study flowered before 1870, we may say that its fruit was plucked during the next thirty years. Great masses of the knowledge acquired by the leading scholars in previous decades were made available for the ordinary man during these years. We need only refer to these magnificent series of volumes, The Sacred Books of the East, Trübner’s Oriental Series, The Harvard Oriental Series and M. N. Dutt’s long list of translations. Several of the books published during these years have climbed to fame, notably Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia and The Song Celestial. Childers, a young civil servant in Ceylon, published in 1875 a Dictionary of Pali, and thus laid the basis of the scientific study of the literature of early Buddhism. Since 1870 Oriental study has reacted very powerfully on the Indian mind in various ways. Indian scholars, trained in European methods, have done brilliant service both in the editing of texts and in translation.

4. The reason why we date this section of our period from 1870 is that from about that date a great change manifests itself in the spirit of the educated classes of India. Hitherto they have been docile pupils: now they begin to show the vigour and independence of youth. There is a wonderful outburst of freshness, energy and initiative. Many forms of new effort and organization appear. The most pronounced line of thought is a growing desire to defend Hinduism, and an increasing confidence in its defensibility. The movement is now shared by Muslims, Buddhists, Jains and Parsees, but it appeared first among Hindus. Rather later, new political aspirations began to be expressed; the Indian National Congress came into being; and the native press climbed to great influence. About the same time the Social Reform Movement was organized. The first college organized by Hindus was opened in Calcutta in 1879.

5. Religiously, the new feeling created what was practically a Counter-Reformation. A large number of religious movements sprang into being, all of them quite as distinctly opposed to the Brāhma Samāj and the Prārthanā Samāj as to Christianity. We divide these movements into two groups, those which insist on a good deal of reform, and those which lay all their emphasis on defence of the old faiths.

Of the group which seeks reform the most noteworthy movements have their home in the Panjab. There is first the Ārya Samāj, the founder of which was an ascetic named Dayānanda Sarasvatī. A Muḥammadan, named Mirza Ghuḷam Aḥmad, resident in a village in the Panjab, founded a body which holds much the same place in Indian Muḥammadanism that the Ārya Samāj does in Hinduism. He proclaimed himself the Muslim Maḥdi, the Christian Messiah and a Hindu incarnation. There is, lastly, the Deva Samāj, an atheistic body with its centre in Lahore, the leader of which receives divine honours.

The other group contains a large number of movements, of which we shall mention only a few at this point. The first is the teaching of an interesting ascetic who lived and taught in a temple a few miles north of Calcutta. He is known as Rāmakṛishṇa Paramahaṁsa. Svāmī Vivekānanda, who represented Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, was a pupil of his. The next movement is Theosophy, which was founded by a Russian lady, named Madame Blavatsky, in New York in 1875. The headquarters were moved to India in 1879, and have remained there since. Madame Blavatsky declared that the system was taught her by certain beings of superhuman knowledge and power who, she said, resided in Tibet. It is rather remarkable that another Russian, a man named Notovitch, created, in similar fashion, a myth about Jesus in connection with Tibet¹; and an American has started in Chicago an eclectic form of Zoroastrianism which he declares he was taught by the Dalai Lama himself.²

All the leading Hindu sects, both Vishṇuite and Śivaite, have formed defence associations; and Jains, Buddhists, Parsees and Muḥammadans have followed their example. We need not deal with these in detail here.

These two groups of movements, taken together, form a very striking revival of the ancient religions, parallel to the revival which the faiths of the Roman Empire experienced in the early centuries of the Christian era.

LITERATURE. — Trotter’s India under Victoria. R. C. Dutt’s Victorian Age in India. The Lives of Ripon, Dufferin and Lansdowne. Richter’s History of Missions in India. Phillip’s Outcastes’ Hope, London, Y. P. M. M., 1912. India, Fifty Years of Progress and Reform, by R. P. Karkaria, Oxford Press, 1896.

FOURTH SECTION: 1895-1913

This brief space of eighteen years is but a fragment of a period; but it has proved so different in character from the foregoing time that it would be misleading not to set it by it-self. What gives it its peculiar colour is the new national spirit, which will be discussed in our fifth chapter.

For our purposes the most significant events of the decade, 1895-1905, are the serious preparations for revolutionary action which were made during these years, especially in the Marâtha country, but also to some extent in the Panjab and Bengal. Meantime, the national movement was steadily gaining in strength, and men were becoming furiously urgent to reap results. The educated Indian was becoming a full-grown man. Towards the close of the decade there came the Russo-Japanese war, the result of which was to enhance the self-respect and the sense of independence and strength of every thinking Asiatic. It happened, then, that, while these three series of events were moving to their climax, we had in India as the representative of Britain Lord Curzon, a man of high aims, of will and knowledge, of industry and eloquence, but also a man whose temperament and action were as a mustard-blister to educated India.

Those who had been preparing for ten years got their opportunity in the Partition of Bengal in October, 1905; and thus the whole length of Lord Minto’s viceroyalty (1905-1910) was filled with the horror of anarchism. But he also has the honour of having proposed the new Councils, which have served to give Indians a new place in the Government of India. The King’s visit in 1911-1912, and the restoration of the unity of central Bengal greatly helped the healing process.

Since the time when the majority of the educated class came to recognize that anarchism was the worst enemy the people of India have, the new national feeling, touched as it is with religious feeling, has led men into new forms of activity and service, which promise to bear rich fruit.

LITERATURE. — Lord Curzon and After, by Lovat Fraser, London, Heinemann, 165. Indian Unrest, by Sir Valentine Chirol, London, Macmillan, 1910, 55. net. Indian Nationalism, by Edwin Bevan.

Footnotes