out offerings and incense, and if there be a shadow of intensity in Shintô devotion, it is thrown into his worship.

Infallibility on the part of the head of a State, in virtue of his Divine descent, was a convenient doctrine for political purposes in Japan, but cannot stand as an institution of government against the rapidly spreading tide of political ideas from Europe. I am almost inclined to speak of Shintô as the State religion in the past tense, for the hundred and twentyfirst Mikado has voluntarily abdicated his absolute sovereignty, the gift of the sun-goddess, and, in promulgating a constitution for the Japanese Empire, has descended into the ranks of constitutional rulers. In this descent Shintô must receive its deathblow. As a religion, anyhow, it is nearly extinct. Western science has upset its cosmogony, and Western philosophy its mythology; it survives as a bundle of harmless superstitions, a fading folk-lore, fondly clung to as such by the unenlightened peasantry. Without a ritual, a moral code, or the rudest elements of a creed; with its lack of sensuousness, as well as of teachings regarding a future state, it never had power as a spiritual centre, and yielded easily to the ascendency of Buddhism. It is hollow and empty, it has nothing in it to stir man's deepest nature. It appeals to no instincts of good or evil, and promises no definite destiny, and all attempts to resuscitate it, either as a bulwark against Christianity or as a substitute for Buddhism, must inevitably fail. In the words of a poet

"It shall pass as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and gone,

From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone." These notes are the merest outline of Shintô, but the most elaborate treatise could do no more than successfully demonstrate its utter emptiness of all that to our ideas constitutes religion, and excite surprise that it should still retain even a nominal place among a people so quick-witted as the Japanese.

This easiest and least exacting of religions is vanishing away; and now —what will satisfy the spiritual cravings which Buddhism and Christianity have awakened, and who will mould the religious future of Japan? Will it be the ascetic and philosophic Sakyamuni, dead for two thousand years, and serene for ever in his golden shrine, offering a passionless nonentity as the goal of righteousness? or will it be Jesus the crucified Nazarene, holdng in His pierced hands the gift of an immortality of consecrated activities, the best hope of the weary ages-to whom, as the Crowned and Risen Christ, through centuries of slow and painful progress, all Christendom has pent the adoring knee, and who shall yet reign in righteousness, King of kings and Lord of lords?

HINDUISM.

BY SIR ALFRED LYALL

POPULAR Hinduism, which is the subject of this article, is the religion of some 170 millions of the inhabitants of India; and the word Hindu means, not only an Indian by birth, but also and more particularly, a person belonging to this religion. It is of course impossible to give in a few pages more than an outline of the general features and character of so great a system of beliefs and practices.

To begin with a very loose and broad definition, Hinduism may be described roughly as the religion of all the people who accept the Brahmanic scriptures-the sacred books and traditions-as orthodox and inspired; who adore the Brahmanic gods, their principal incarnations and their symbolic manifestations; who venerate the cow, observe certain rules of caste in regard to marriage and the sharing of food, follow a ritual prescribed by the Brahmans, and go to that priesthood for all the essential forms and ceremonies connected with birth, matrimony, or death. This is the general agreement; these are the binding rules which unite the vast population which is called Hindu; but we must nevertheless be cautious about taking the word Hindu to mean, like the word Mahommedan, a formal creed or a uniform faith. For the Hindus are divided and marked off into manifold interior diversities of worship and popular superstitions, belonging to different ages and different grades of their society; they have a great Pantheon of deities; they have an extensive mythology, their ritual varies incessantly with the places at which it is practised and the gods to which it is addressed.

The first thing, then, to bear in mind is that Hinduism includes many kinds and modes of worship addressed to an immense number of gods, estimated by millions, of whom the superior class and the most famous are Brahmanic and orthodox, whom every one more or less recognises; while the inferior and far more numerous class includes a great many deities, local, tribal, and connected with certain sects and even professions. All these deities, with the addition of a host of demigods, divine saints or heroes, and miraculous personages generally, are in one sense below and separate from the chief divinities of Brahmanic Hinduism, and yet more or less remotely connected with them.

The second thing to remember is that Hinduism has another characteristic, one well known as belonging to almost all early religions; it has a set of outward forms and fables for the crowd and a different inner meaning and significance for the initiated,-for all those who inquire

further, who are not content to remain in the outer courts of the temple. The outer shape is a very fantastic polytheism, the worship of innumerable divine beings, through their images and emblems, by a ritual that is often not very pure. The inner meaning and explanation is what is called Pantheism; that is, the doctrine that all the countless deities, and all the great forces and operations of nature, such as the wind, the rivers, the earthquakes, the pestilences, are merely direct manifestations of the allpervading divine energy, which shows itself in numberless forms and manners. They hold that man himself is but the vessel which contains the divine particle, which gives thought and utterance to visible humanity; their doctrine is that God is substantially identical with Nature, so that in worshipping Nature, whether animate or inanimate, you actually worship God, and in adoring the idol you show reverence to the symbol or emblem of divinity. This is the Hindu system of explaining all natural works and wonders, of defending the direct worship of the elements, or of animals, or even of sticks and stones, and of justifying idolatry as a help to popular devotion. And this explanation is universally accepted by all intelligent Hindus. A still deeper secret is that the whole world as perceived by our senses is an illusion.

The character of Hinduism may be to a great degree explained by the political condition and history of the country in which it has grown up. The Indian population is a vast composite mass of various tribes and nations in different stages of civilization, living under diverse forms of government. Over this population, as a whole, no single ruler, civil or religious, not even the Brahmanic priesthood, has ever acquired complete control. This accounts for much of the loose organization of the religion. the absence of law or orderly arrangement or definite form.

Our first attempt to examine Hinduism only shows us at the first glance a tangled jungle of disorderly superstitions; we see demons, demi-gods and deified persons; we see household gods, tribal gods, local gods, universal gods, with their countless shrines and temples and their rites of every sort and fashion; we see deities who abhor a fly's death and deities who are still supposed to delight in human victims, and gods who will have neither sacrifice nor burnt offering; we see in short a kind of religious We have been so much accustomed in Europe to associate any great religion with the idea of a church, and of regular formal creeds, that we find it hard to realize the existence of an ancient religion, still alive and powerful, which is on the surface a mere troubled sea, driven to and fro by the winds of boundless credulity and grotesque invention.

chaos.

These preliminary remarks may serve to explain why it is so difficult for me to give in the course of a single essay any definite, orderly and easily comprehensible account of popular Hinduism as it actually prevails in India. Its character is, as has been said, astonishing variety in the objects of worship and in the manner of worshipping; and, moreover, these things differ in different parts of the country, while changes are constantly going on. In

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such a system, where the most unvarnished idolatry is found mixed up more or less with a deep philosophy, it would be impossible to classify accurately all its features; so that no more than general notions and a rough outline can be here given.

To begin, then, all Hindu life falls generally within the framework of caste. I mean that every Hindu belongs, as such, to some one of the very numerous groups into which the whole multitude is sorted out. But caste is not the exact translation of the Indian term; it is an European word (Portuguese) applied rather broadly to these separate groups or circles, of which the members all eat and intermarry with each other, and as a rule do not marry with outsiders. Caste, however, is much more exactly connected with differences of race or profession than with diversities of religious belief, although the laws of caste, like all other laws among2 Hindus, are settled and expounded by Brahmans.

Into the question of the origin and working of the system of caste I cannot now enter, beyond referring to the four great caste divisions, which are mentioned in the sacred books. The 1st is the Brahmanic or priestly caste; the 2nd consists of warriors; the 3rd of merchants; and the 4th, called Sudras, comprise all other miscellaneous subdivisions of Hindus. But of these only the Brahmans now represent a real caste or separate group in Hindu Society; the others do not actually exist, are not practically in use, as distinct classes of the people; for the mass of the Hindu population is divided into a very great number of castes, sects, and tribes. The Brahman, however, does exist as a separate and superior caste; he is the Levite of India. I mean that the Brahmans are the hereditary possessors and guardians of all sacred learning and tradition. The Brahman is the priest whose offices are indispensable at all the important moments of life,-at birth, marriage, and funeral; and it is the Brahmanic caste that has invented and keeps up the elaborate ceremonial and apparatus of the religion, and that studies and expounds the Hindu scriptures. If, then, we must attempt some preliminary definition of Hinduism, we may venture to call it the collection of rites, worships, beliefs, traditions, and mythologies that are sanctioned by the sacred books and ordinances of the Brahmans and are propagated by Brahmanic teaching. And a Hindu is one who generally follows the rules of conduct and ceremonial thus laid down for him, particularly regarding food and marriage, and the adoration of the gods.

I will not do more than touch upon the Brahmanic scriptures. The Vedas are the earliest and most sacred books, of universal authority and great antiquity. Vedic literature, according to the summary given by Sir Monier Williams, consists of three divisions-Texts and Metrical Hymns; Rules of Ritual and Worship; Mystical Doctrines. The Vedas were revealed to the Rishis or inspired saints, and by them committed to writing. The Hindu religion, as it is now represented and practised, is, I believe, mainly founded on the Puranas, a word which means ancient

writings. These writings give an account of the various gods of Hinduism and certain legends of the world's creation and its successive ages. I must now attempt to give some description-it will be very imperfect-of the divinities worshipped by the Hindus. There are, as is generally known, three supreme gods: Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; and we may conceive these three mightiest deities at the summit and highest pinnacles of the whole fabric; and below them, sometimes proceeding out of them as incarnations or re-appearances, sometimes connected with them as manifestations or symbols, or as their wives and subordinate attendants, a whole host of minor deities, said to be in all three hundred millions. Nothing like this number are actually worshipped; but beside the regular and traditional gods there is certainly an innumerable crowd of demi-gods and deified people, to whom I will go back again presently.

I will first take the great Triad of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. Of Brahma, there is little to say. He is usually described as the Creator, the Self-existent; and it is supposed that he stands for the original creative intelligence which produced the visible universe, so to speak, out of nothing. But he is rather a philosophic conception, made by way of obtaining a starting-point for the whole system, more than a divinity who has any further concern in the operation of the machinery that has been set in motion by his will. His influence is thus too remote, and his functions are too vague, to impress the popular imagination, and as a matter of fact he has very few temples. The whole multitude of devout orthodox Hindus is divided generally into worshippers of Vishnu, and worshippers of Siva, but these two great divisions bear no more love to each other than sects usually do. Vishnu is a more important and wide-ruling deity, representing several great and far-spread religious ideas. He is the supreme preserver of things, and his wife, Lakshmi typifies plenty and prosperity. In his highest form he is pictured as in a state of blissful repose and you may here notice that the supreme type of all the highest Hindu divinities is tranquillity, not activity. Vishnu in repose shadows forth the Eternal Spirit; but, unlike Brahma, Vishnu can be awakened by the earnest prayers and oblations of men, or of the minor gods, and can be induced to descend into the world and to set things right at critical moments. These descents are his famous incarnations, when he has come embodied in some form, and has achieved great feats, or worked great miracles. His most celebrated embodiments were Rana and Krishna. Rana is a famous legendary warrior-the hero of the great epic poem of India. Krishna is a god whose worship is in the highest repute in certain parts of India. It must be clearly borne in mind that this theory of divine embodiment is one of the most important and effective doctrines of Hinduism; it binds together various parts of the religion, connecting the higher with the lower ideas, and bringing the gods constantly down from heaven to take part in human affairs. Whenever it became expedient to account for the marvellous feats of some great hero, the explanation has been that he was possessed by the great god Vishnu,