ers over the
face of the country, as well as among the occupants of its mountain
strongholds.

* * * * *

In a country like India, where differences of habit, business,
extraction, and creed, are accompanied by an inordinate amount of
separation between different sections and subsections of its population,
and where slight barriers of diverse kinds prevent intermixture, the
different sects of its numerous religions requires notice. This,
however, may be short. As sectarianism is generally in the direct ratio
to the complexity of the creed submitted to section, we may expect to
find the forms of Brahminism and Buddhism, not less numerous than those
of either Christianity or Mahometanism. And such is really the case. The
sects are too numerous to enlarge upon. The Sikh creed has been noticed
from its political importance. That of the Jains is also remarkable,
since it most closely resembles Buddhism, without being absolutely
Buddhist in the current sense of the word. It is, possibly, the actual
and original Buddhism of the continent of India--supposed to have been
driven out bodily by Brahminism, but really with the true vitality of
persecuted creeds, still surviving in disguise. Again, in India, though
in a less degree than in China, Philosophy replaces belief--so much so,
that the different forms of one negation--Natural Religion--must be
classed amongst the creeds of Hindostan; by the side of which there
stand many kinds of simple philosophy; just as was the case in ancient
Greece, where, in one and the same city, there were the philosophers of
the Academy and the believers in Zeus.

There is, then, creed within creed in the two great religions of
India--to say nothing about the numerous fragments of modified and
unmodified paganism.

And besides these there are the following introduced religions--each
coinciding, more or less, with some ethnological division.

1. Christianity from, at least, four different sources--

_a._ That of the Christians of Thomas on the Malabar Coast. Here the
doctrine is that of the Syrian Church, and the population being
_perhaps_ (?) Persian in origin.

_b._ The Romanism of the French and Portuguese; the latter having its
greatest development in the Mahratta country, about Goa.

_c._ Dutch and Danish Protestantism.

_d._ English and American Protestantism. To which add small infusions of
the Armenian and Abyssinian churches.

Of these it is only t