ot a religion at all,
but only a social system. There are several doctrines to which a great
many Hindus would at once conventionally subscribe, and these I venture
to call Hindu doctrines. In theological conversations with Hindus, three
doctrines very frequently show themselves as a theological background.
These are, first, Pantheism; secondly, Transmigration and Final
Absorption into Deity; and, thirdly, Maya, i.e. Delusion, or the
Unreality of the phenomena of Sense and Consciousness. I find a recent
pro-Hindu writer making virtually the same selection. In the ninth
century, she writes, Sankarachargya, the great upholder of Pantheism,
"took up and defined the [now] current catch-words--maya, karma [the
doctrine of works, or of re-birth according to desert], reincarnation,
and left the terminology of Hinduism what it is to-day."... "But," she
also adds, "they are nowhere and in no sense regarded as essential."[64]
Naturally, then, the inquiry that we have set ourselves to will at the
same time be an inquiry how far Christian thought has affected these
three main Hindu doctrines of Pantheism, Transmigration, and Maya.

[Sidenote: Commingling of contradictory beliefs--]

[Sidenote: Polytheism with Monotheism.]

Nor is it to be imagined that the Hindu polytheism, theism, and
pantheism are distinguishable religious strata. "Uniformity and
consistency of creeds are inventions of the European mind," says a
cynical writer already quoted. "Hinduism bristles with contradictions,
inconsistencies, and surprises," says Sir M. Monier Williams. The common
people are indeed polytheists, at different seasons of the year and on
different social occasions worshipping different deities, male or
female, and setting out to this or that shrine, as the touts of the
rival shrines have persuaded them. Nevertheless, an intelligent member
of the humbler ranks is always ready to acknowledge that there is really
only one God, of whom the so-called gods are only variations in name. Or
his theory may be that there is one supreme God, under whom the popular
deities are only departmental heads; for the presence of the great
central British Government in India is a standing suggestion of
monotheism. The officer who drew up the _Report of the Census of India_,
1901 (p. 363) gives an instance of this commingling of monotheism and
polytheism. "An orderly," he writes, "into whose belief I was inquiring,
described the relation between the supreme God and