the
scene of Gautama's enlightenment, where he became Buddha or Enlightened,
one of the conventional statues of Buddha is actually marked and
worshipped as Vishnu, the Hindu deity, the Preserver in the Hindu triad.
Even at that most holy shrine of Buddhism, Hinduism has supplanted it,
for popular Hinduism offered salvation, while Buddhism offered
extinction. Turning from the masses to the philosophical ascetic--when
he cuts himself off from family life with all its variety of pleasure
and interest, not to speak of the self-torture he also sometimes
inflicts, he too has some corresponding demand, some adequate motive to
satisfy. His is the resolute quest for salvation of the higher, older
type. But we are dealing with modern, new-educated India, and now we ask
ourselves: What does the modern, new-educated Indian mean by salvation?
Why does the thought of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ fail to reach
his heart?

[Sidenote: Three ways of salvation in Hinduism: more strictly, three
stages.]

[Sidenote: 1. Saving knowledge]

[Sidenote: Or now Beatific Vision.]

The acute Indian mind, with its disposition to analyse and its
tenderness towards all manifestations of religion, has noted three
different paths of salvation, or more strictly three stages in the path.
The last only really leads to salvation, the other two paths are
tolerant recognition of the well-meaning religious efforts of those who
have not attained to understanding of the true and final path of
salvation. For convenience sake we may roughly designate the three ways
as Saving Works, and Saving Faith, and Saving Knowledge, placing the
elementary stage first. One of the Tantras or ritual scriptures of
Modern Hinduism, the Mahanirv[=a]na Tantra, thus explains the three
stages in the path and their respective merits: "The knowledge that
Brahma alone is true is the best expedient; meditation is the middling
[= the means?]; and (2) the chanting of glories and the recitation of
names is the worst; and (3) the worship of idols is the worst of the
worst.[128] Of the pantheist's "saving knowledge," perhaps enough has
been said. But again, it is the piercing of the veil of Maya or Delusion
which hides from the soul that God is the One and the All. It is the
transformation of the consciousness of "I" into that of the "One only,
without a second." It is the ability to say "Aham Brahman," _i.e._ I am
Brahma. In the _Life of Dr. Wilson_, the Scottish Missionary at Bom