h whose name he bears. He is a man who has
studied Western thought and religion under the guidance and inspiration,
perhaps, of the Christian missionary; and then in an ingenious way strives
to interpret his own faith in the light of his Western attainments. He
presents to us not orthodox Hinduism, but a mongrel doctrine and
philosophy which are as foreign to the teaching of the orthodox Hindu
pundit and as alien to the Hindu Scriptures as they are to Western
philosophy and faith. It is a significant fact that all these
Western-travelled Hindus have first to violate a fundamental injunction of
their own religion--namely, that which prohibits sea travelling to a
Hindu--before they can visit the West in order to commend their faith. And
when they return to their native country they do so as the outcastes of
their religion, and can be reinstated only after performing a work of
atonement which includes the disgusting act of eating the five products of
the cow!

The _real_ Hindu, who stands today as the true exponent of his faith, is a
very different man. He would no more cross the seas than he would cut off
his right arm; for he knows that he can remain a true Hindu only so long
as he remains at home. He is a conservative of the stiffest kind. He
thinks on ancient lines and swears by the rishis of old.

[Illustration: Idol Worship.]

[Illustration: Religious Mendicants.]

(_a_) Study his prepossessions and then alone can you appreciate his
heritage. Though he may not be a scholar or a philosopher, he is
nevertheless fortified by a host of religious beliefs and prejudices. A
thousand dogmas and prepossessions, the inherited treasures of thirty
centuries, are his. He drank them in with his mother's milk; he has
breathed them in as an essential part of his daily environment. They are
more than second nature to him and constitute largely the world of his
thought. His ideas of God, of himself, of sin, of salvation, of human
life--all are far removed from ours and are peculiarly his own. He feels
himself to be in the toils of an iron destiny which slowly grinds him to
powder. His conception of God brings him no ray of comfort, or hope of
release. His idea is that his sin and suffering of today are the
inflictions, by some unknown power, for the sins of supposed former
births. So that he must, through countless ages, work out his own
salvation--a salvation which indeed means eternal rest;