rring merely to the great majority of Hindus.

As a form of life and thought Hinduism is definite and unmistakeable. In
whatever shape it presents itself it can be recognized at once. But it
is so vast and multitudinous that only an encyclopedia could describe it
and no formula can summarize it. Essayists flounder among conflicting
propositions such as that sectarianism is the essence of Hinduism or
that no educated Hindu belongs to a sect. Either can easily be proved,
for it may be said of Hinduism, as it has been said of zoology, that you
can prove anything if you merely collect facts which support your theory
and not those which conflict with it. Hence many distinguished writers
err by overestimating the phase which specially interests them. For one
the religious life of India is fundamentally monotheistic and Vishnuite:
for another philosophic Sivaism is its crown and quintessence: a third
maintains with equal truth that all forms of Hinduism are tantric. All
these views are tenable because though Hindu life may be cut up into
castes and sects, Hindu creeds are not mutually exclusive and repellent.
They attract and colour one another.

2. _Origin and Growth of Hinduism_

The earliest product of Indian literature, the Rig Veda, contains the
songs of the Aryan invaders who were beginning to make a home in India.
Though no longer nomads, they had little local sentiment. No cities had
arisen comparable with Babylon or Thebes and we hear little of ancient
kingdoms or dynasties. Many of the gods who occupied so much of their
thoughts were personifications of natural forces such as the sun, wind
and fire, worshipped without temples or images and hence more indefinite
in form, habitation and attributes than the deities of Assyria or Egypt.
The idea of a struggle between good and evil was not prominent. In
Persia, where the original pantheon was almost the same as that of the
Veda, this idea produced monotheism: the minor deities became angels and
the chief deity a Lord of hosts who wages a successful struggle against
an independent but still inferior spirit of evil. But in India the
Spirits of Good and Evil are not thus personified. The world is regarded
less as a battlefield of principles than as a theatre for the display of
natural forces. No one god assumes lordship over the others but all are
seen to be interchangeable--mere names and aspects of something which is
greater than any god.

Indian religion is commonly