cricket by reading
handbooks. The aphorisms of the Sankhya and Vednata are meant to be read
under the direction of a teacher who will see that the pupil's mind is
duly prepared not only by explanation but by abstinence and other
physical training. Hindu religions are unpractical only in so far that
they decline to subordinate themselves to human life. It is assumed that
the religious man who is striving towards a goal beyond this world is
ready to sacrifice the world without regret and in India the assumption
is justified surprisingly often.

As mentioned already the word god has more than one meaning. In India we
have at least two different classes of divinities, distinguished in the
native languages. First there is Brahman the one self-existent,
omnipresent, superpersonal spirit from whom all things emanate and to
whom all things return. The elaboration of this conception is the most
original feature of Indian theology, which tends to regard Brahman as
not merely immanent in all things, but as being all things, so that the
soul liberated from illusion can see that it is one with him and that
nothing else exists. Very different is the meaning of Deva: this
signifies a god (which is not the same as God, though our language
insufficiently distinguishes the two) roughly comparable with the gods
of classical mythology[137]. How little sense of divinity it carries
with it is seen by the fact that it became the common form of address to
kings and simply equivalent to Your Majesty. In later times, though Siva
is styled Mahadeva, it was felt that the great sectarian gods, who are
for their respective worshippers the personal manifestations in which
Brahman makes himself intelligible, required some name distinguishing
them from the hosts of minor deities. They are commonly spoken of by
some title signifying the Lord: thus Siva is Isvara, Vishnu and his
incarnations are more often styled Bhagavad.

From the Vedic hymns onwards the gods of India have been polymorphic
figures not restricted by the limitations of human personality. If a Jew
or a Moslim hears new views about God, he is disposed to condemn them as
wrong. The Hindu's inclination is to appropriate them and ascribe to his
own deity the novel attributes, whether they are consistent with the
existing figure or not. All Indian gods are really everything. As the
thought of the worshipper wanders among them they turn into one another.
Even so sturdy a personality as Indra i