is. At
first, this was not so. But its rigid pantheism gradually necessitated
manifestations of the divine, in order that faith and devotion might
be made possible. And, in later centuries, the doctrine of incarnation
was accepted as a haven of rest to the Hindu mind and soon became a
wild passion of its soul. There is no other people on earth who have
carried the doctrine of incarnation (_Avatar_) to such excess of
imaginings as to create such abundantly grotesque and fanciful
appearances of their many divinities. Normally, then, the Mohammedan
faith, at its very core, must be unsatisfying and even repulsive to
the tropical Hindu mind. It was brought here at the point of the
sword; and, for centuries, it was the faith of a ruling power whose
custom was to tax heavily all people who did not conform, outwardly at
least, to the State religion.

After Islam had become established and secure in its success in India,
when it could relax its grip upon the sword and relinquish something
of the spirit of intolerance which characterized it, it had to meet
and cope with a greater foe than that of the battle-field. Hinduism
has always exercised a great benumbing influence upon all faiths which
have come into contact and conflict with it. It has insinuated itself
into the mind of the conquerors and laid its palsied hand upon every
department of religious thought and life. So that, after a few
centuries of prosperity in India, Islam began to forget its narrow
bigotry and uncompromising severity and fraternized more or less with
the religion of the country. Little by little a latitudinarianism
crept in, which found its culmination in that remarkable man, Akbar
the Great, who entertained the teachers of all faiths and encouraged a
fearless discussion of their respective merits. Dr. Wherry writes:
"The tolerance of Akbar, who not only removed the poll-tax from all
his non-Moslem subjects, but who established a sort of parliament of
religions, inviting Brahmans, Persian Sufis, Parsee fire-worshippers,
and Jesuit priests to freely discuss in his presence the special
tenets of their faith and practice, was remarkable. He went farther,
and promulgated an eclectic creed of his own and constituted himself a
sort of priest-king in which his own dictum should override everything
excepting the letter of the Quran. His own creed is set forth in the
following words of India's greatest poet, Abul Fazl:--

"O God, in every temple I see those