44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



parody a well-known saying, tliat Hindoo nascitur nonfit, still there 

 can be no doubt tbat it manages to make more converts by mere 

 assimilation than can any other religion in India by direct mis- 

 sionary effort. This absorption into Brahmanism is becoming, 

 under the pax Britannica, day by day, a more important feature 

 in Indian social economy. As surely as the English bring fresh 

 uncultured tribes under their civilizing influence, so surely do 

 they add to the number of the Hindoos ; as surely as the iron hand 

 of Anglo-Indian law, by refusing to recognize any difference be- 

 tween man and man, causes the upward rise in the social scale of 

 those that labor to good purpose, so surely is the cause of Brah- 

 manic orthodoxy advanced and its influence widened. I have 

 watched the first process myself in the case of the recruits to our 

 little army of Gurkhas ; the wild mountain boy, on joining his 

 regiment, is taught not only his drill, but also the Hindustani lan- 

 guage as understood in military circles, and with it his religion^ 

 i. e., a smattering of current Hindooism. The second can be seen in 

 progress any day all over India, by any one who will take the 

 trouble to observe the career of a successful handicraftsman or 

 small trader. At first an " outcaste," dealing only in matters of re- 

 ligion with his tribal soothsayer ; as he gathers money, he sets up 

 a Brahman priest, and minds the orthodox gods, and at last, when 

 respectable and wealthy, he develops into a full-blown Hindoo ; 

 and then, since in all Hindooism ceremonial orthodoxy is synony- 

 mous with social respectability, he adopts Hindoo manners to the 

 full ; isolates his women, prohibits the remarriage of widows, mar- 

 ries off his infant children in the proper quarters, and practices the 

 thousand-and-one customs peculiar to his adopted religion. Of 

 course, in order to be able to thus attract to itself so many antag- 

 onistic principles of custom and belief, the modern Brahmanism 

 can have no hard and fast creed. It has, in fact, no creed at all, 

 properly so called. Nothing in the shape of " I believe in God the 

 Father Almighty " ; nothing like the strict Mohammedan formula 

 — Id ilciha ilV iUciJiu, Muliammadi-r-Rasidu'-llaJiu (there is no God 

 but God, Mohammed is the prophet of God). It consists rather of 

 a leading principle, viz., to gather together whatever items of be- 

 lief may come to hand, in order to develop them in a certain defi- 

 nite direction, under the control of its own priests, and for their 

 benefit ; and while the process of development is going on, it nat- 

 urally ingrafts its own customs on to those it already finds in ex- 

 istence. Herein lies its wonderful vitality and strength, its capaci- 

 ty for digesting anything that it gets into its maw, and its power 

 of resisting internal disruption. The apparently elastic network 

 of caste and family customs that it invariably twines round its 

 victims is marvelously cruel, and so unendurable that revolt after 

 revolt has been made against it ; but the result, so far, has been 



