DUALISM OF BRAHMANICAL AND ZOROASTRIAN PHILOSOPHERS. 9 
duality or triplicity or plurality in unity to the one Being 
who delights in manifesting his Essence in various forms. 
It is, of course, understood that this same Being may 
ignore himself for a time, so that any one of his forms may 
do homage to another, as to a superior Being, or deal practi- 
cally with another as with a distinct Being. 
This alone will account for the multiplicity of divine mani- 
festations (popularly thought to be 330 millions), worshipped 
‘or honoured as gods, although the number represented by 
images is not large; all the gods being finite and subject to 
re-absorption into the one essence. Indeed few idols are to 
be seen, except forms of Vishnu and Siva and of their wives. 
Brahma’s image is only worshipped in two temples in all India, 
‘while the one eternal Brahma has neither temple nor image. 
And here, too, lies the secret of the great difficulty of Chris- 
tianizing India according to the true meaning of Christianity. 
For, according to the Brahmanical theory, Christianity is to 
be accepted as an example of the one Being’s many mani- 
festations suited to Europeans. 
Its excellence is even sometimes admitted; at any rate, I 
found that whenever I succeeded in pointing out to thoughtful 
men the fundamental differences between the religion of 
Christians and that of Hindi, the reply generally was that 
both might be true, according to the doctrine taught by one 
of the oldest texts of the Rig-veda (1-164, 46), Hkam sad 
Vipra bahudha vadanti, “ Sages declare that the one Essence 
manifests himself in manifold ways;” just as (according to a 
later illustration) the metal gold, though really preserving 
the unity of its nature everywhere, assumes different forms, 
names, and uses in different places. 
I must not conclude my remarks without adverting more 
particularly to the theory of the existence of good and evil 
spirits—the respective sources of good and evil. 
It is well known that the eternal existence of a good and 
evil principle is a kind of Dualism, which is generally regarded 
as a distinguishing feature of the Zoroastrian philosophy. 
The idea, however, is by no means exclusively Zoroastrian. 
The continual conflict between good and evil spirits is a 
dominant idea in many other religious systems. 
In Sankara’s commentary on the Chandogya Upanishad 
(p. 26, ll. 2-8) there is a remarkable passage, describing the 
constant struggle between good and evil, knowledge and 
ignorance. 
All Sanskrit literature, too, teems with descriptions of the 
battle continually going on between gods and evil demons; 
