74 Remarks by Mr. Ball. [April, 



India wherever, and as long as, English education thrives among the 

 Hindus. Ekamevadvikiyam is the banner-cry of the Brahmos every- 

 where, against idolatry and polytheism ; its in hoc signo vinces. Dr. 

 Mitra's is not the first exposition we have had of the source of this motto 

 in the Shastras, and of its precise meaning therein. It need hardly be 

 said that the three words occur more than once in the Hindu scriptures. 

 Some years ago Dr. Krishna Mohun Banerjee, dealing with the words 

 as a Christian scholar, showed that, in the instance he referred to, the 

 speaker of them was replying to Gargi, a female disciple, concerning the 

 cosmos or visible universe ; and was not speaking of God. The teacher 

 said to the learner " This, oh Gargi, (this world, this cosmos,) now so 

 manifold, was once, in the beginning ekam evadvikiyam, a monad, a germ 

 unmanifested, one single unit." Such, in substance was the rendering 

 of the words by the Rev. K. M. Banerji ; at least as memory gave it to 

 the speaker. 



Now we have this view confirmed by Dr. Rajendralala Mitra ; at 

 least so far as concerns the use of the word " God " in this connection. 

 Dr. Mitra says that in the three schools of Hindu philosophy, the Monists, 

 the Dualists and the Agnostics, — all the Monists (with S'ankaracharyya) 

 cry out, as against the Dualists, — there is one essence, one existence, one 

 substance, only one, ekam evadavikiyam. 



To be sure, Dr. Mitra has given four groups of Monists. Of these, 

 the first group only believe in pantheism, pure and simple, and that all is 

 spirit, one single soul. The second class see, in man, a shadow of that 

 soul. The third count man to be a spark of the Over-soul, something 

 more substantial than a shadow. And the fourth — (with Chaitanya) — re- 

 gard man as a particle slightly inferior to the One ; — thus coming very 

 near to the Dualists and the recognition of individual souls. 



Of the above, the third and fourth groups are mostly anchorites, 

 while the second are voluptuaries, says Dr. Mitra. So that these theo- 

 rising do not rest in the abstract but are moulding character. The 

 single point, however, to which the speaker would call attention was 

 that we have both Christian and Hindu scholars, uniting to tell the Brah- 

 mos to look elsewhere for the declared unity of God, than to their present 

 motto Ekamevadvikiyam, one soul exists and nothing else ; no human 

 soul exists. Good cannot come of mistranslations. 



It is but fair to the Brahmo Somaj to say that from the very 

 beginning of their movement in Calcutta, in 1831, they have rested, not 

 on the passages quoted by Dr. Mitra and Dr. Banerji, but on the use of 

 Ekamevadvikiyam in the Udyoga Parva section of the Mahabharata, 

 where a Brahman says, " Oh King, the One without a second, whom thou 

 dost not know, truly He is the step to heaven and the ship to cross 

 the sea." 



