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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XXI. 



soil for the seed of the spiritual priest. The relationship of 

 the latter to his disciple is a purely personal one, and no caste, 

 race, or sex qualification is necessary either for teacher or 

 pupil, for the Spirit has no caste, race, or sex. A person of a 

 low caste, or even an outcast, may be a spiritual teacher. This 

 rule has lightened the burden of the Sudra's lot, for it throws 

 open to genius the highest of positions. The best known of 

 modern Hindu sages, Ramakrishna Svami of Bengal, who 

 died in 1886, and whose life was written by Professor Max 

 Miiller, had for his teacher a woman, who was for him what 

 Diotima was to Socrates, and inspired in him the same devotion, 

 love, and gratitude. 



It is related of Sankaracharya — the great Hindu philo- 

 sopher and apostle, to whom I have already referred, — that on 

 one occasion, while travelling with the pomp suitable to his 

 dignity, he suddenly met on the road a Paria bearing a load 

 of beef fresh slaughtered and dripping with blood. Shrinking 

 from the sight with a holy Brahmin's horror, he called out 

 imperiously to the outcast to move outLof sight. " Whom 

 dost thou order," answered the Paria with amazing boldness, 

 "to move out of sight — the spirit or the flesh ? " Sankara- 

 charya, remembering that the flesh of his own body did not 

 differ from that of the Paria or the beef, and realizing that 

 the all-pervading Spirit of God was equally in Paria and 

 Brahmin, recognized in this outcast his long-waited-for 

 spiritual teacher, and descending from his palanquin pros- 

 trated himself at the Paria's feet. The Paria, who was (it is 

 said) no other than the Lord Siva, vanished. Sankaracharya' s 

 conversion dates from this incident, and to him Hinduism 

 owes more than to any other man. 



The story of Sukar also shows that to gain the knowledge of 

 God and participate in the divine bliss, it is not necessary to 

 abandon the world and retire into the solitude of a forest, nor 

 is death of the body a condition precedent. King Janaka 

 attained this high estate while still in the flesh and in the active 

 exercise of royal power. 



Here, too, is briefly enunciated the fundamental doctrine of 

 the Vedanta,* that the One and only Reality is the Spirit or 

 pure consciousness, and that the universe is a differentiation 



