nature is after all the same in all countries and at all times.

A whole system of religious philosophy has been built up in later times, founded on the principle of bhakti or love, namely the Sûtras of Sândilya 1, who in his second Sûtra explains bhakti as affection fixed on God.

And at the present moment no system is more popular in Bengal than that of Kaitanya. Kaitanya was born in 1486, and he did much to popularize and humanize the old Brahmanic doctrines 2. With him bhakti or love became the foundation of everything, and different steps are laid down through which a worshipper may reach the highest perfection. The exoteric steps consist in discipline, (1) social discipline (svadharmâkarana); (2) discipline of the intellect and a surrender of all to Krishna (Krishnakarmârpana); (3) mendicity (svadharmatyâga); (4) philosophic culture (gîânamisrâ bhakti); (5) simplicity of the heart (gñânasûnyabhakti); and (6) dispassion (sântabhâva).

Then follow the higher or esoteric steps, viz. loving devotion (premabhakti), consisting in humility (dâsya), friendship (sâkhya), and tenderness (vâtsalya); and, as the crowning step, sweetness and love (madhurabhâva, kântabhâva), represented by the highest and purest love between husband and wife.

Bhakti, therefore, may be used as an equivalent of religion in the sense of devotion and love, but it is, comparatively speaking, a modern word in Sanskrit.

1 Edited by Ballantyne in the Bibliotheca Indica, 1861, and translated by Prof. Cowell in the same collection, No. 409.

2 See Yogendra Chandra Ghosh, Chaitanya's Ethics, Calcutta, 1884; A. de Gubernatis, Giornale della Società Asiat. Italiana, 1888, p. 116; and Kaitanya-kandrodaya, ed. Rajendralal Mitra, Bibl. Indica.

Sraddha, faith.

There is, however, a very ancient word for faith. It is a very important word, for while bhakti is a purely Indian concept, and even in India of later growth, sraddhâ, faith, is a very old word, and must have existed before the Aryan nations separated 1. Think what that implies. We read in the Rig-veda I. 55, 5: When the fiery Indra hurls down the thunderbolt, then people believe in him.'

Adha kana srat dadhati tvishimate

Indraya vagram nighanighnate vadham.

Here you have in one line the whole secret of natural religion. When people see the manifestation of power in the storm and lightning, then they believe in Indra. It is not said that they perceive Indra, or that they find out by reasoning that there must be a god, called Indra: no, they believe in him, they accept him, they do not doubt his existence. Or again, Rv. I. 102, 2: Sun and moon move in regular succession, that we may have faith, O Indra.'

Asme sûryakandramase abhikakshe

Sraddhe kam indra karatah vitarturam.

Here we have no longer faith in Indra or any particular deity, but faith in general, and that faith is taken as the result of our seeing the regular rising and setting of sun and moon.

Faith, therefore, is represented as reposing on terror produced by the overpowering convulsions of nature, and on trust, called forth by the discovery of law and order in nature. Few of the greatest living

1 Hibbert Lectures, p. 309. According to Sândilya (Sûtra 24), bhakti is not identical with sraddhà, because sraddhâ, belief, is merely subsidiary to ceremonial works; but not so is faith in Îsvara.

philosophers have anything better to say on the origin of faith.

And now let us consider this word sraddha a little more closely. It is letter by letter the same as the Latin credo, and our creed. When the Brahmans said srad-dadhe, the Romans said credidi; when the Brahmans said sraddhitam, the Romans said creditum.

The two words are therefore clearly the same; but if you ask me what sraddhâ meant etymologically, I can only say, We do not know. Professor Darmesteter derives it from srad, in the sense of heart, and dhâ, to place. Phonetically this etymology might be defended, though srad, by the side of hrid, the regular word for heart in Sanskrit, would be without analogy. But Professor Darmesteter has not considered that srad occurs elsewhere by itself, and that there it cannot possibly mean heart. For instance, Rv. VIII. 75, 2, srat visvâ vâryâ kridhi,' Make all our wishes true!' Here srad cannot possibly be taken as a dialectic form of hrid.

How srat should come to mean true, and sraddhâ, to make true, to accept as true, we do not know. But this only shows how old a word sraddhâ really is, and how early in the history of the human mind the idea must have sprung up that we may accept as true what can neither be confirmed by our senses nor proved by our reasoning, but what is nevertheless irresistible. Here you see how we may discover embedded in the very deepest strata of language the germs of religion -for there can be no name for believing before the first rays of faith or sraddhâ have dawned in the human heart.

LECTURE V.

MY OWN DEFINITION OF RELIGION.

Former Definitions.

We have now examined the most important and

WE E

most characteristic definitions of religion. We have seen how some of them looked chiefly to the practical character, others to the theoretic character of religion, while some philosophers, such as Schleiermacher, would recognise the true essence of religion neither in its practical nor in its theoretic manifestations, but only in a complete change of our nature, in a loving devotion to and almost union with the Supreme Being.

Do not suppose that I look upon all these definitions as wrong, or that I intend to criticise them one by one. On the contrary, I believe that most of them contain some truth, some very important truth, but they all seem to me to be vulnerable in one and the same point, namely in taking the object of religious thought for granted and therefore leaving it undefined. This may be defensible, if in defining religion we only think of our own, or of the religion of the present age. But if the historical school has proved anything, Cany it has established the fact, to which I alluded at the end of my last lecture, that in religion as in language there is continuity, there is an unbroken chain which

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find

rests

connects our thoughts and our words with the first thoughts conceived and with the first words uttered by the earliest ancestors of our race. A definition of religion ought therefore to be applicable, not only to what religion is now, but to what religion was in its origin, and in its earliest developments. Religion may change, and it has changed, as we know; but however much it may change, it can never break entirely with its past, it can never be severed from its deepest roots, and it is in these deepest roots that we ought to seek, as it seems to me, the true essence of religion.

But it is not only religion in its origin which the ordinary definitions would fail to comprehend. There are several of the historical developments of religion also which could hardly be brought within their gage.

Is Buddhism a religion?

If you tried, for instance, to bring Buddhism within the compass of any of the definitions hitherto examined, you would find it impossible to do so, and yet, as you know, the largest number of human beings have trusted to Buddha's teaching as their only means of salvation. Those who define religion as a theory, as a mode of knowledge, must necessarily, as I pointed out before, supply an object that is to be known, whether they call it gods or god, the father, the creator, the Supreme Being, or the Supreme Will.

Buddhism, as theoretical, not included under any definition. But in Buddhism-I mean in Southern Buddhism, which ought to be carefully distinguished from Northern Buddhism or Bodhism-there is no mention of God as a creator or ruler of the world1; on the

1 See the account of Brahman as a Creator in Selected Essays, ii. 297.