l he
shall be clothed, but tells him how to perform innumerable acts that men
of other nations never think have anything to do with religion at all,
Hinduism as an intricate social code, stands largely unaffected by the
flood of Western education that has been poured upon the country. He
instances a brahman, one of his own subordinates, college-bred and
English-speaking, who, when away from home with his superior officer,
had to cook his food for himself, because the brahman servant he had
with him was of a lower division than his own, and he could not afford
to hire a man of his own status among brahmans."

[Sidenote: Thought independent of act.]

We ask again for the cause of this progress in thought and stagnation in
practice. In India, creed and practice go their own way; thinking is
independent of acting. Listen to the naive standpoint assumed in the
Confession or Covenant of a Theistic Association established in Madras
in 1864. We read in article 3 that the person being initiated makes this
declaration: "In the meantime, I shall observe the ceremonies now in
use, but only where indispensable. I shall go through such ceremonies,
where they are not conformable to pure Theism, as mere matters of
routine, destitute of all religious significance--as the lifeless
remains of a superstition which has passed away." And again in article
4: "I shall never endeavour to deceive anyone as to my religious
opinions." In the revision of 1871, both articles were dropped, but in
the earlier form there was no attempt to disguise that thought was
independent of act. The familiar figure of Buddha in meditation, seated
cross-legged and motionless, with vacant introspective eyes, oblivious
of the outer world, is a type of the separation of thought from act that
seems natural to India or to the Indian mind, type also of the
independence of each thinker. The thinker secludes himself; "the mind is
its own place." To become a thinker signifies to become an ascetic
recluse; even modern enlightenment often removes an Indian from
fellow-feeling with his kind.

[Sidenote: No Theological Faculties.]

How is it so? I say nothing of the climate of tropical India as a
contributory cause. The way in which Hindu learning was and is
transmitted, is itself almost sufficient explanation of the independence
and the fluidity of religious doctrine. Hinduism has no recognised
Theological Faculties as training schools for the priesthood. _Buddhist_
monas