d made any serious impression on caste; neither had
been able to mitigate the wrongs which Brahmanism had heaped upon
woman--Mohammedanism had rather increased them. The horrors of the satti
and the murder of female infants--those bitterest fruits of priestly
tyranny--were left unchecked until the British Government, inspired by
missionary influence and a general Christian sentiment, branded them as
infamous and made them crimes. But now even the native sentiment of the
better classes in India is greatly changed by these higher influences,
and the conventional morality is rising above the teachings of the
national religion. Widow-burning and infanticide belong almost wholly to
the past. Child-marriage is coming into disrepute, and caste, though not
destroyed, is crippled, and its preposterous assumptions are falling
before the march of social progress.

Perhaps the very highest tribute which Hinduism has paid to Christianity
is seen in the fact that the modern Arya Somaj has borrowed its ethics
and some of its religious doctrines, and is promulgating them under
Vedic labels and upon Vedic authority.[72] It has renounced those
corruptions of Hinduism which can no longer bear the light--such as
enforced widowhood and the general oppression of woman. It denounces the
incarnations of Vishnu as mere inventions, and therefore cuts up by the
roots the whole Krishna cult and dissipates the glory of the Bhagavad
Gita. It abhors polytheism, and not only proclaims the supremacy of one
only true God, self-existent, the creator and upholder of all things,
but it maintains that such was the teaching of the Vedas. But although
this modern eclectic system adopts the whole ethical outcome of
Christian civilization in India for its own purposes, it shows a most
uncompromising hostility to Christianity. Though it claims to be
positively theistic, it seems ready to enter into alliance with any form
of atheism or agnosticism, Eastern or Western, against the spread of
Christian influence in India.

In speaking of the movement of revived Aryanism I assume that with the
more intelligent and progressive classes of India the old Hinduism is
dead. Of course, millions of men still adhere to the old corruptions.
Millions in the remoter districts would retain the festival of
Juggernaut, the hook-swinging, even infanticide and widow-burning, if
they dared. The revolting orgies of Kali and Doorga, and the vilest
forms of Siva worship, even the murder