at dwell in the heart cease, then the
mortal becomes immortal, and obtains Brahman.

"When all the fetters of the heart here on earth are broken,
when all that binds us to this life is undone, then the
mortal becomes immortal--here my teaching ends."

This is what is called Vedanta, the Veda-end, the end of the Veda, and
this is the religion or the philosophy, whichever you like to call it,
that has lived on from about 500 B.C. to the present day. If the
people of India can be said to have now any system of religion at
all--apart from their ancestral sacrifices and their _S_raddhas, and
apart from mere caste-observances--it is to be found in the Vedanta
philosophy, the leading tenets of which are known, to some extent in
every village.[342] That great revival of religion, which was
inaugurated some fifty years ago by Ram-Mohun Roy, and is now known as
the Brahma-Sama_g_, under the leadership of my noble friend Keshub
Chunder Sen, was chiefly founded on the Upanishads, and was Vedantic
in spirit. There is, in fact, an unbroken continuity between the most
modern and the most ancient phases of Hindu thought, extending over
more than three thousand years.

To the present day India acknowledges no higher authority in matters
of religion, ceremonial, customs, and law than the _Veda_, and so long
as India is India, nothing will extinguish that ancient spirit of
Vedantism which is breathed by every Hindu from his earliest youth,
and pervades in various forms the prayers even of the idolater, the
speculations of the philosopher, and the proverbs of the beggar.

For purely practical reasons therefore--I mean for the very practical
object of knowing something of the secret springs which determine the
character, the thoughts and deeds of the lowest as well as of the
highest among the people in India--an acquaintance with their
religion, which is founded on the Veda, and with their philosophy,
which is founded on the Vedanta, is highly desirable.

It is easy to make light of this, and to ask, as some statesmen have
asked, even in Europe, What has religion, or what has philosophy, to
do with politics? In India, in spite of all appearances to the
contrary, and notwithstanding the indifference on religious matters so
often paraded before the world by the Indians themselves, religion,
and philosophy too, are great powers still. Read the account that has
lately been published of two native statesmen, the administrato