Burma.

Rangoon, Bunna.

{198}

XX

HINDUISM--AND THE HIMALAYAS

If it were any other country but India, I might write last of the
religion the people profess, but, since it is India, it is the first
thing to be considered. Religion is the supreme fact of Indian life--
if we may call religion what has been more properly defined as "a
sacred disease."

Certainly nowhere else on earth is there a country where the entire
life of the people is so molded by their spiritual beliefs. Two
children are born the same day. The one, of high-caste parentage,
Brahminism has irrevocably decreed shall be all his life, no matter
how stupid or vicious, a privileged and "superior" being, to whom all
lower orders must make obeisance. The other, born of a Dom father and
mother, Brahminism has decreed shall be all his life, no matter how
great his virtue or brilliant his mind, an outcast whose mere touch
works pollution worse than crime. And through the lifetime of each,
Brahminism, or Hinduism, as the supreme religion of India is called,
will exercise over him an influence more potent and incessant than any
civil government has ever exercised over its subjects.

About theoretical or philosophical Hinduism there is admittedly a
certain measure of moral beauty, but to get even this from Hindu
literature one must wade through cesspools of filth and obscenity and
must shut his eyes to pitiably low ideals of Deity, while in its
practical manifestations modern Hinduism is the most sickening
combination of superstition, idolatry, and {199} vice that now
disgraces the name of religion in any considerable portion of the
earth. The idea of the transmigration of souls, "Samsara," the belief
that you have had millions of births (as men and animals) and may have
millions more (unless you earlier merit the favor of the gods and win
release from life), and that what you are in your present life is the
result of actions in previous existence, and what you do in this
present existence will influence all your future rebirths--this is a
doctrine that might be a tremendous moral force if it were linked with
such ideals as distinguish the Christian religion. In practical
Hinduism, however, the emphasis is not on worthy living, not on
exalted moral conduct, as the thing essential to divine favor, but on
rites and ceremonies, regard for the priests, rigid observance of
caste, sacred bathing, and the offering of proper sacrifices to fickle
or bl