years of the nineteenth century, the University of Calcutta accepted an endowment of a lectureship “to promote Sanscrit learning and Vedantic studies,” any Hindus without distinction of caste being eligible as lecturers; and then, shortly after, agreed to the request of the first lecturer that none but Hindus be admitted to the exposition of the sacred texts, thus excluding the European heads of the university from a university lecture.  Perhaps the lecturer thought himself liberal, for to men like him at the beginning of the century it would have been an offence to read the sacred texts with Sudras or Hindus of humble castes.  According to strict Hindu rule, only brahmans can read the sacred books.[2]

[Sidenote:  Indian ideas.]

For in all three spheres, social, political, and religious, the advent of the new age implied more or less of a conflict.  India has still of her own a social system, political ideas, and religious ideas and ideals.  In the Indian social system, caste and the social inferiority of women stand opposed to the freedom of the individual and the equality of the sexes that prevail in Great Britain, at least in greater degree.  In the sphere of politics, the absolutism, long familiar to the Indian mind, is the antithesis of the life of a citizen under a limited monarchy, with party government and unfettered political criticism.  In the sphere of religion, the hereditary priesthood of India stands over against the British ideal of a clergy trained for their duties and proved in character.  The Hindu conception of a religious life as a life of sacrificial offerings and penances, or of ecstasies, or of asceticism, or of sacred study, stands over against the British ideal of religion in daily life and in practical philanthropies.  To the Hindu, the religious mood is that of ecstatic whole-hearted devotion; the Briton reverences as the religious mood a quiet staying intensity in noble endurance or effort.

[Sidenote:  Testimony to the change in ideas]

The nineteenth century has witnessed a great transition in ideas and a great alteration in the social and political and religious standpoints.  It is easy to find manifold witness to the fact from all parts of India.  The biographer of the modern in ideas.  Indian reformer, Malabari, a Parsee[3] writing of a Parsee, and representing Western India, is impressed by the singular fate that has destined the far-away British to affect India and her ideals so profoundly.  Crossing to the east side of India, we seek a trustworthy witness.  The well-known reformer, Keshub Chunder Sen, a Bengali, and representative therefore of Eastern India, declares in a lecture published in 1883:  “Ever since the introduction of British power into India there has been going on a constant upheaval and development of the native mind,... whether we look at the mighty political changes which have been wrought by that ... wonderful administrative machinery which the British Government has set in motion, or