IV. The Theosophists are the only other new religious organisation whom we can notice.—­Them too the new patriotic feeling has very largely shaped.  Founded in America in 1875, the very year in which the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j was established in Bombay, the Theosophical Society professed to be “the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity,” representing and excluding no religious creed and interfering with no man’s caste.  On the other hand, somewhat inconsistently, it professed to be a society to promote the study of [=A]ryan and other Eastern literature, religion, and sciences, and to vindicate their importance; and it appealed for support, amongst others, “to all who loved India and would see a revival of her ancient glories, intellectual and spiritual.”  At the same time the society professed “to investigate the hidden mysteries of nature and the psychical powers latent in man.”  The society naturally gravitated towards India, and by 1884 had 87 branches in India and Ceylon, against 12 in all the rest of the world.  Its career might easily have been predicted.  Inevitably, when transplanted to India, about the year 1878, such a society came under the spell of the new national consciousness already referred to.  For a time Theosophy shared with the political Congress the first place in the interest of New India, and crowds of educated Indians still assemble whenever Mrs. Besant, now the leading Theosophist, is to speak.  One of the rules of the society, however, saved it from the descent into politics that has overtaken the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j and tainted it as a religious movement.  Rule XVI (1884) forbids members, as such, to interfere in politics, and declares expulsion to be the penalty for violation of the rule.

[Sidenote:  [=A]rya period of the Theosophical Society.]

Consistently enough, when the society was transplanted to India, it entered into partnership with the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j; for two years, indeed, Madame Blavatsky, the first leader of the Theosophists, had been corresponding from America with the founder of the [=A]ryas.  The [=A]rya tenet of the infallibility of the original Hindu Scriptures needed no reconciliation with the Theosophist declaration of the ancient spiritual glories of India.  But the [=A]ryas are also religious reformers, while, as enlightened Hindus now complain, the Theosophists are more Hindu than the Hindus.  After three years, in 1881, difference arose on the question of the personality of God.  The [=A]ryas, we have seen, are monotheist; the Theosophical Society, we shall see, is identified with brahmanical pantheism.[58]

[Sidenote:  Buddhist period of the Theosophical Society.]

[Sidenote:  Pro-Hindu period of the Theosophical Society.]