the Hindus in this case—­was a prominent doctrine of the crusade.  In Mahomedan language, India was Daru-l-harb or a Mansion of War.  In these later years, on the contrary, it is generally recognised by Mahomedans that India under the British rule is not Daru-l-harb, but Daru-l-Islam, or a Mansion of Islamism, in which war on infidels is not incumbent.[60] It may be noted that the decree, recently issued from Mecca, that British territory is Daru-l-Islam, can only refer to India.

[Sidenote:  The Aligarh movement analogous to Brahmaism.]

Exactly like the Brahmas, the other new Mahomedan sect, in the modern rational spirit, have refined away their faith to a theism or deism purged of the supernatural.  Mahomed’s inspiration and miracles are rejected.  These represent the modern rationalising spirit in religion; reason is their standard, and “reason alone is a sufficient guide.”  According to Sir Syed Ahmad, founder of the movement, “Islam is Nature, and Nature Islam.”  Hence the sect is sometimes called the Naturis,[61] or followers of Natural Religion, the adoption of the English word identifying them again with the Br[=a]hmas, who are essentially the outcome of English education and Christian influence among Hindus.  The Naturis, the modernised Mahomedans, have as their headquarters the Mahomedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in the United Provinces.  It ought to be said that they also claim to be going back to pure original Mahomedanism before it was corrupted by the “Fathers” of Islam.

CHAPTER XIII

HINDU DOCTRINES—­HOW THEY CHANGE

“As men’s minds receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the world advances.  Society rests upon them; mighty revolutions spring from them; institutions crumble before their onward march.”

    —­Extract from Mr. Kiddle, an American writer, which occurs in
    a letter “received” by Madame Blavatsky from Koot Humi in
    Thibet.

[Sidenote:  Will the new religious organisations survive?]

The four new religious organisations described in the preceding chapters may or may not survive—­who can tell?  What would they become, or what would become of them, in the event, say, of the great nations of Europe issuing from some deadly conflict so balanced that India and the East had to be let alone, entirely cut off?  The Indian Christian Church, hardly yet acclimatised so far as it is the creation of modern efforts, would she survive?  The English sweet-pea, sown in India, produced its flowers, but not at first any vigorous self-propagating seed.  The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j, graft of West on East, and still sterile as an intellectual coterie, how would it fare, cut off from its Western nurture?  The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j—­what, in that event, would be her resistance to the centripetal force that we have noted in her blind patriotism?