[Sidenote:  Commingling of contradictory beliefs—­]

[Sidenote:  Polytheism with Monotheism.]

Nor is it to be imagined that the Hindu polytheism, theism, and pantheism are distinguishable religious strata.  “Uniformity and consistency of creeds are inventions of the European mind,” says a cynical writer already quoted.  “Hinduism bristles with contradictions, inconsistencies, and surprises,” says Sir M. Monier Williams.  The common people are indeed polytheists, at different seasons of the year and on different social occasions worshipping different deities, male or female, and setting out to this or that shrine, as the touts of the rival shrines have persuaded them.  Nevertheless, an intelligent member of the humbler ranks is always ready to acknowledge that there is really only one God, of whom the so-called gods are only variations in name.  Or his theory may be that there is one supreme God, under whom the popular deities are only departmental heads; for the presence of the great central British Government in India is a standing suggestion of monotheism.  The officer who drew up the Report of the Census of India, 1901 (p. 363) gives an instance of this commingling of monotheism and polytheism.  “An orderly,” he writes, “into whose belief I was inquiring, described the relation between the supreme God and the Devata [minor Gods] as that between an official and his orderlies, and another popular simile often used is that of the Government and the district officer."[65] The polytheism of the masses may thus blend with the theism which is the ordinary intellectual standpoint of the educated classes.

[Sidenote:  Monotheism with Polytheism.]

Rising to the next stage, namely, the theism of the educated class—­the blending of their theism with the polytheism of the masses is illustrated in the July number of the magazine of the Hindu College, Benares, the headquarters of the late Hindu revival and of the pantheistic philosophy.  In answer to an inquirer’s question—­“Is there only one God?” the reply is, “There is one supreme Lord or Ishvara of the universe, and there are minor deities or devas who intelligently guide the various processes of nature in their different departments in willing obedience to Ishvara.”  The Hindu College, Benares, be it remembered, is primarily one of the modern colleges whence the modern new-Indians come.

[Sidenote:  Monotheism with Pantheism.]

Again, the modern theism of the educated, in like manner, very readily passes into the pantheism of the philosophers and of those educated in Sanscrit, which I have described as part of the accepted Hindu orthodoxy.  For, whatever its origin, an observer finds the pantheistic idea emerge all over educated India.  The late Sir M. Monier Williams speaks of pantheism as a main root of the original Indo-Aryan creed, which has “branched out into an endless variety of polytheistic superstitions.”  Whether that be so, or whether, as is now more generally