One general observation about India may be made at the outset.  Here more than in any other country the national mind finds its favourite occupation and full expression in religion.  This quality is geographical rather than racial, for it is possessed by Dravidians as much as by Aryans.  From the Raja to the peasant most Hindus have an interest in theology and often a passion for it.  Few works of art or literature are purely secular:  the intellectual and aesthetic efforts of India, long, continuous and distinguished as they are, are monotonous inasmuch as they are almost all the expression of some religious phase.  But the religion itself is extraordinarily full and varied.  The love of discussion and speculation creates considerable variety in practice and almost unlimited variety in creed and theory.  There are few dogmas known to the theologies of the world which are not held by some of India’s multitudinous sects[4] and it is perhaps impossible to make a single general statement about Hinduism, to which some sects would not prove an exception.  Any such statements in this book must be understood as referring merely to the great majority of Hindus.

As a form of life and thought Hinduism is definite and unmistakeable.  In whatever shape it presents itself it can be recognized at once.  But it is so vast and multitudinous that only an encyclopedia could describe it and no formula can summarize it.  Essayists flounder among conflicting propositions such as that sectarianism is the essence of Hinduism or that no educated Hindu belongs to a sect.  Either can easily be proved, for it may be said of Hinduism, as it has been said of zoology, that you can prove anything if you merely collect facts which support your theory and not those which conflict with it.  Hence many distinguished writers err by overestimating the phase which specially interests them.  For one the religious life of India is fundamentally monotheistic and Vishnuite:  for another philosophic Sivaism is its crown and quintessence:  a third maintains with equal truth that all forms of Hinduism are tantric.  All these views are tenable because though Hindu life may be cut up into castes and sects, Hindu creeds are not mutually exclusive and repellent.  They attract and colour one another.

2. Origin and Growth of Hinduism

The earliest product of Indian literature, the Rig Veda, contains the songs of the Aryan invaders who were beginning to make a home in India.  Though no longer nomads, they had little local sentiment.  No cities had arisen comparable with Babylon or Thebes and we hear little of ancient kingdoms or dynasties.  Many of the gods who occupied so much of their thoughts were personifications of natural forces such as the sun, wind and fire, worshipped without temples or images and hence more indefinite in form, habitation and attributes than the deities of Assyria or Egypt.  The idea of a struggle between good and evil was not