[Footnote 401:  The population of India (about 315 millions) is larger than that of Europe without Russia.]

[Footnote 402:  But compare the English poet

“Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, ... but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all I should know what God and man is.”]

[Footnote 403:  Efforts are now being made by Hindus to suppress this institution.]

[Footnote 404:  In the Vedic funeral ceremonies the wife lies down by her dead husband and is called back to the world of the living which points to an earlier form of the rite where she died with him.  But even at this period, those who did not follow the Vedic customs may have killed widows with their husbands (see too Ath.  Veda, XII. 3), and later, the invaders from Central Asia probably reinforced the usage.  The much-abused Tantras forbid it.]

[Footnote 405:  For the history of the Ramayana and Mahabharata and the dates assignable to the different periods of growth, see Winternitz, Gesch.  Ind.  Lit. vol.  I. p. 403 and p. 439.  Also Hopkins’ Great Epic of India, p. 397.  The two poems had assumed something like their present form in the second and fourth centuries A.D. respectively.  These are probably the latest dates for any substantial additions or alterations and there is considerable evidence that poems called Bharata and Ramayana were well known early in the Christian era.  Thus in Asvaghosha’s Sutralankara (story XXIV) they are mentioned as warlike poems inculcating unbuddhist views.  The Ramayana is mentioned in the Mahavibhasha and was known to Vasubandhu (J.R.A.S. 1907, p. 99).  A Cambojan inscription dating from the first years of the seventh century records arrangements made for the recitation of the Ramayana, Purana and complete (asesha) Bharata, which implies that they were known in India considerably earlier.  See Barth, Inscrip.  Sanscrites de Cambodge, pp. 29-31.  The Mahabharata itself admits that it is the result of gradual growth for in the opening section it says that the Bharata consists of 8,800 verses, 24,000 verses and 100,000 verses.]

[Footnote 406:  Hardy, Indische Religionsgeschichte, p. 101.]

[Footnote 407:  But some of these latter sacrifice images made of dough instead of living animals.]

[Footnote 408:  It is said that the Agnishtoma was performed in Benares in 1898, and in the last few years I am told that one or two Vedic sacrifices have been offered annually in various parts of southern India.  I have myself seen the sites where such sacrifices were offered in 1908-9 in Mysore city and in Chidambaram, and in 1912 at Wei near Poona.  The most usual form of sacrifice now-a-days is said to be the Vajapeya.  Much Vedic ritual is still preserved in the domestic life of the Nambathiri and other Brahmans of southern India.  See Cochin, Tribes and Castes, and Thurston, Castes and Tribes of southern India.]