An Introduction to the Study of Hinduism: (A Study in Comparative Religion)

About The Book: A right conception of Hindu history is essential to a right understanding of Hindu religion. But, where are we to find a Hindu history? One of the most convenient myths of European origin, in regard to India is that previous to the Mahomedan invasion, this country had never (any reliable history of its own. The Hindus not only had no history, but never possessed the historical faculty even. Our modern Historical science or Philosophy of History starts, therefore, with the ultimate truth of modern Anthropology, the truth, namely, of the existence of certain original, prehistoric inexplicable yet undeniable peculiarities of mental and social structures, that constitute the special characteristic and genius of different races and nations, and that furnish the element of permanence, as well as the regulative end and idea to all historic evolutions. It is, therefore,, that we find Tylor's animistic theory of the origin of religion, inapplicable to, and unsupported by the records of the Aryan, and especially of the Hindu people. The Vedic view of nature, we therefore prefer to characterise as humanistic or anthropomorphic. This very complexity, however, offers to the students of the science or, more strictly speaking, the philosophy of religion, a most interesting subject of study and 'investigation in this great world-religion. It may justly claim to be somewhat of an epitome of all world religions, and the history of religious evolution may be traced in it almost from beginning to end, so far as that end has been yet reached by man.