"What is in the Brahmin's books, that is in the Brahmin's heart. Neither you nor I knew there was so much evil in the world."
The power of the priests or Brahmins over the Hindus is one of the phenomena of India. I do not know where you can get a better idea of their influence and of the reverence that is paid to them than in "Kim," Rudyard Kipling's story of an Irish boy who was a disciple of an old Thibetan lama or Buddhist monk. That story is appreciated much more keenly by people who have lived or traveled in India, because it appeals to them. There is a familiar picture on every page, and it is particularly valuable as illustrating the relations between the Brahmins and the people. "These priests are invested," said one of the ablest writers on Indian affairs, "with a reverence which no extreme of abject poverty, no infamy of private conduct can impair, and which is beyond anything that a mind not immediately conversant with the fact can conceive. They are invariably addressed with titles of divinity, and are paid the highest earthly honors. The oldest and highest members of other castes implore the blessing of the youngest and poorest of theirs; they are the chosen recipients of all charities, and are allowed a license in their private relations which would be resented as a deadly injury in any but themselves."
This reverence is largely due to superstitions which the Brahmins do their best to cultivate and encourage. There are 30,000,000 gods in the Hindu pantheon, and each attends to the affairs of his own particular jurisdiction. Most of them are wicked, cruel and unkind, and delight in bringing misfortunes upon their devotees, which can only be averted by the intercession of a priest. Gods and demons haunt every hill and grove and gorge and dark corner. Their names are usually unknown, but they go on multiplying as events or incidents occur to which the priests can give a supernatural interpretation. These gods are extremely sensitive to disrespect or neglect, and unless they are constantly propitiated they will bring all sorts of disasters. The Brahmin is the only man who knows how to make them good-natured. He can handle them exactly as he likes, and they will obey his will. Hence the superstitious peasants yield everything, their money, their virtue, their lives, as compensation for the intercession of the priests in their behalf.
The census of 1901 returned 2,728,812 priests, which is an average of one for every seventy-two members of the Hindu faith, and it is believed that, altogether, there are more than 9,000,000 persons including monks, nuns, ascetics, fakirs, sorcerers, chelas, and mendicants or various kinds and attendants employed about the temples who are dependent upon the public for support. A large part of the income of the pious Hindu is devoted to the support of priests and the feeding of pilgrims. Wherever you see it, wherever you meet it, and especially when you come in contact with it as a sightseer, Brahminism excites nothing but pity, indignation and abhorrence.
Buddhism is very different, although Buddha lived and died a Hindu, and the members of that sect still claim that he was the greatest, the wisest and the best of all Brahmins. No two religions are so contradictory and incompatible as that taught by Buddha and the modern teachings of the Brahmins. The underlying principles of Buddha's faith are love, charity, self-sacrifice, unselfishness, universal brotherhood and spiritual and physical purity. He believed in none of the present practices of the Hindu priests. There is a striking resemblance between the teachings of Buddha and the teachings of Christ. Passages in the New Testament, reporting the words of the Savior, seem like plagiarisms from the maxims of Buddha, and, indeed, Buddhist scholars tell of a myth concerning a young Jew who about five centuries after Buddha, and twenty centuries ago, came from Syria with a caravan and spent several years under instruction in a Buddhist monastery in Thibet. Thus they account for the silence of the scriptures concerning the doings of Christ between the ages of 12 and 20, and for the similarity between his sermons and those preached by the founder of their religion. Buddha taught that good actions bring happiness and bad actions misery; that selfishness is the cause of sin, sorrow and suffering, and that the abolition of self, sacrifices for others and the suppression of passions and desires is the only true plan of salvation. He died 543 years before Jesus was born, and within the next two centuries his teachings were accepted by two-thirds of the people of India, but by the tenth century of our era they had been forgotten, and a great transformation had taken place among the Indo-Ayran races, who began to worship demons instead of angels and teach fear instead of hope, until now there are practically no Buddhists in India with the exception of the Burmese, who are almost unanimous in the confession of that faith. It is a singular phenomenon that Buddhism should so disappear from the land of its birth, although 450,000,000 of the human race still turn to its founder with pure affection as the wisest of teachers and the noblest of ideals.
The teachings of Buddha survive in a sect known as the Jains, founded by Jina, or Mahavira, a Buddhist priest, about a thousand years ago, as a protest against the cruel encroachments of the Hindus. Jina was a Perfect One, who subdued all worldly desires; who lived an unselfish life, practiced the golden rule, harmed no living thing, and attained the highest aim of the soul, right knowledge, right conduct, temperance, sobriety, chastity and a Holy Calm.
There are now 1,334,148 Jains in India, and among them are the wealthiest, most highly cultured and most charitable of all people. They carry their love of life to extremes. A true believer will not harm an insect, not even a mosquito or a flea. All Hindus are kind to animals, except when they ill treat them through ignorance, as is often the case. The Brahmins represent that murder, robbery, deception and every other form of crime and vice may be committed in the worship of their gods. They teach that the gods themselves are guilty of the most hideous depravity, and that the sacrifice of wives, children, brothers, sisters and friends to convenience or expediency for selfish ends is justifiable. Indeed, the British government has been compelled to interfere and prohibit the sacrifice of human life to propitiate the Hindu gods. It has suppressed the thugs, who, as you have read, formerly went about the country killing people in order to acquire holiness; it has prohibited the awful processions of the car of Juggernaut, before which hysterical fanatics used to throw their own bodies, and the bodies of their children, to be crushed under the iron wheels, in the hope of pleasing some monster among their deities. The suppression of infanticide, which is still encouraged by the Brahmins, is now receiving the vigilant attention of the authorities.
Every effort has been made during the last fifty years to prevent the awful cruelties to human beings that formerly were common in Hindu worship, but no police intervention has ever been necessary to protect dumb animals; nobody was ever punished for cruelty to them; on the contrary, animal worship is one of the most general of practices among the Hindus, and many beasts and reptiles are sacred. But the Jains go still further and establish hospitals for aged and infirm animals. You can see them in Bombay, in Delhi, Lucknow, Calcutta and other places where the Jains are strong. Behind their walls may be found hundreds of decrepit horses, diseased cows and bullocks, many dogs and cats and every kind of sick, lame and infirm beast. Absurd stories are told strangers concerning the extremes to which this benevolence is carried, and some of them have actually appeared in published narratives of travel in India. One popular story is that when a flea lights upon the body of a Jain he captures it carefully, puts it in a receptacle and sends it to an asylum where fat coolies are hired to sit around all day and night and allow fleas, mosquitoes and other insects to feed upon them. But although untrue, these ridiculous stories are valuable as illustrating the principles in which the Jains believe. They are strict vegetarians. The true believers will not kill an animal or a fish or a bird, or anything that breathes, for any purpose, and everybody can see that they strictly practice what they preach.
His most gracious majesty, King of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, has more Mohammedan subjects than the Great Turk or any other ruler. They numbered 62,458,061 at the last census. They are a clean, manly, honorable and industrious portion of the population. Commercially they do not rank as high as the Parsees, who number only