Thread by @HindooHistory

The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., 1911

"HINDUISM: THE SUPREME FACT OF INDIA"

"If it were any other country but India, I might write last of the religion the people profess, but since it is India, it is the first thing to be considered"

#HindooHistory

"Religions is the Supreme Fact of Indian life-- if we may call religion what has been more properly defined as 'a sacred disease'"

"Certainly nowhere else on earth is there a country where the entire life of the people is so molded by the spiritual belief."

"Two children are born on the same. The one, of high-caste parentage, Brahmanism has irrevocably decreed shall be all his life, no matter how stupid or vicious, a privileged and 'superior' being to whom all lower orders must make obeisance."

"The other, born of a Dom father and mother, Brahmanism has decreed shall be all his life, no matter how great his virtue or brilliant his mind, an outcast whose mere touch works pollution worse than crime."

"And through the whole life of both, Brahmanism or Hinduism, as the supreme religion of India is called, will exercise over each an influence more potent and incessant than any civil government has every exercised over its subjects"

"About theoretical or philosophical Hinduism there is admittedly a certain measure of moral beauty, but to even get from this Hindu literature one must wade through cesspools of filth and obscenity and must shut his eyes to the pitiably low ideals of Deity"

"while in its practical manifestations modern Hinduism is the most sickening combination of superstition, idolatry, an d vice that now disgraces the name of religion in any considerable portion of the earth"

"the idea of the transmigration of souls, 'Samsara,' the belief that you have had millions of birth (as men and animals) and may have millions more (unless you merit the favor of the gods and win release from life)..."

"and that what you are in your present life is the result of actions in previous existences, and what you do in your present existence will influence all your future re-births:"

"this is a doctrine that might be a tremendous moral force if it were linked with such ideals as distinguish the Christian religion"

"In Hinduism, however, the emphasis is not on worthy living, not on exalted moral conduct, as the thing essential to divine favor, but on rites and ceremonies, regard for the priests..."

"rigid observance of caste, sacred bathing, and the offering of proper sacrifices to fickle or bloodthirsty gods and goddesses"

"In their religion no Isiah makes terrible and effective protest against the uselessness of form; no Christ teaches that God can be worshipped only in spirit"

"The other Hindu idea that Self, that a man's own soul is an Emanation of God, a part of the Divine Essence, and the purpose of man's existence is to hasten a final Absorption into God:..."

"this also (although destructive of the idea of individuality, the sacredness of Personality so fundamental in Christian thought) would seem to be a tremendous moral force..."

"but it is vitiated in much the same way as the idea of Samsara while it is further weakened by the fact that the Hindu gods themselves are often represented as immoral, bloodthirsty, obscene and criminal"

"Enmeshed in vicious traditions and false doctrines, its philosophy and purer teachings known only to a cultured few, the Higher Hinduism 'powerless to be born,' is only the Illusion which it would teach that all else is..."

"while practical Hinduism hangs like a blight over a land whose people are as the sands of the sea for multitude."

"If all the human race alive today were to pass in review before you, every eight person in the ranks would be a Hindu. And to realize in what manner Hinduism guides its 200,000,000 followers, it is only necessary to visit some of their most celebrated temples"

"It is an extreme illustration, no doubt, but since it was the first Hindu shrine I visited, we may begin with the Kalighat in Calcutta."

"This temple is dedicated to Kali or 'Mother Kali,' as the English-speaking temple priest who conducted me always says, the bloody goddess of destruction"

"That terrible society of criminals and assassins, the Thugs (its founder is worshipped as a saint) had Kali as their patron goddess and whetted their knives and planned their murderous crimes before her image-- all this in a 'temple' or 'religion'"

"The representations of Kali befit her character. Fury is in her countenance and in her three red eyes, her tongue lolls from her mouth, in one of her four hands is the dripping bloody head of a slaughtered enemy..."

"Her necklace is of the heads of her slain and her girdle is the severed hands of dead men. Tradition says that she constantly drinks blood, and each man who comes to worship her brings to little wet, trembling kid"

"The warm blood that flows after the priestly axe has done its work is supposed to please the terrible goddess. The morning of my visit there were sacrifices every few minutes, and on the great day of Kali-worship, in October, the place runs ankle-deep in blood"

"In the old days-- and not so long ago at that-- there were human sacrifices at Kalighat, and when I asked the priest concerning them, his significant answer was that the British Government would no longer allow them-- he made no claim. that Hinduism itself has changed!"

"Their Kalki Purana says that one human sacrifice delights Kali for a thousand years, and in spite of British alertness a bloody human head bedecked with flowers was found in a Kali temple near Caclutta not many years ago..."

"From the Kalighat temple, the priest of Mother Kali took me to the edge of the dirty, murky Hoogli (sacred as a part of the Ganges system) where in its consecrated filth scores of miserable young pilgrims were washing away their sins or 'acquiring merit' with the gods"

"On the way we passed the image of Juggernaut, the miserable stables in which the pilgrims are lodged, and the image of Setola, 'the Mother of the Smallpox,' as the priest called her, to which smallpox victims come for cure"

"Back again the Temple, the priest assured me that if I would give the other priests a few annas (an anna is worth two cents of our money) they would drive back the shrieking, blood-stained, garlanded crowds of half-naked 'worshippers' and give me a view of the Kali idol"

"The money forthcoming-- and the high priest, in expectation of a tip, coming out to lend his assistance-- there ensued such a Kilkenny fight between the priests and the dense mob of 'worshippers'..."

"such knocking, kicking, scourging, as never any man got for the same amount of money in any prize-fight, until finally I got a swift glimpse of the idol's hideous head"

"Then having paid the greedy priest and the high priest (like the daughters of the horse leech they always cry for 'more'), I went back to my hotel, properly edified, let us believe, by this spectacle of Hindu 'religion'"

"Could I have been otherwise than impressed when I went that afternoon to another Indian religious service-- this time of Christians-- and compared it with what I had seen in the morning?"

"Instead of a money-hunting priest sitting beside a butcher's block and exacting a prescribed fee from each pushing, jabbering, suppliant of a blood-thirsty goddess, herself only one of many jealous gods and goddesses to be favored and propitiated"

"instead of this there was a converted Indian minister who told his fellows of one God whose characteristic is love, and whose worship is of the Spirit. "

"And instead of the piteous bleating of slaughtered beasts there was the fine rhythm of hymns whose English names one could easily recognize from their tunes in spite of the translation of the words into the strange tongue of the Bengali"

"At home, I may say just here, I am not accused of being flagrantly and outrageously pious; but no open-minded, observant man, even if he were an infidel, could make a trip through Asia without seeing..."

"what a tremendously uplifting influence is the religion to which the majority of Americans adhere, as compared with other faiths, and how tremendously in Christian lands it has bettered and enriched the lives even of those of 'Deaf ear and soul uncaring' who ignore or deride it"

"and with no desire. to preach, I set down these things, simply because they are as obvious as temples or scenery to any Oriental traveler who keeps his eyes open"

"But let us now go to Benares, the fountain-head of the Hindu faith, the city which is to it what Mecca is to Mohammedanism and more than what Jerusalem is to Christianity. And Benares is so important that I must give more than a paragraph to my impressions of it"

"The view of the river-front from the sacred Ganges I found surprisingly majestic and impressive. The magnificent, many-storied pilgrim houses, built along ago by wealthy princes anxious to win the favor of the gods, tower like mountains from the river bank..."

"a strange mingling of many styles and epochs of Oriental architecture, and yet mainly suggesting the palaces and temples that lined the ancient Nile."

"An earthquake, too, has heightened the effect by leaving massive ruins, the broken bases of gigantic columns, that seem to whisper tales older than the centuries that have been witnessed by any building now standing in Benares."

"For Benares, although its present structures are modern, was old when the walls of Rome were built; it was historic when David sat on the throne of Israel"

"But while one may find elsewhere structures not greatly unlike these beside the Sacred River, nowhere else on earth may one see crowds like these..."

"that overflow the acres and acres of stone steps leading up from the river's edge through the maze of buildings and spill off into the water"

"There are indeed all sorts of conditions of men-- and women. Princes from afar come with their gorgeous retinues and stately equipages and go down into the bathing-places calling on the names of their gods..."

"as trustingly as the poor doomed leper who thinks that the waters of Mother Gunga may bring the hoped-for healing of his body."

"Naturally, there are many temples in Benares in which pilgrims worship, many priests whom they must support. There are said to be 2,000 temples in Benares..."

"and the high priest of one of them-- while sparring for a bigger tip for his services-- told me that he was at the head of 400 priests supported by the establishment alone (the Golden Temple)."

"And such temples as they are! I have seen the seamy side of some great cities, but for crass and raw vulgarity and obsceneness there are temples in Benares..."

"-- so-called 'temples' that should minister to man's holier nature with so-called 'priests' to act as guides to their foulness-- that could give some lessons to a third-rate Bowery den."

"No wonder that the Government of India when it made a law against indecent pictures and carvings had to make a special exception for Hindu 'religious' (?) pictures."

"There is a limit, however, even to the endurance of the British Government, and at the Nepalese Temple I was told that the authorities do not allow such structures to be built."

"Moreover, it is not only admitted that the temples in many parts of India are the resort of the lowest class of women, 'temple girls,' dedicated to gods and goddesses, but their presence is openly defended as proper."

"Most of the temples in Benares, too, are as far from cleanliness as they are from godliness. The Golden Temple with its sacred cows penned up in dirty stalls, its ragged, half-naked worshippers..."

"its holy cesspool known as 'The Well of Knowledge,' its hideous, leprosy-smitten beggars, its numerous emblems of its lustful god Krishna, and its mercenary priests, is enough to make one sick at heart, not to mention other parts of the human anatomy"

"The famous Monkey Temple (dedicated like the Kalighat to Mother Kali) is no better. This temple is open to the sky, and the most loathsome collection of dirty monkeys I have ever had the misfortune to see were scrambling all around the place..."

"while the money-made, goat-killing priests, preying on the ignorance of the poor and, itching for a few annas in tips, won a place in my disgust second only to that occupied by their monkey companions"

"I left and went out to the gate where teh snake charmers were juggling with a dozen hissing cobras. They were pleasanter to look at."

"That night an eminent English artist, temporarily in Benares, discoursed to me at length, though vaguely, upon the beauties of Hindu religious theory, but what I had seen during the day did not help his argument"

"Emerson's phrase may well be applied to Hinduism, 'What you are speaks so loud that I can not hear what you say'"